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TO THE CLERGY AND CHURCHWARDENS. THOMMUNIONENES Pater, now reads. usual Large Supply of SURPLICES and EPPS'S HOMEOPATHIC COCOA.-Its deli cious aroma, grateful smoothness, and invigorating power have procured its general adoption as a breakfast beverage. Sold in 1lb., lb., and lb. packets, at 1s. 6d. per lb., by grocers. Each packet is labelled," James Epps, Homœopathic Chemist, London." LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 9. 1861. CONTENTS. - No. 271. NOTES:-Choice Notes, by William Oldys, Norroy Kingat-Arms, 181-Letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, 184-The Ancestry of Cromwell, Ib. MINOR NOTES:- Chancels and Pictures - "Inoneing " a New Word?-Langue d'oi and Langue d'oc-Canning, Chateaubriand, and Cobbett "La Revue des Deux Mondes" Retentive Memory, 185. QUERIES:- Sedes Stercoraria: Pope Joan, 187 - Authors and Dates of Seventeenth-century Pamphlets, Ib. - The Brocas Cumberland Medal of 1745 Custine, the French Republican General: Where was he Born ?Elginshire Genealogies - Epigram James Fellows Galahad, as synonymous with Pandar-Grant's MSS. Medal of 1753-Duke of Orleans in Dublin - Paris Testament of 1662- Pedrinus Zonus- Pew: Domdaniel Poets ascribe Feeling to inanimate Things-Quotation -Quotation from Madame Alix-Seal of Robert De Thorny-Stains on Parchment - Tippling Glass Willmus de Horchie - Worms in the Flesh, 188. Leighton QUERIES WITH ANSWERS: Dr. Johnson's Works- Literary Hoax Westminster Play-"From humble Port to Imperial Tokay," 190. REPLIES:- Simon Gray, 191-The Scarlett Family, 192 -Eneas and the Professor of Poetry, 193- Bookbinding in Ancient and in Mediæval Times- Reuter's Telegrams -The Sword of La Tour d'Auvergne-Old Ballad on Jane Seymour-Bithiah-Emendations of Greek DramatistsScreaming Fishes - Prince Maurice Hamlet-"Sansculottes "The Quaker's Disease"- Calderon's "Life's a Dream Baronetesses in their own Right, &c., 194. Monthly Feuilleton on French Books. Notes. CHOICE NOTES. BY WILLIAM OLDYS, NORROY KING-AT-ARMS. (Continued from p. 163.) WANLEY.All the account of the Harleian library [in Nicolson's Historical Libraries, 1736, p. vi.], was written by Mr. Humphry Wanley, librarian to the Lord Treasurer Harley, as his son, the most noble Edward, Earl of Oxford, my most invaluable friend and patron, informed me in the year 1730; but it would make a volume as big as this to give a just idea of this library. Mr. Wanley died July 6, 1726. See the Diary of his own Life in the Harleian library. QUEEN ANNE.-When the Lord Treasurer Oxford recommended Sir Symonds D'Ewes manuscripts to be purchased by Queen Anne for a public library, as the richest collection in England next to Sir Robert Cotton's, she said, "It was no virtue for her, a woman, to prefer as she did, arts to arms; but while the blood and honour of the nation was at stake in her wars, she could not, till she had secured her living subjects an honourable peace, bestow their money upon dead letWhereupon the Earl stretched his own purse, and gave 6000l. for the library. ters." "TRINARCHODIA."- In a manuscript volume, formerly in the possession of James Petit An drews, Esq., entitled Trinarchodia: the severall Raignes of Richard the Second, Henrie the Fourth, and Henrie the Fifth, is the following note by Wm. Oldys, who appears to have been its former possessor: "By what I can find, in perusing this book, so full of uncouth and obscure phrases, metaphorical allusions, distant, abstracted conceits, and mystical learning, the author was a clergyman, and calls King Charles II. his master. He began this book on the 7th Nov. 1649, and ended it on All Souls' Day, 1650. It further seems, these three reigns and the Idyllia were written for the press; but not to be published till after his death, and then without his name; yet the Idyllia, by being said to be revised and enlarged, looks as if it had been published before." BROWNE.-William Browne [author of Britannia's Pastorals] was reputed a man not only the best versed in the works and beauties of the English poets, but also in the history of their lives and characters: wherefore he was pitched upon to draw out the line of his poetic ancestors, from Josephus Iscanius down to himself, which must have been a delectable and useful labour, from a man not only of his learning and taste, but who had the advantage of living so much nearer the times when our most renowned cultivators of English poetry adorned this isle.1 CHAUCER'S PORTRAIT.-Winstanley, in his Lives of the Poets, p. 26., says, "Thomas Occleve, of the office of the privy seal, sometime Chaucer's scholar, for the love he bore him, caused his picture to be truly drawn in his book De regimine principis; according to which, that his picTo this passage Mr. Oldys added the following ture drawn upon his monument was made." note in the margin of his copy of Winstanleyfolio, written, in English stanzas, on vellum, with "This book, De regimine principis, a pretty thick is in the possession of Mr. West of the Temple, that picture of Chaucer on the side of the verses, who showed it me, Feb. 27, 1735."2 1 An edition of Wm. Browne's Works was published by Thomas Davies in 1772, 3 vols. 12mo., with some short notes by the Rev. William Thompson. 