# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bold, Henry

​ BOLD, HENRY (1627–1683), poetical writer, was born in 1627, and was a descendant of the ancient Lancashire family of Bold of Bold Hall. He was the fourth son of Captain William Bold of Newstead in Hampshire. He was educated at Winchester School; thence went to Oxford, and in 1645 was elected a probationer fellow of New College. From this position he was dislodged in 1648 by the parliamentary visitors, and he then settled in London, and is described as of the Examiner's Office in Chancery.' He died in Chancery Lane on 23 Oct. 1683, and was buried at West Twyford near Acton. His books, which are of exceptional rarity, are as follows: 1. 'Wit a Sporting in a Pleasant Grove of New Fancies.' By H. B., London, 1657. This was considered by Freeling to be the rarest book he had. Prefixed is what professes to be a portrait of the author, but which was really engraved as that of Christian Ravus, or Ravius, an orientalist and friend of Ussher. It is found in his 'Discourse ​ of the Oriental Tongues,’ London, 1649, and, after serving as the effigies of Bold, was used with another alias as the frontispiece of the ‘Occult Physick' of William Williams of Gloucestershire, 1660, and of the ‘Divine Poems and Meditations' by William Williams of the county of Cornwall, London, 1677. In ‘Wit a Sporting' Bold has stolen much from Herrick, and nearly fifty pages are from Thomas Beedome’s ‘Poems Divine and Humane,' London,1641. 2. ‘St. George’s Day, sacred to the coronation of his most excellent majesty Charles II,’ London, 1661 (3 folio leaves). 3. ‘On the Thunder happening after the Solemnity of the Coronation of Charles II,’ 1661 (a sheet in verse). 4. ‘Poems Lyrique, Macaronique, Heroique, &c. By Henry Bold olim è N. C. Oxon.,’ London, 1664, This is dedicated to Colonel Henry Wallop, and has commendatory verses by Alexander Brome, Dr. Valentine Oldis, and by his two brothers, William Bold and Norton Bold, C.C.C. Oxon. S. The songs in the volume are licentious, but there are also a number of occasional pieces, several of them addressed to Charles II. ‘Expect the second part,’ says the author, but no second part is known. Wood is mistaken ‘when he states that this volume contains ‘Scarronides; or Virgil Travestie.’ This was the work of Charles Cotton. 5. ‘Latine Songs, with their English, and Poems. By 'Henry Bold, formerly of N. Coll. in Oxon, afterwards of the Examiner’s Office in Chancery. Collected and perfected by Captain, William Bold,’ London, 1685—a posthumous collection from the author’s scattered papers. The translations justify the commendations of Anthony à Wood, but the songs selected are often gross and worthless. There is a spirited Latin version of ‘Chevy Chace,’ and Bold‘s rendering of Suckling’s famous song' begins:-
Cur palleas, Amasie? Cur quæso palleas? Si non rubente facie, Squallente valeas? Cur quæso palleas?
Another Henry Bold was of Christ Church, Oxford, chaplain to the Earl of Arlington, fellow of Eton College, and chanter in Exeter Cathedral. He died at Montpellier, ‘as 'twas reported,' in 1677.
[Corser’s Collectanea Anglo-Poetica (Chatham Society, vol. lv.), 1861; Dibdin's Reminiscences of a Literary Life, 1836, p. 934; Wood's Athenæ Oxon ed. Bliss, iv. 115; Fasti, 278; Hazlitt's Handbook to Literature of Great Britain to the Restoration, London, 1867; Griffiths’s Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica, 1805; Lowndes’s Bibl. Man. ed. Bohn, 1864.]
W. E. A. A.