ABSTRACT
Date and publication. ‘To Sir Godfrey Kneller’ was first printed in The Annual Miscellany: for the Year 1694, being the Fourth Part of Miscellany Poems. In a letter to Walsh of 12 December 1693 (Letters 64), D. wrote that this miscellany would appear the following ‘Hillary terme’. It was, however, not advertised in the 1694 Hilary (February) TC, and seems not to have appeared until July (see Gentleman’s Journal, July 1694 207). The poem was not reprinted in D.’s lifetime. It was included in Tonson’s edition of D.’s Poems on Various Occasions (1701), where it is entitled ‘To Sir Godfrey Kneller, Principal Painter to His Majesty’. In the 1701 text, ll. 91–4, 115–23 and 164–5 are omitted, and there are a number of other small changes. Works speculates that the omissions and alterations (which were followed by editors before Christie) ‘may be authorial’. Kinsley and Works (as an alternative) suggest that Kneller may have been responsible for the changes, since the deleted passages might be thought to suggest certain limitations in his art. As there is no firm evidence to support either hypothesis, the 1701 variants are not recorded in the present edition, which is based on 1694, with the original paragraphing overridden at ll. 112 and 120.
