Replies.
JOHN BODLEY.
(Vol. iv., p. 59.)
John Bodley is a name that ought not to be passed over without due reverence. He not only fostered the translation of the Genevan Bible, but was specially interested in its circulation throughout England. Neither Fox, Burnet, or Strype, Mr. Todd, or Mr. Whittaker give us any particular information respecting him. Lewis glances at him as one John Bodley; and Mr. Townley, in his valuable Biblical Literature, after some notice of Whittingham, Gilby, Sampson, &c., closes by saying, "Of John Bodleigh no account has been obtained."
This good and pious man was the father of the celebrated Sir Thomas Bodley. He was born at Exeter, and according to the statement of his son (Autobiography, 4to., Oxf. 1647),—
"In the time of Queen Mary, after being cruelly threatened and narrowly observed by those that maliced his religion, for the safety of himself and my mother (formerly Miss Joan Hone, an heiress in the hundred of Ottery St. Mary), who was wholly affected as my father, knew no way so secure as to fly into Germany; where, after a while, he found means to call over my mother, with all his children and family, when he settled for a while at Wesel, in Cleveland, and from thence we removed to the town of Frankfort. Howbeit, we made no long tarriance in either of these towns, for that my father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva, where, as far as I remember, the English Church consisted of some hundred members."
John Bodley returned to England in 1559, and on the 8th of January, 1560-61, a patent was granted to him by Queen Elizabeth, "to imprint, or cause to be imprinted, the English Bible, with annotations." This privilege was to last for the space of seven years. In 1565 Bodley was preparing for a new impression; and by March the next year, a careful review and correction being finished, this zealous reformer wished to renew his patent beyond the seven years first granted. It does not appear, however, that his application to the authorities had the desired effect; for it will be remembered that Archbishop Parker's Bible was now in the field, and the Queen's Secretary, Sir William Cecil, was compelled to act with caution. A curious letter, addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to Sir William Cecil, concerning the extension of Bodley's privilege, is printed from the Lansdown MS. No. 8. (Art. 82.), in Letters of Eminent Literary Men, edited by Sir Henry Ellis for the Camden Society.
For a full history of the Geneva Bible, I beg to refer S. S. S. to the second volume of Anderson's Annals of the English Bible: Lond. 2 vols. 8vo. 1845.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
In the notice of Sir Thomas Bodley contained in Prince's Worthies of Devon, S. S. S. will find some particulars relating to his father, John Bodley. Prince's account of Sir Thomas is "from a MS. on probable grounds supposed to be his own handwriting, now in the custody of a neighbour gentleman," (Walter Bogan of Gatcombe, near Totnes.) From this it appears that John Bodley was long resident at Geneva—
"Where [says Sir Thomas], as far as I remember, the English church consisted of some hundred persons. I was at that time of twelve years of age, but through my father's cost and care sufficiently instructed to become an auditor of Chevalerius in Hebrew, of Beraldus in Greek, of Calvin and Beza in divinity, and of some other professors in the university, which was then newly erected: besides my domestical teachers in the house of Philibertus Saracenus, a famous physician in that city, with whom I was boarded, where Robertus Constantinus, that made the Greek Lexicon, read Homer unto me."
There is, however, no mention of John Bodley's having been one of the translators of the Bible.
R. J. KING.
WITHER'S "HALLELUJAH."
(Vol. iii., p. 330.)
A correspondent, S. S. S., inquires concerning one of the numberless, and now almost fameless, works of George Wither, a poet of the seventeenth century, famous in his generation, but unworthily disparaged in that which followed him; the names of Quarles and Wither being proverbially classed with those of Bavius and Mævius in the Augustan age. The Hallelujah of the latter has become precious from its rarity. A copy of this volume (of nearly 500 pages) was lent to me several years ago, by a collector of such treasures. On the blank at the back of the cover, there was written a memorandum that it had been bought at Heber's sale by Thorpe the bookseller for sixteen guineas; my friend, I had reason to believe, paid a much higher price for it, when it fell into his hands. The contents consist of several hundreds of hymns for all sorts and conditions of men, on all the ordinary, and on many of the extraordinary circumstances of human life. Of course they are very heterogeneous, yet no small number are beyond the average of such compositions in point of devotional and poetical excellence.