2 Some curious particulars of this portrait of Chaucer are given in Kippis's Biog. Britan. iii. 465. 467.; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. 1849, i. 30.; Gent. Mag. Oct. 1841, p. 370.; and in Warton's History of English Poetry, ii. 263. Mr. Warton informs us, that "it is in one of the Royal manuscripts of Occleve's poem in the British Museum that he has left a drawing of Chaucer; according to which, Chaucer's portraiture was made on his monument, in the chapel of St. Blase in Westminster Abbey, by the benefaction of Nicholas Brigham, in the year 1556. From this drawing, in 1598, John Speed procured the print of Chaucer prefixed to Speght's edition of his Works; which has since been copied in a most finished engraving by Vertue in Urry's edition, 1721, fol. Yet it must be remembered that the same drawing occurs in the Harleian MS. 4866. fol. 91., written about Occleve's age, CHURCHYARD.-Thomas Churchyard, who was called the old Court Poet almost all Queen Elizabeth's reign, was a gentleman born: by his studies at Oxford and his travels, a man of learning and experience by his services and sufferings in the wars, a man of valour and merit: by his attendance on courts and great men, a man of manners, address, polite conversation, and other engaging qualities; and with all this he died a beggar, without ever having it in his power to make himself so by extravagance. All who have spoken of him know little of his story, as Fuller, Winstanley, and even Anthony Wood, who says, he laboured much to recover the titles of his writings, in that very imperfect catalogue he gives us of them in his life. [Wood's Athena, by Bliss, i. 727.] But from some of them he never saw we collect, he was born in Shrewsbury about the year 1520; came to Henry's court in 1537; had served in the wars abroad; and was subject at home under eight [?] crowned heads had also been in the service of two or three of the noblest families in England: had dedicated books and pamphlets, in poetry and prose, of his own composing and translation, from Latin and some modern languages, to above twenty great personages of fortune and distinction: most generously recorded the praises and celebrated the memories of half the great men of his time. Yet with all his fighting and writing; loss of much blood and time in camps and courts, in a fearful and fruitless attendance and dependence upon the ungrateful great for above sixty-seven years, never could get more than a scanty pension from Queen Elizabeth3, and that, according to his own words, seems to have been through the interest of Sir Walter Ralegh; but so scanty, that upon the death of Dr. John Underhill, Bishop of Oxford, one of his best friends, he had no better prospect or resource, in 1592, of sustaining himself to the end of his natural course, than exposing again his aged and scarified limbs to the hardships of war in foreign service, as he miserably complains in his poem of The Unhappy Man's Dear Adieu. He did struggle on, abroad and at home, to salute King James with a congratulation soon after his entrance and coronation +, anno 1604 [1603?], when he could not be less than eighty-four years of age, if not more. What notice was then taken of him we find not, nor when he died, but and in the Cotton. MS. Oth. A. 18. Occleve himself mentions this drawing in his Consolatio Servilis. It exactly resembles the curious picture on board of our venerable bard, preserved in the Bodleian gallery at Oxford." 5 See " A Pleasant Conceite, penned in verse, collourably sette out, and humblie presented, on New-yeere's day last, to the Queene's Majestie at Hampton Court, anno Domini 1593-4," printed in Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, iii. 232. 4A Paan Triumphal upon the King's Entry to London from the Tower. 1603. it could not be long after 5, when somebody did cover his bones in Westminster Abbey, and hide as much as they could such a shameful monument and testimony to their country of the ingratitude that reigns in courts and courtiers, in masters and patrons, towards their servants and dependants. SHADWELL.