found anywhere out of his own book. Ellis, it is plain, is
not to be trusted. Professing to be exact, he refers for his authority
to page 652 of Sylvester's works, and then proceeds to print a poem as
his which is not there. Had he read the page he quotes so carefully, he
would have seen that "The Lie" and "The Soul's Errand" were two separate
productions, alike only in the six stanzas taken from the former and
included in the latter.

We learn that Sir Walter Raleigh's poems were never all collected into a
volume, and, further, we learn that "The Lie," as a separate piece, was
attributed to him at an early period. Payne Collier, as I have said,
prints it as his, from a manuscript "of the time"; and in an elaborate
article on Raleigh, in the North British Review, copied into Littell's
Living Age, of June 9, 1855, the able reviewer refers particularly to
"The Lie," "saddest of poems," as Sir Walter's, and adds in a note that
"it is to be found in a manuscript of 1596." This would make the piece
two hundred and seventy years old. When and by whom it was first taken
from Sir Walter and given to Sylvester, with the altered title, and why
Sylvester incorporated into his poem of "The Soul's Errand" six stanzas
belonging to "The Lie," can now, of course, never be known.

I find that I have been indulging in quite a flow of words about a few
old verses; but then they _are_ verses, and such as one should not be
robbed of. They have lived through centuries of time, and outlived
generations of ambitious penmen, and the true name of the author ought
to live with them. Long ago, when a school-boy, I used to read and
repeat "The Lie," and it was then the undoubted work of Sir Walter
Raleigh. In after years, on looking into various volumes of old English
poetry, I was told that "The Lie" was _not_ "The Lie," and was not
written by Sir Walter Raleigh; that the true title of the piece was "The
Soul's Errand," and that the real author of it was a certain Joshua
Sylvester. Unwilling to displace the brave knight from the niche he had
graced so long, I hunted up Sylvester's old folio, and the result of my
search may be found in these imperfect remarks.

Frankly, I would fain believe that "The Lie" was written by Sir Walter.
It is true I am not able to prove it, but I think I prove that it was
not written by Sylvester. He wrote another poem, "The Soul's Errand,"
and he is welcome to it; that is, he is welcome to fourteen of its
twenty sta