The author himself, with the consciousness of Horace, in his
"Exegi monumentum ære perennius,"
crowns his labours at the 487th page with the following "Io triumphe" lines:—
"Although my Muse flies yet far short of those,
Who perfect Hallelujahs can compose,
Here to affirm I am not now afraid,
What once in part a heathen prophet said,
With slighter warrant, when to end was brought
What he for meaner purposes had wrought;
The work is finished, which nor human power,
Nor flames, nor times, nor envy shall devour,
But with devotion to God's praise be sung
As long as Britain speaks her English tongue,
Or shall that Christian saving faith possess,
Which will preserve these Isles in happiness;
And, if conjecture fail not, some, that speak
In other languages, shall notice take
Of what my humble musings have composed,
And, by these helps, be often more disposed
To celebrate His praises in their songs,
To whom all honour and all praise belongs."
How has this fond anticipation been fulfilled? There are not known (says my authority) to be more than three or four copies in existence of this indestructible work; and the price in gold which a solitary specimen can command, is no evidence of anything but its market value. Had its poetic worth been proportionate, its currency might have been as common as that of Milton's masterpiece, and its trade price as low as Paternoster Row could afford a cheap edition of the Pilgrim's Progress.
J. M. G.
Hallamshire.
P.S.—Lowndes says:
"Few books of a cotemporary date can more readily be procured than Wither's first Remembrancer in 1628; few, it is believed, can be more difficult of attainment than his second Remembrancer, licensed in 1640, of which latter Dalrymple observes, 'there are some things interspersed in it, nowhere, perhaps, to be surpassed.'"—Bibliographer's Manual, p. 1971.
FIRST PANORAMA.
(Vol. iv., p. 54.)
I did not speak of my own recollection of Girtin's panorama; my memory cannot reach so far back. It was my father who does perfectly remember Girtin's semicircular panorama. I think the mistake must be with H. T. E. Some years back a large collection of Girtin's drawings and sketches were sold at Pimlico; my father went to see them, and was delighted to find among them some of the original sketches for this panorama, which he immediately recognised and bought. He afterwards showed them to Girtin's son, now living in practice as a surgeon at Islington (I believe), who identified them as his father's work, and with whom I went to see the painting, when not many years back it was found in a carpenter's loft. Girtin certainly was a painter principally in water colour, and one who, with the present J. M. W. Turner, contributed much to the advancement of that branch of art; but I do not see how that is a reason why he did not paint a panorama. I should think it not unlikely that two semicircular panoramas of the same subject were painted; and, therefore, with all deference, believe that the mistake is with H. T. E. Girtin's son, if applied to, could, and I am sure would, give any information he possessed readily.
We are not yet quite right about the first panorama, but perhaps the following will close the discussion.
I have lately been sitting with Mr. Barker (ætat 78), and he tells me that, when quite a boy, he sketched for his father the view of Edinburgh from the observatory on the Calton Hill: in the foreground was Holyrood House; that that was a half circle, and was exhibited in Edinburgh.
So much was thought of the discovery of its being possible to take a view beyond the old rule of sixty degrees, that they went to London, and then he took the view from the top of the Albion Mills, as was stated in Vol. iv., p. 54.
That was three quarters of a circle, and was exhibited in Castle Street, Leicester Square. Afterwards the whole circle was attempted. The idea of painting a view more than sixty degrees, was suggested by his mother. His father did not work at them, he being a portrait painter; but he did, young as he was. Mr. Robert Barker and his wife were both Irish; but Henry Aston the son was born in Glasgow.
H. T. ELLACOMBE.
Clyst St. George.
JOHN A KENT.
