Main, C. F. “Wotton's ‘The Character of a Happy Life’.” The Library, fifth series 10, No. 4 (December 1955): 270-74.

In the essay below, Main analyzes several versions of Wotton's “The Character of a Happy Life” and determines that no definitive version of the poem exists.

Mr. J. B. Leishman's study of the transmission and transmogrification of Sir Henry Wotton's ‘You Meaner Beauties of the Night’¹ suggests the possibility of subjecting Wotton's equally famous ‘Character of a Happy Life’ to a similar scrutiny. Although the history of the ‘Character’ is not nearly so complex as that of ‘You Meaner Beauties’, both poems present the same problems to an editor: neither was printed by the author, and both exist in a variety of versions. Faced with so many different readings, an editor may either evade his responsibilities by reproducing verbatim the text which as a whole seems best to him, or he...