NOTES.
"To brandish the poles of that old Sedan Chair!"—Page [7].
A friendly critic, whose versatile pen it is not easy to mistake, recalls, à-propos of the above, the following passage from Molière, which shows that Chairmen are much the same all the world over:—
1 Porteur (prenant un des bâtons de sa chaise). Çà, payez-nous vitement!
Mascarille. Quoi!
1 Porteur. Je dis que je veux avoir de l'argent tout à l'heure.
Mascarille. Il est raisonnable, celui-là, etc.
Les Précieuses Ridicules, Sc. vii.
"It has waited by portals where Garrick has played."—Page [8].
According to Mrs. Carter (Smith's Nollekens, 1828, i. 211), when Garrick acted, the hackney-chairs often stood "all round the Piazzas [Covent Garden], down Southampton-Street, and extended more than half-way along Maiden-Lane."
"A skill Préville could not disown."—Page [23].
Préville was the French Foote, circa 1760. His gifts as a comedian were of the highest order; and he had an extraordinary faculty for identifying himself with the parts he played. Sterne, in a letter to Garrick from Paris, in 1762, calls him "Mercury himself."
Molly Trefusis.—Page [32].
The epigram here quoted from "an old magazine" is to be found in the late Lord Neaves's admirable little volume, The Greek Anthology (Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Readers). Those familiar with eighteenth-century literature will recognize in the succeeding verses but another echo of those lively stanzas of John Gay to "Molly Mogg of the Rose," which found so many imitators in his own day. Whether my heroine is to be identified with a certain "Miss Trefusis," whose Poems are sometimes to be found in the second-hand booksellers' catalogues, I know not. But if she is, I trust I have done her accomplished shade no wrong.
An Eastern Apologue.—Page [43].
The initials "E. H. P." are those of the late eminent (and ill-fated) Orientalist, Professor Palmer. As my lines entirely owed their origin to his translations of Zoheir, I sent them to him. He was indulgent enough to praise them warmly. It is true he found anachronisms; but as he said these would cause no disturbance to orthodox Persians, I concluded I had succeeded in my little pastiche, and, with his permission, inscribed it to him. I wish now that it had been a more worthy tribute to one of the most erudite and versatile scholars this age has seen.
A Revolutionary Relic.—Page [48].
"373. St. Pierre (Bernardin de), Paul et Virginie, 12mo, old calf. Paris, 1787. This copy is pierced throughout by a bullet-hole, and bears on one of the covers the words: 'à Lucile St. A.... chez M. Batemans, à Edmonds-Bury, en Angleterre,' very faintly written in pencil." (Extract from Catalogue.)
"Did she wander like that other?"—Page [50].
Lucile Desmoulins. See Carlyle's French Revolution, Vol. iii. Book vi. Chap. ii.
"And its tender rain shall lave it."—Page [52].
It is by no means uncommon for an editor to interrupt some of these revolutionary letters by a "Here there are traces of tears."
"By 'Bysshe,' his epithet."—Page [81].
i.e. The Art of English Poetry, by Edward Bysshe, 1702.
The Book-plate's Petition.—Page [87].
These lines were reprinted from Notes and Queries in Mr. Andrew Lang's instructive volume The Library, 1881, where the curious will find full information as to the enormities of the book-mutilators.
"Have I not writ thy Laws?"—Page [93].
The lines in italic type which follow, are freely paraphrased from the ancient Code d' Amour of the XIIth Century, as given by André le Chapelain himself.
A Dialogue, etc.—Page [107].
This dialogue, first printed in Scribner's Magazine for May, 1888, was afterwards read by Professor Henry Morley at the opening of the Pope Loan Museum at Twickenham (July 31st), to the Catalogue of which exhibition it was prefixed.
"The 'crooked Body with a crooked Mind.'"—Page [108].
"Mens curva in corpore curvo."
Said of Pope by Lord Orrery.
"Neither as Locke was, nor as Blake."—Page [115].
The Shire Hall at Taunton, where these verses were read at the unveiling, by Mr. James Russell Lowell, of Miss Margaret Thomas's bust of Fielding, September 4th, 1883, also contains busts of Admiral Blake and John Locke.
"The Journal of his middle-age."—Page [118].
It is, perhaps, needless to say that the reference here is to the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, published posthumously in February, 1755,—a record which for its intrinsic pathos and dignity may be compared with the letter and dedication which Fielding's predecessor and model, Cervantes, prefixed to his last romance of Persiles and Sigismunda.
Charles George Gordon.—Page [120].
These verses appeared in the Saturday Review for February 14th, 1885.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.—Page [122].
These verses appeared in the Athenæum for October 8th, 1892.
With that he made a Leg."—Page [137].
"Jove made his Leg and kiss'd the Dame,
Obsequious Hermes did the Same."
Prior.
"So took his Virtú off to Cock's."—Page [137].
Cock, the auctioneer of Covent Garden, was the Christie and Manson of the last century. The leading idea of this fable, it should be added, is taken from one by Gellert.
"Of Van's 'Goose-Pie.'"—Page [139].
"At length they in the Rubbish spy
A Thing resembling a Goose Py."
Swift's verses on Vanbrugh's House, 1706.
"The Oaf preferred the 'Tongs and Bones.'"—Page [145].
"I have a reasonable good ear in music; let us have the tongs and the bones."
Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act iv., Sc. i.
"And sighed o'er Chaos wine for Stingo."—Page [145].
Squire Homespun probably meant Cahors.
The Water-Cure.—Page [178].
These verses were suggested by the recollection of an anecdote in Madame de Genlis, which seemed to lend itself to eighteenth-century treatment. It was therefore somewhat depressing, not long after they were written, to find that the subject had already been annexed in the Tatler by an actual eighteenth-century writer, who, moreover, claimed to have founded his story on a contemporary incident. Burton, nevertheless, had told it before him, as early as 1621, in the Anatomy of Melancholy.
"In Babylonian numbers hidden."—Page [180].
"—nec Babylonios
Tentaris numeros."
Hor. i., 11.
"And spite of the mourning that most of us wear."—Page [259].
In March, 1773, when She Stoops to Conquer was first played, there was a court-mourning for the King of Sardinia (Forster's Goldsmith, Book iv. Chap. 15).
"But he grows every day more and more like the print.—Page [259].
"Mr. Wilkes, with his usual good humour, has been heard to observe, that he is every day growing more and more like his portrait by Hogarth (i.e. the print of May 16th, 1763)."
Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, 1782, pp. 305-6.