(Vol. iv., p. 83.)
As I have not seen the Athenæum, I send the following notes, in uncertainty whether or not they may prove acceptable to MR. COLLIER.
Sion y Cent, i.e. John a Kent, or John of Kentchurch, is very generally believed in Wales to have been Owen Glendowr; though some few—unable to account for the mysterious disappearance of the hero—are still firmly convinced that he sleeps, like Montezuma and various other mighty men, in some deep cavern, surrounded by his warriors, until the wrongs of his country shall call him forth once more to lead them on to battle.
The following extracts are from notes appended [by the editors] to some poems of John a Kent which are published amongst the "Iolo MSS." by the "Welsh MSS. Society."
"... John of Kent, as he is called, is said to have been a priest at Kentchurch in Herefordshire, on the confines of Wales, about the beginning of the fifteenth century. He still enjoys a high degree of popularity, in the legendary stories of the principality, as a powerful magician. There is in the possession of Mr. Scudamore, of Kentchurch, an ancient painting of a monk, supposed to be a portrait of John of Kent; and as the family of Scudamore is descended from a daughter of Owen Glendowr, at whose house that chieftain is believed to have passed in concealment a portion of the latter part of his life, it has been supposed that John of Kentchurch was no other than Owen Glendowr himself," &c. &c.—Page 676., note to the poem on The Names of God.
"... The author was a priest of Kentchurch in Herefordshire, on the confines of Monmouthshire and Breconshire, and is said to have lived in the time of Wickliffe, and to have been of his party. As the parish of Kentchurch is adjacent to that of Oldcastle, the residence of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, it is by no means impossible that John of Kentchurch may also have favoured the same opinions; and may in some measure sanction the idea."
"... The poet then proceeds to speak of the indignation of the well-robed bishops, the monks, friars and priests; and in the course of the composition he makes some strong animadversions on the luxurious living of the churchmen, stating that formerly the friars were preachers, who possessed no wealth, and went about on foot with nothing but a staff; but that they now possessed horses, and frequented banquets," &c. &c.—Page 687., notes to A Poem to another's Book, by John of Kentchurch; from the collection of Thomas ap Jevan of Tre'r Bryn, made about 1670.
The following words occur in this poem:—
"... onid côf cwymp
Olcastr, ti a gair ailcwymp."
"—— rememberest thou not the fall
Of Oldcastle?—Thou shall have a repetition of the fall."
In addition to the two poems here mentioned, the collection contains one "Composed by John of Kent on his death-bed;" in which are some lines of considerable beauty: and also one on The Age and Duration of Things.
The parish church of Kentchurch is dedicated to St. Mary. I hope to be able to send you some further information on the subject, but I well know that quotations from memory are nearly valueless. Meanwhile, the following note on the mysterious disappearance to which I have already alluded may be not uninteresting: I give it as translated by the editors of the Iolo MSS.
"In 1415, Owen disappeared, so that neither sight nor tidings of him could be obtained in the country. It was rumoured that he escaped in the guise of a reaper; bearing[1] ... according to the testimony of the last who saw and knew him; after which little or no information transpired respecting him, nor of the place or manner of his concealment. The prevalent opinion was, that he died in a wood in Glamorgan; but occult chroniclers assert that he and his men still live, and are asleep on their arms, in a cave called Govog y ddinas, in the Vale of Gwent, where they will continue, until England becomes self-debased; but that then they will sally forth, and reconquer their country, privileges, and crown for the Welsh, who shall be dispossessed of them no more until the day of judgment, when the world shall be consumed with fire, and so reconstructed, that neither oppression nor devastation shall take place any more: and blessed will be he who shall see the time."—Page 454. Historical Notices extracted from the Papers of the Rev. Evan Evans, now in the Possession of Paul Panton, Esq., of Anglesea.
[1] The manuscript is defective here. "A sickle" was probably the word.
SELEUCUS.
THE BRITISH SIDANEN.
(Vol. iv., p. 83.)
