button to main menu  Gents Mag 1811 part 2 p.124
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Gentleman's Magazine 1811 part 2 p.124

  Richard Brathwaite
  Drunken Barnaby's Journeys
Drunken Barnaby's Journeys


"We let our friends passe idely like our time,
Till they be gone, and then we see our crime,
And think what worth in them might have been known,
What duties done, and what affections shewn;
Untimely knowledge, which so dear doth cost,
And then begins when the thing known is lost."
BOSWORTH, to the Immortal Memory of the fairest and most virtuous lady, the lady --.
Mr. URBAN, Chiswell-street.
ONE hundred and fifty years has obscured the name, though it has brightened the fame of the Author of the above lines, as prophetic as they are applicable to himself. The inquisitive curiosity of posterity, at various periods, to be made acquainted with the real name of the facetious but unkown Author of that celebrated little book Drunken Barnaby's Journal, is confirmed; and, in spite of the prying eyeys of posterity, the vigilance, the rewards, and the labour of our literary police, no success has ever been able to apprehend and bring to justice this facetious and eccentric Highwayman, this High Priest of the Jolly God and Apollo, Author of the two following Works:

"Barnabees Journall, under the names of Mirtillus and Faustulus, lively shadowed, for the Traveller's solace, and to most apt numbers reduced, to the old tune of Barnaby, as commonly chaunted, by Corymbaeus."
First Edition, no date or Printer's name: and,

"The Chast and Lost Lovers, lively shadowed, in the Persons of Arcadius and Sepha; and illustrated with severall Stories of Hemon and Antigone, Eramio and Amissa, Phaon and Sappho, Deliathason and Verista: being a Description of several Lovers smiling with delight, and with hopes fresh as their youth, and fair as their beauties, in the beginning of their affections, and covered with bloud and horror in the conclusion: To this is added, the Contestation betwixt Bacchus and Diana, and certain Sonnets of the Author to Aurora; Digested into Three Poems, by William Bosworth, Gent.

---- Me quoque
Impune volare, et sereno
Callipoe dedit ire caelo.
London, printed for William Sheares, and are to be sold at the Signe of the Bible, in St. Paul's Church Yard, 1653."
127 pages, neatly printed, 8vo, with a neat Portrait, engraved by G. Glover, representing him in loose hair, whiskers on the upper lip, long and turned up, like Charles I. point lace, scolloped, falling over a satin embroidered jacket, aetatis 30, 1637.
The latter Work was posthumous, though written at the age of nineteen; and ushered to the world, after the Author's death, by R. C. with a Dedication, "To the true Lover of all good Learning, the Hon. John Finch, Esq.;" and "copies of commendatory Verses on these deathlesse Poems, by L. B.; Francis Lovelace; Edmond Gayton; S. P.; and L. C."
Having a Volume of Portraits ready for the press, of illustrious, eminent, and remarkable Persons, not hitherto or but imperfectly known or engraved, I shall be much obliged by any communication, that may throw light on the above Person or his Works, as early as convenient, but particularly to point out the spot
"That closed the scene of all his folly."
I have consulted with the Registers of Scaveley, near Kendal, where he terminated both his peregrinations, and dwelt; and the registers of Queen's College, Oxford, where it is said he was a graduate; and Appleby, where he was born - withut success. The latter register cannot be found.
William Bosworth, Gent. was descended from the antient and illustrious familes * of Bokesworth, Boxworth, or Bosworth, of Boxworth, by Harrington, in Cambridgeshire, was born in 1607, and died about the year 1651-2-3; in his journey he speaks of this earlier work then in MS.
* In his Poems addressed to Aurora, he says,

"O scorne me not; I come of noble line;
For by the Norman Duke our browes were crowned
With lawrell branches, and our names renowned."
"Thence
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