Edward Fairfax's Fourth Eclogue: Lost and Found?

Abstract

This article prints a manuscript copy of an eclogue by Edward Fairfax (d. 1635) discovered in Lambeth Palace Library, London. A manuscript of all twelve of Fairfax's eclogues once existed, but is now lost; only a small portion of the whole managed to get into print. The Lambeth manuscript contains Fairfax's fourth eclogue, 'Eglon and Alexis', which had been printed in Mrs Cooper's anthology The Muses Library (1737). The manuscript copy is lacking a number of early stanzas, but also includes one line not given in Mrs Cooper's text. The manuscript copy is, therefore, unique, and not the one used by Cooper.