'Tis true Mirtillo 'twas a fault

Title:

To Dr. Waldron. A Fellow of Allsouls Colledge in Oxford Who in a Letter acknowledg'd his mistake In having lefte that Society & the Muses to follow the Practise of Phisick

Primary Text:

MS Folger, 244-6*.

Secondary Eds:

1903 Reynolds prints Folger text, 106-7; rpt of 1903 Reynolds: 1979 Rogers AF, 84-5.

Comment:

This epistle is probably to the same George Waldron who supplied the two poems by Anne Finch to Prior which appeared in the 1741 edition of Prior's Miscellaneous Works and are copied out together with her other poems in to the MS Harleian 7316. Waldron thus knew her sufficiently early to see her juvenilia. Cameron suggests he was a friend to both Leopold William Finch, Heneage's younger brother, who was Warden of All Souls, and Charles Finch who attended All Souls in 1688. This would place Anne Finch's friendship with him around the time of her friendship with the other men in Charles's circle (Rowe, Shippen, Thornhill), that is around 1701. Since, however, her poem does not appear with these earlier poems in the Folger MS, I conjecture it was written a couple of years after this idyllic period was over and Waldron had left off poetising to try to make money as a physician; he returned it in time to place it in the second section of the Folger MS.
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