considered a sufficiently major poet by Samuel Johnson's sponsors, and
Langbaine's account is sketchy. In a periodical paper[8] Macdonald
summarized supplementary evidence on the dates of composition of
Settle's poem; he was working on it in January 1681/2, and it was
published on the following April 6. Lockyer, Dean of Peterborough,
asserted to Joseph Spence, who includes the rumor in _Anecdotes_, that
Settle was assisted by Clifford and Sprat and by "several best hands of
those times";[9] but Spence is notoriously unreliable. In the lack of
other evidence, then, it seems best to take the poem as wholly Settle's.
It needs only to add a few words on its textual states. The First
Edition, here reproduced, seems to exist in a single impression, and
likewise the Second Edition of the Settle (1682, in quarto) seems to
have been struck off in a single textual state. Of its individual
variants from the First Edition only the following seem of any
significance and, since there is no reason to suppose that it was
printed from any copy other than the First, they may be merely the
result of carelessness.

FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION

p. 3, line 4, enthron'd, with inthron'd with
3 8, Arts ... steps Art's ... step's
11 10, Rods; Rods?
13 26, to Descend do Descend
14 17, couch, couch
29 9, Cedar Cedars
31 21, Temples Temple

[Footnote 8: "The Attacks on John Dryden," _Essays and Studies by
Members of the English Association_, XXI, 41-74.]