The copytext (L=11626.c.5) includes a frontispiece portrait of Charles by A. Hertochs.

    A Mixt Poem was printed twice during 1660 and again, in variant form, under the title "A Poem Upon the Happy Restauration" in John Crouch's collection of verses -- Census Poeticus (printed for the Author, by H. Brugis at the Red Lyon in New-Street, neer Fetter-Lane. 1663). ¹ Although the evidence is finally inconclusive, of the two 1660 printings, the edition published by Daniell White, containing 346 lines {and an errata list}, is probably earlier than that by Thomas Bettertun, who published later poems by Crouch, containing 356 lines. ² Bettertun's edition has been taken for copy text here. {In line with editorial policy, substantive variants affecting meaning have been reported from the White printing; I have also recorded corrections from the errata list and several corrected by hand in the C copy.}

    Since the Dedication acknowledges the existence of the commemorative volumes published by Oxford and Cambridge, Crouch's poem cannot have appeared before July.

    An inveterate scandal-monger, Crouch couldn't resist mixing his praise of the returning king with retrospective personal attacks on -- among others -- Cromwell, the journalist Marchamont Nedham, and the astrologer William Lilly. Much of what he says here about Cromwell and Nedham he had already said a decade earlier in issues of The Man in the Moon, his weekly newsletter that ran between April 1649 and June 1650 in which he set new standards in royalist vituperation and personal invective, effectively inventing the kind of news reporting familiar in modern tabloids. See Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-century England (Clarendon, 1996).

    According to Lois Potter, Crouch's family lived in the Smithfield area where they were associated with popular ballad printing and "scurrilous `low' royalist propaganda" (Potter, p. 15). John Crouch appears engaged in anti-government publications from 1647-1650 both as author and publisher. Despite concerted parliamentary attempts to supress them, the group associated with these newsbooks survived, falling relatively quiet during the trial and execution of Charles I, to re-emerge in April 1649 with a new version of Mercurius Pragmaticus subtitled "For King Charls II." That month The Man in the Moon -- "the most violent of the royalist Mercuries" (Potter, p. 18) -- began appearing, in which Crouch turned from criticizing government policies to attacking people in terms of their personal -- usually sexual -- habits. Using the same alias, Crouch issued several occasional pamphlets containing pointed and scurrilous libels, ³ that doubtless helped inspire the Printing Ordinance of September 1649 which set out to silence the clandestine press. Within days of the Ordinance passing, Crouch writes:

The uncontroulable, almighty, and everlasting Commons, have out of their great Care for the good of the Commonwealth, passed an Act for Regulating Printing, and punishing all such as Write, Print, Publish, or Disperse, Scandalous and Unlicensed Books; Laying great Penalties on the Offenders. A sad story my Lord; but now I think on't, must not Walkers Occurences ⁴ and the Ly-urnals cease by this Act? Who the Devil has the Authority to license them: I deny the Juncto or any of their spawn to have the least Authority to License so much as a ballad to the tune of King Thomas ye cannot; and therefore I the Man in the Moon (mark what I say) can shew lawful Authority (Cum Privilegio & permissi Superiorum) to Write, Print, Publish, and Disperse in the World, all the Knaveries Committed under the Sun, whether in Juncto, Councell of State, Army, City, or Country; and to this I can (if I please) shew my Imprimatur. ⁵

    Like other royalist newsbooks, issues of The Man in the Moon typically begin with a prefatory set of quatrains in doggerel, but another of Crouch's innovations was to intersperse prose passages with short sets of verse in pentameter, the form adopted for his Restoration panegyric. Evidently Crouch thought that his views on current affairs and those involved in them deserved the serious consideration owed to neoclassical forms. Although the Dedication of A Mixt Poem suggests this might be his first public appearance as a poet, Crouch's name appears on a few earlier publications in pentameters. Signed "John Crowch," A Congratulation In Honour of the Annual Festival of the Lords, Knights, Esq; and Yeomandry [sic] of the County of Hertford, at Merchant Taylors Hall, on Thursday Sept. 6. 1655, is a commemorative broadsheet that claims its author is originally from Hertfordshire. It illustrates a different, though complementary, side of Crouch's literary ambition from his impulse to libel, one that he would be able to indulge following the Restoration: that of grovelling before civic notables, aristocrats, and members of the royal family. "I hope you cannot think," he writes, "that there can be / In me (dear SIRS!) the seeds of flattery," but it is hard to imagine anyone would have thought otherwise.

