Miscellanies.
Blue Boar Inn, Holborn.—The reviewer in the last "Quarterly" of Mr. Cunningham's Handbook for London, makes an error in reference to the extract from Morrice's Life of Lord Orrery, given by Mr. Cunningham under the head of "Blue Boar Inn, Holborn," and transcribed by the reviewer (Qu. Rev. vol. lxxxvi., p. 474.). Morrice, Lord Orrery's biographer, relates a story which he says Lord Orrery had told him, that he had been told by Cromwell and Ireton of their intercepting a letter from Charles I. to his wife, which was sewn up in the skirt of a saddle. The story may or may not be true; this authority for it is not first-rate. The Quarterly reviewer, in transcribing from Mr. Cunningham's book the passage in Morrice's Life of Lord Orrery, introduces it by saying,—"Cromwell, in a letter to Lord Broghill, narrates circumstantially how he and Ireton intercept, &c." This is a mistake; there is no letter from Cromwell to Lord Broghill on the subject. (Lord Broghill was Earl of Orrery after the Restoration.) Such a letter would be excellent authority for the story. The mistake, which is the Quarterly reviewer's, and not Mr. Cunningham's, is of some importance.
C.H.
Lady Morgan and Curry.—An anecdote in the last number of the Quarterly Review, p. 477., "this is the first set down you have given me to-day," reminds me of an incident in Dublin society some quarter of a century ago or more. The good-humoured and accomplished—Curry (shame to me to have forgotten his christened name for the moment!) had been engaged in a contest of wit with Lady Morgan and another female célébrité, in which Curry had rather the worst of it. It was the fashion then for ladies to wear very short sleeves; and Lady Morgan, albeit not a young woman, with true provincial exaggeration, wore none, a mere strap over her shoulders. Curry was walking away from her little coterie, when she called out, "Ah! come back Mr. Curry, and acknowledge that you are fairly beaten." "At any rate," said he, turning round, "I have this consolation, you can't laugh at me in your sleeve!"
Scotus.
Sir Walter Scott and Erasmus.—Has it yet been noticed that the picture of German manners in the middle ages given by Sir W. Scott, in his Anne of Geierstein (chap. xix.), is taken (in some parts almost verbally) from Erasmus' dialogue, Diversoria? Although Sir Walter mentions Erasmus at the beginning of the chapter, he is totally silent as to any hints he may have got from him; neither do the notes to my copy of his works at all allude to this circumstance.
W.G.S.
Parallel Passages.—A correspondent in Vol. i., p. 330, quoted some parallels to a passage in Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar. Will you allow me to add another, I think even more striking than those he cited. The full passage in Shakspeare is,
"There is a tide in the affairs of man,
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives
Is bound in shallows and in miseries."
In Bacon's Advancement of Learning, book 2, occurs the following:—
"In the third place, I set down reputation because of the peremptory tides and currents it hath, which, if they be not taken in due time, are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an after game of reputation."
E.L.N.
Gray's Ode.—In return for the information about Gray's Ode, I send an entertaining and very characteristic circumstance told in Mrs. Bigg's (anonymous) Residence in France (edited by Gifford):—
"She had a copy of Gray when she was arrested in the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins who searched her goods lighted on the line—
'Oh, tu severi religio loci,'
and said, 'Apparemment ce livre est quelque chose de fanatique.'"
My informant tells me that the monk he saw was the same as the one mentioned by your correspondent, and that he had a motto from Lord Bacon over his cell.
C.B.
The Grand Style.—Is it not extremely probable that Bonaparte plagiarised the idea of the centuries observing the French army from the pyramids from these lines of Lucan?—
"Sæcula Romanos nunquam tacitura labore, Attendunt, oevumque sequens speculatur ab omni Orbe ratem."—Phars. viii. 622.
One of the recent French revolutionists (I think Rollin) compared himself with the victim of Calvary. Even this profane rant is a plagiarism. Gracchus Baboeuf, who headed the extreme republican party against the Directory, exclaimed, on his trial, that his wife, and those of his fellow-conspirators, "should accompany them even to Calvary, because the cause of their punishment should not bring them to shame."—Mignet's French Revolution, chap. xii.
J.F. Boyes.
Hoppesteris.—The "shippis hoppesteris," in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, 2019., is explained by Tyrwhitt to mean dancing, and that in the feminine—a very odd epithet. He tells us that the corresponding epithet in Boccaccio is bellatrici. I have no doubt that Chaucer mistook it for ballatrici.
C.B.
Sheridan's Last Residence (Vol. i., p. 484.).—I wonder at any doubt about poor Sheridan's having died in his own house, 17. Saville Row. His remains, indeed, were removed (I believe for prudential reasons which I need not specify) to Mr. Peter Moore's, in Great George Street; but he was never more than a temporary, though frequent visitor at Mr. Moore's.
C.