Minor Queries with Answers.
Pepys.—I have lately acquired a collection of letters between Pepys and Major Aungier, Sir Isaac Newton, Halley, and other persons, relating to the management of the mathematical school at Christ's Hospital; and containing details of the career of some of the King's scholars after leaving the school. The letters extend from 1692 to 1695; and are the original letters received by Pepys, with his drafts of the answers. They are loosely stitched, in order of date, in a thick volume, and are two hundred and upwards in number. Are these letters known, and have they ever been published or referred to?
A. F. B.
Diss.
[It is a singular coincidence that we should receive the communication of A. F. B. on the day of the publication of the new and much improved library edition of Pepys's Diary. Would our correspondent permit us to submit his collection to the editor of Pepys, who would no doubt be gratified with a sight of it? We will guarantee its safe return, and any expenses incurred in its transmission. On turning to the fourth volume of the new edition of the Diary, we find the following letter (now first published) from Dr. Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, to Dr. Charlett, dated April 28, 1699:—"Mr. Pepys was just finishing a letter to you last night when I gave him yours. I hear he has printed some letters lately about the abuses of Christ's Hospital; they are only privately handed about. A gentleman that has a very great respect for Mr. Pepys, saw one of them in one of the Aldermen's hands, but wishes there had been some angry expressions left out; which he fears the Papists and other enemies of the Church of England will make ill use of." Is anything known of this "privately printed" volume? In the Life of Pepys (4th edit., p. xxxi.), mention is made of his having preserved from ruin the mathematical foundation at Christ's Hospital, which had been originally designed by him.—Ed.]
"Retainers to Seven Shares and a Half."—Can any reader of "N. & Q.," conversant with the literature of the seventeenth century, furnish an explanation of this phrase? It occurs in the preface to Steps to the Temple, &c., of Richard Crashaw (the 2nd edit., in the Savoy, 1670), addressed by "the author's friend" to "the learned reader," and is used in disparagement of pretenders to poetry. The passage runs thus:
"It were prophane but to mention here in the preface those under-headed poets, retainers to seven shares and a half; madrigal fellows, whose only business in verse is to rime a poor sixpenny soul, a subburb sinner into hell," &c.
H. L.
[The performers at our earlier theatres were distinguished into whole shares, three-quarter sharers, half sharers, seven-and-a-half sharers, hired men, &c. In one scene of the Histriomastic, 1610, the dissolute performers having been arrested by soldiers, one of the latter exclaims, "Come on, players! now we are the sharers, and you the hired men;" and in another scene, Clout, one of the characters, rejects with some indignation the offer of "half a share." Gamaliel Ratsey, in that rare tract, Ratseis Ghost, 1606, knights the principal performer of a company by the title of "Sir Three Shares and a Half;" and Tucca, in Ben Jonson's Poetaster, addressing Histrio, observes, "Commend me to Seven shares and a half," as if some individual at that period had engrossed as large a proportion. Shakspeare, in Hamlet, speaks of "a whole share" as a source of no contemptible emolument, and of the owner of it as a person filling no inferior station in "a cry of payers." In Northward Ho! also, a sharer is noticed with respect. Bellamont the poet enters, and tells his servant, "Sirrah, I'll speak with none:" on which the servant asks, "Not a player?" and his master replies:
"No, though a sharer bawl:
I'll speak with none, although it be the mouth
Of the big company."
The value of a share in any particular company would depend upon the number of subdivisions, upon the popularity of the body, upon the stock-plays belonging to it, upon the extent of its wardrobe, and the nature of its properties.—See Collier's English Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii. p. 427.]
