(the editor of the edition to which I refer) appends the remark inclosed
between brackets:--

"He was imprisoned for his _Abuses Whipt and Stript_; yet this
could not have been his first offence, as an allusion is made to
a former accusation. [It was for _The Scourge_ (1615) that his
first known imprisonment took place.]"

I cannot discover upon any authority sufficient ground for Mr.
Campbell's note resecting a _former_ accusation against Wither. He was
undoubtedly imprisoned for his _Abuses Whipt and Stript_, which first
appeared in print in 1613, but I do not think an _earlier_ offence can
be proved against him. It has been supposed, upon the authority of a
passage in the _Warning Piece to London_, that the first edition of this
curious work appeared in 1611; but I am inclined to think that the
lines,--

"In sixteen hundred ten and one,
I notice took of public crimes,"

refers to the period at which the "Satirical Essays" were _composed_.
Mr. Willmott, however (_Lives of the Sacred Poets_, p. 72.), thinks that
they point to an earlier publication. But it is not likely that Wither
would so soon again have committed himself by the publication of the
_Abuses_ in 1613, if he had suffered for his "liberty of speech" so
shortly before.

Mr. Cunningham's addition to Mr. Campbell's note is incorrect. The
_Scourge_ is part of the _Abuses Whipt and Stript_ printed in 1613 (a
copy of which is now before me), to which it forms a postscript. Wood,