    Crouch's other pre-Restoration verses in iambic pentamenters are both shrewd attempts to ingratiate himself with Francis Talbot, eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury; an elegy on the nobleman's first wife appeared in 1657, ⁷ followed the next year by an epithalamium, The Muses Joy, on his subsequent marriage to the notorious Anna Maria, daughter of Robert, Lord Brudenell. ⁸ The wedding poem, like his panegyric to Charles, is portentiously signed "J. C. Gent," a characteristic bit of self-promotion implying that the author is of a social rank too exalted to sign a printed poem. Here, as in his newsbooks, Crouch stuck to his principle that partisan bias and self interest should always take precedence over the truth, for "the Vertuous Lady Anne Brudnel" named on the titlepage had been engaged in a well known scandalous affair with George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, since 1654. {cf: poem transcribed as file: crouch.ep} Crouch dedicated his epithalamium "To the Virtuous and Right honorable Anna-Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury," writing:

... although I never had the honor to be related to those noble Families the Shrewsburies and Brudenals (now in a happy conjunction) yet when I hear the high Expressions of both from a Brother and a Sister, I cannot be unconcern'd in their debt of duty, or passive in their transportations: [sig A2] but as I am warm'd, so I must admire by reflection. This (the greater her presumption) is my Muses second Service to your Ladyship; though yet she never brought an Embassy of ill news, never put your fair eyes to the expense of one pearl. Before she solemniz'd your auspicuous Nuptials: perhaps the dress of that Poem might, the subject could not be troublesom, which was so pleasing to your Ladyship. At this time my Muse celebrates the new espousals of a Royal Widdow to her Crown, I wish I could say to her King. Now though your ladyship be entertain'd in the Porch, the Dedication of this Poem; yet the fabrick, namely the Subject, is part of her Majesties Revenue; unto whom I need no nearer Access than your Ladyship your person being as near the Queen as her shadow to her Body, or rather as her Body to her Head; joyn'd not onely bu propinquity, but by influence also. And now, Madam, I have unbosom'd my whole design, which is, that the world by me, and her Majesty by you may know, how much I am her Majesties loyal Subject, and
Your Ladyships humblest Servant,
JO. CROUCH. (sig A2v)

    With the return of the Stuarts, Crouch sought opportunities to ingratiate himself with the new powers by addressing pentameter verses to various members of the royal family. The Muses Tears For the Loss of the Illustrious Prince Henry Duke of Gloucester ⁹ and The Muses Joy For the Recovery of that weeping Vine, Henretta Maria, The most Illustrious Queen-Mother, and her Royal Branches ¹⁰ both appeared during 1660, soon to be followed by a poem on Charles's coronation. ¹¹ He was quite unashamed about grovelling in public. "And now, Madam," he ends his dedication to the Countess of Shrewsbury prefaced to The Muses Joy, "I have unbosom'd my whole design, which is, that the world by me, and her Majesty by you may know, how much I am her majesties loyal Subject, and Your Ladyships humblest Servant" (sig. A2v). Crouch's poems addressing the royal oak and Charles's marriage to Catharine of Braganza appeared in 1662. ¹² These were followed in 1665 by poetic attacks on England's major trading competitors, the Dutch ¹³ . The next year he published poems lamenting the plague, ¹⁴ and the great fire of London. ¹⁵ Crouch also published heroic elegies on Andrew Rutherford, Earl of Tiveot (1664), ¹⁶ Henry Pierrpont, the Marquis of Dorchester (1680) ¹⁷ , and Thomas Butler, the Earl of Ossory (1680). ¹⁸

   A Mixt Poem, nonetheless, was his first direct address to a member of the royal family using the heroic couplet, a fact that did not prevent him from indulging his aptitude for personal invective while directly alluding to his own loyalist past efforts in The Man in the Moon.

   IT hath ever been the Ambition of Writers to climb as high as they can to an Honourable Patronage, even to Heaven it self, if the Nobility of the subject might authorize the Presumption; Now Poets rankt (especially by the more earthly ²¹ part of the World) amongst the most airy of Pen-men, are priviledg'd by common Opinion to soar up with the Highest: But my present Obligations ²² instruct me to the contrary. As Loyalty was the Muse inspir'd this Poem, so Love shall appoint the Dedication. Though my weak Muse hath sometimes borrowed the expeditious Aids of the Presse, yet not till now appeared in publick: As she never knew the triumphs of Fame, so she never felt the blushes of Dishonour, was never injurious to any person but her self. But in this subject, Secrecy had been a kind of Combination, Privacy a privative Treason; so ill do clandestine joyes become an universal Jubilee, That I come behind in the rear of our Poetique ²³ Forces, must be imputed to some unkind contingencies; ²⁴ my thoughts being conceived with the first, ²⁵ but by some misprisions met with hard labour from the midwifry ²⁶ of the Press. Neverthelesse, it will be honour enough for me, if I may have leave ²⁷ to wait upon (as their obsequious shadows) the heroick poems ²⁸ of those 3. ²⁹ Seraphims, Waller, Cowley, & Lluellin, whose sudden march Alarum'd both Universities. ³⁰ Mine, if they come not too early, will come soon enough to blush. But in earnest I must thank the Presse for a second benefit, besides the manifestation of my Allegiance, that it furnisheth me with a kind occasion of acknowledging unto the ungrateful world even in Print, the many kindnesses I have received from so good a Brother. In fine, You, whose Heart and Sword, so long maintain'd the Royal Cause, are obliged to protect the Heraulds of it. Accept therefore Good Brother, (which compellation I prefer before all Titles) accept of this Poem (whose onely merit is its Subject) as a mark of Loyalty to my Prince, and as a Token of my Love to your self, from