-The character of Capt. Hackum, in Thomas Shadwell's comedy The Squire of Alsatia, was drawn (as I have been told by old John Bowman the player) to expose Bully Dawson, a noted sharper, swaggerer, and debauchee, about town, especially Blackfriars and its infamous purlieus. Tom Shadwell died suddenly of an apoplexy (or by taking too large a dose of opium given him by mistake) at Chelsea, near London, Nov. 20, 1692, in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried in the church there the 25th of the same month. See his Funeral Sermon by Nich. Brady, 4to. 1693. If Shadwell could not match Ben Jonson in his learning, in the deep reach of his plots, the innocence of his humorous characters, and the chastity of his morals, and other qualifications of his mind, he did at least in the corpulency of his body. Whence among many other sarcasms, we may account for this extraordinary epitaph of Tom Brown: "And must our glorious Laureat then depart? Heav'n, if it please, may take his loyal heart; As for the rest, sweet Devil, bring a cart." SPENSER. Ask Sir Peter Thompson if it were improper to try if Lord Effingham Howard would procure the pedigrees in the Heralds' office, to be seen for Edward Spenser's parentage or family; or how he was related to Sir John Spenser of Althorpe, in Northamptonshire, to three of whose daughters, who all married nobility, Spenser dedicates three of his poems. Of Mr. Vertue, to examine Stow's memorandum book. Look more carefully for the year when Spenser's monument was raised, or between which years the entry stands-1623 and 1626. Sir Clement Cottrell's book about Spenser. Capt. Power, to know if he has heard from Capt. Spenser about my letter of inquiries relating to Edward Spenser. Of Whiston, to examine if my remarks on Spenser are complete as to the press. - Yes. Remember when I see Mr. William Thomp 5 Arrived at length at the advanced age of eightyfour, Churchyard died in Westminster about the 1st of April, 1604, and was certainly buried, as the parish register evinces, on the 4th day of the same month, in the quire of St. Margaret's Church, near his favourite Skelton, and not in the church-porch, according to a ludicrous epitaph in Camden's Remains. — George Chalmers's Life of him in Churchyard's Chips, 8vo. 1817. 2nd S. XI. MAR. 9. '61.] NOTES AND QUERIES. son, to inquire whether he has printed in any of SHAKSPEARE. - There was a very aged gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Stratford (where he died fifty years since) who had not only heard, from several old people in the town, of Shakspeare's transgression, but could remember the first stanza of that bitter ballad, which, repeating to one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing; and here it is neither better nor worse, but faithfully transcribed from the copy which his relation very courteously communicated to me 7: "A parliemente member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse; Yet an asse in his state, We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, Sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it." If tradition may be trusted, Shakspeare often baited at the Crown Inn or tavern in Oxford, in his journey to and from London. The landlady was a woman of great beauty and sprightly wit, He 6 William Thompson, a warm lover of our elder bards, and no vulgar imitator of Spenser, was the second son of the Rev. Francis Thompson, Rector of Brough in Westmoreland. He was entered as a scholar at Queen's College, Oxford, where he graduated A.M. in 1738. afterwards became fellow of the same college, and succeeded to the livings of Weston and Hampton Poyle in Oxfordshire; after which (according to Alex. Chalmers) he became Dean of Raphoe in Ireland, where he died about 1766. D'Israeli informs us, that "he was the reviver of Bishop Hall's Satires in 1753, by an edition which had been more fortunate if conducted by his friend Oldys, for the text is unfaithful, though the edition followed was one borrowed from Lord Oxford's library, probably by the aid of Oldys." In 1757, Thompson published two volumes of Poems, among which those entitled "The Nativity; ""Sickness;" and "The Hymn to May," have met with considerable approbation. 7 According to Mr. Capell, this ballad came originally from Mr. Thomas Jones, who lived at Tarbick, a village about eighteen miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, and died in 1703, aged upwards of ninety. Mr. Wilkes (adds Malone) grandson of the gentleman to whom Mr. Jones repeated this first stanza of the ballad, appears to have been the person who gave a copy of it to Mr. Oldys and Mr. Capell. "What is called a complete copy of the verses contained in Malone's Shakspeare by Boswell, vol. ii. p. 565., is evidently not genuine." (Collier's Shakspeare, ed. 1858, i. 70.) See also Halliwell's Shakspeare, p. 129, 130.; and Malone's Shakspeare, by Boswell, ii. 140. 8 See Wood's Athenæ, iii. 802. (Bliss) for the anecdote of Shakspeare stopping at the Crown Inn, at Oxford. and her husband, Mr. John Davenant (afterwards "10 One of Shakspeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles II., would in his younger days come to London to visit his brother Will, as he called him, and be a spectator of him as an actor in some of his own plays. This custom, as his brother's fame enlarged, and his dramatick entertainments grew the greatest support of our principal, if not of all our theatres, he continued, it seems, so long after his brother's death, as even to the latter end of his own life. The curiosity at this time of the most noted actors [exciting them] to learn some He was born at Oxford in February, 1605-6, and on the 3rd of March following, was baptized at St. Martin's Church, in which parish his father's house stood. 