Madden's "Reflections and Resolutions proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland."—This work, by the Rev. Samuel Madden, was first published in Dublin in 1738, and was reprinted at the expense of the late Mr. Thomas Pleasants, in one vol. 8vo., pp. 224, Dub. 1816. I possess two copies of the original edition, likewise in one vol. 8vo., pp. 237, and I have seen about a dozen; and yet I find in the preface to the reprint the following paragraph:
"The very curious and interesting work which is now reprinted, and intended for a wide and gratuitous circulation, is also of uncommon rarity; there is not a copy of it in the library of Trinity College, or in any of the other public libraries of this city, which have been searched on purpose. (One was purchased some
years ago for the library of the Royal Dublin Society, if I mistake not, for 1l. 6s., or rather more.) The profoundly learned Vice-Provost, Doctor Barrett, never met with one; and many gentlemen well skilled in the literature of Ireland, who have been applied to for information on the subject, are even unacquainted with the name of the book."
Of Dr. Madden, known as "Premium" Madden, few memorials exist; and yet he was a man of whom Johnson said, "His was a name Ireland ought to honour." The book in question does not appear to be of "uncommon rarity." Is it considered by competent judges of "exceeding merit?" I would be glad to know.
Abhba.
[Probably, from this work having appeared anonymously, it was unknown to the writers of his life in Chalmers' and Rose's Biographical Dictionaries, as well as to Mr. Nichols, when he wrote his account of Dr. Madden in his Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 32. A volume containing the Reflections and Resolutions, together with the author's tragedy, Themistocles, 1729, and his tract, A Proposal for the General Encouragement of Learning in Dublin College, 1732, is in the Grenville Collection in the British Museum. This volume was presented by Dr. Madden to Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, as appears from the following MS. note on a fly-leaf: "To his Excellency the Right Hon. Philip Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, these Tracts, writ (how meanly soever) with a real zeal for the service of that country, are most humbly presented by the author, his most obedient humble servant.">[
King Edward I.'s Arm.—Fuller, speaking of the death and character of King Edward I., winds up with these words:
"As the arm of King Edward I. was accounted the measure of a yard, generally received in England; so his actions are an excellent model and a praiseworthy platform for succeeding princes to imitate."—Church History, b. iii., A.D. 1307.
Query, Is there historical proof of this statement of "honest Tom?" He gives no reference apparently considering the fact too well established to require any.
J. M. B.
[Ask that staunch and sturdy royalist, Peter Heylin, whether Old Tom is not sometimes more facetious than correct; and whether, in the extract given above, we should not read Richard I. for Edward I. In Knyghton's Chronicle, lib. II. cap. viii. sub Hen. I., we find, "Mercatorum falsam ulnam castigavit adhibita brachii sui mensura." See also William of Malmsbury in Vita Hen. I., and Spelm. Hen. I. apud Wilkins, 299., who inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal measure was ascertained by Henry I., who commanded that the ulna, or ancient ell, which answers to the modern yard, should be made of the exact length of his own arm.]
Elstob, Elizabeth.—Can any of your numerous correspondents state where that celebrated Saxon linguist, Mrs. Elizabeth Elstob, was buried? In Chambers's Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire, she is said to have been buried at Saint Margaret's, Westminster; but after every inquiry, made many years since of the then worthy churchwarden of the parish, our researches were in vain, for there is no account of her sepulture in the church or graveyard.
J. B. Whitbourne.
[Most of the biographical notices of Mrs. Elizabeth Elstob state that she was buried at St. Margaret's, Westminster. We can only account for the name not appearing in the register of that church, from her having changed her name when she opened her school in Worcestershire, as stated, on the authority of Mr. Geo. Ballard, in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 714. Ballard's Correspondence is in the Bodleian.]
Monumental Brasses in London.—Can any of your correspondents favour me with a list of churches in London, or within a mile of the same, containing monumental brasses? I know of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, only.
J. W. Brown.
[As our young crypto-antiquary dates his letter from Crosby Hall, he will probably find in its library the following works to assist him in his researches:—List of Monumental Brasses in England (Rivington), Manual for the Study of Monumental Brasses (Parker), and Sperling's Church Walks in Middlesex (Masters). Two are noticed in Waller's Monumental Brasses, fol., 1842, viz. Dr. Christopher Urswick, in Hackney Church, A.D. 1521, and Andrew Evyngar and wife, in All-Hallows Barking Church. If we mistake not, there is one in St. Faith's, near St. Paul's.]