10 Mr. Oldys might have added, that he was the person who suggested to Mr. Pope the singular course which he "Remember," pursued in his edition of Shakspeare. says Oldys, in his annotated Langbaine, art. Shakspeare, thing from him of his brother, &c., they justly held him in the highest veneration. And it may be well believed, as there was besides a kinsman and descendant of the family, who was then a celebrated actor among them, this opportunity made them greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, more especially in his dramatick character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened with infirmities (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station was, the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song." Verses by Ben Jonson and Shakspeare, occasioned by the motto to the Globe Theatre- Totus mundus agit histrionem : Jonson. "If, but stage actors, all the world displays, "Little, or much, of what we see, we do; We are all both actors and spectators too." Poetical Characteristicks, 8vo. MS. vol. i., sometime in the Harleian library; which volume was returned to its owner. Old Mr. Bowman, the player, reported from Sir William Bishop, that some part of Sir John Falstaff's character was drawn from a townsman of Stratford, who either faithlessly broke a contract, or spitefully refused to part with some land for a valuable consideration, adjoining to Shakspeare's, in or near that town. King James the First honoured Shakspeare with an epistolary correspondence; and I think Sir William D'Avenant had either seen or was possessed of his Majesty's letter to him. See Preface to Lintot's edition of his Poems.3 1 Charles Hart, the actor, was born about the year 1630, and died in August, 1683. If he was a grandson of Shakspeare's sister, he was probably the son of Michael Hart, her youngest son. - Malone. 2 See the character of Adam in As You like it, Act II. Sc. ult. 3 At the conclusion of the advertisement prefixed to Lintot's edition of Shakspeare's Poems, it is said, "That most learned prince, and great patron of learning, King James the First, was pleased with his own hand to write an amicable letter to Mr. Shakspeare; which letter, though now lost, remained long in the hands of Sir William D'Avenant, as a credible person now living can testify." Mr. Oldys, in a manuscript note to his copy of A probable computation of the thousands of people of both sexes whom Shakspeare's Plays have maintained to this day, would appear incredible to anyone who did not maturely consider it. (To be continued.) LETTER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. The subjoined letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, has just appeared at Paris in the Bulletin du Bouquiniste of M. Aubry. It was communicated by M. Hyppolite Cocheris, of the Bibliothèque Mazarine, from the autograph in the library at SaintDié in Lorraine (Département des Vosges). As M. Cocheris remarks: "Il est fort rare de rencontrer maintenant une lettre de l'infortunée reine d'Ecosse qui ait échappé aux recherches de M. Labanoff et de M. Teulet." "Monsieur mon bon frere l'ancienne amitié contractée entre la duchesse de Feria et moy, et l'obligation que je luy ay pour les bons offices quelle a faicte pour moy et les miens, mobligent davoir soing de sa preservation; cest pourquoy, ayant entendu quelle est devenue maladive et que layr du pays luy est un peu contraire, jay entrepris de vous supplier de luy commander le change de pays pour essayer de recouvrer sa santé et prolonger sa vie, laquelle, je scay, sera tousiours dediée à vostre service tres fidellement en lieu quelle demeure. Je scay que ces parens venront soliciter, mays que pour le respect digne de lhonneur quelle a receu par le feu duc son mari en vostre pays pour rien elle ni aquiessera, si il ne vous plest pour lamour de moy et de ses merites la descharger de telles cerimonies en cas si important que de sa vie; et je men sentiray dautant plus obligée vers vous que je lay chere. Priant Dieu, Monsieur mon bon frère, vous avoir en sa saincte et digne garde, Scheffeild, xii doctobre "Vostre tres affectionnée bonne sœur "et cousine, "MARIE R. "Au Roy catholique monsieur mon bon frère." Et sur le revers: "The quene of Scotlands leter to the King of Spaine concerning the duches coming in out of Spaine." Barnes, S.W. BOLTON COrney. THE ANCESTRY OF CROMWELL. The ancestry of the great Protector, though much discussed, is still, beyond his great grandsire, so obscure, that I am induced to trouble you with what appear to be a few gleams of light in that "background of heraldic darkness' so pithily condemned by Carlyle. Noble, further corrupted by Betham, gives an Fuller's Worthies, observes, that "the story came from the Duke of Buckingham, who had it from Sir William D'Avenant." Dr. Farmer, with great probability, supposes that this letter was written by King James in return for the compliment paid to him in Macbeth. The relater of this anecdote was Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. - Malone. |