MR. J. P. COLLIER will find all the information that Cambrian antiquaries can give him respecting Sidanen in Powell's Cambria, Matthew Paris, Wynne's Caradoc, and Warrington's History of Wales, under the year 1241. The history is given at most length in Warrington; where the share which Sidanen had in an interesting episode in Cambrian history is fully developed. There were two Welsh princes named Llywelyn, who stood to each other in the following relation:
| LLYWELYN AB JORWERTH (died in 1240). | | |||
| _____________________________________________________ | |||
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| GRIFFITH, | DAVID. | GLADYS, | |
| married to Senena, daughter of a Cambrian lord named Caradoc ab Thomas. | | | a daughter. | ||
| _____________________________________________________ | |||
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| LLYWELYN AB GRIFFITH, last Prince of Wales. | OWEN. | DAVID. | |
The Prince of Wales mentioned by Munday is the first, Llywelyn ab Jorwerth, whose descent, as his father was not allowed to reign on account of personal deformity, we had better indicate:
| OWEN, king of North Wales. | | |||
| (Eldest son) JORWERTH, the Broken-nosed. | | |||
| LLYWELYN AB JORWERTH. | | |||
Llywelyn, as has been shown, had two sons, Griffith and David, the first and eldest of whom, being a turbulent prince, was set aside by his father at a solemn assembly of Cambrian lords, in 1238, and David was elected to succeed his father. In 1240, David became king of North Wales, and one of his first acts was to apprehend his brother and his son Owen, and put them in prison. This was done with the connivance of a Bishop of Bangor: but that worthy, fearing that the scandal would spread abroad, intrigued with Senena, the daughter-in-law, and not the daughter of Prince Llywelyn, and wife of his son Griffith, for his release. Overtures were made to Henry III.; and certain lords having joined the confederacy, stipulations were entered into, and Henry marched against King David. David, who had married the king's daughter, now began to counterplot, in which he was quite successful; for Henry, who had come to release Griffith, by special contract with his brother, took him, with his wife Senena, and his son Owen, with him to London, and imprisoned them in the Tower, in attempting to escape from whence, two years afterwards, Griffith lost his life. Such is a brief outline of all that is known of Senena, who is undoubtedly the Sidanen of Munday, and whose name is variously written Sina, Sanan, Sanant, and in the Latin chronicle Senena. The negotiations here alluded to, with the names of all the parties engaged in them, will be found in the authorities herein named; all of which being in English, MR. COLLIER can easily consult.
John a Cumber is probably John y Kymro, or John the Cambrian; but I know nothing of him.
Respecting John of Kent there is but little else known than may be found in Coxe's Monmouthshire, and Owen's Cambrian Biography, sub "Sion Cent." There is, however, a tradition in this neighbourhood that he was born at Eglwys Ilan, in the county of Glamorgan; and the road is shown by which he went to Kentchurch, in Herefordshire. It was at Eglwys Ilan that he is reported to have pounded the crows by closing the park gates. As this story has not appeared in English print, I will endeavour to furnish you again with a more circumstantial statement. Sion Kent, who lived about 1450, appears to have derived his name from Kent Chester, or Kent Church. He was a monk, holding Lollard opinions; and a bard of considerable talent and celebrity. As a matter of course, he was on good terms with his Satanic majesty; for he was a mighty reputation as a conjuror. MR. COLLIER may find a portion of one of his poems, translated in the Iolo MSS., page 687. Should this, or any other authority herein named, not be accessible to MR. COLLIER, it would afford me great pleasure to send him transcripts.
There is a very gross anachronism in making Sion, lege Shôn Kent, to be the contemporary of Senena.
T. STEPHENS.
Merthyr Tydfil, Aug. 7. 1851.
PETTY CURY.
(Vol. iv., p. 24.)
I believe that Petty Cury signifies the Little Cookery. See a note in my Annals of Cambridge, vol. i. p. 273.
C. H. COOPER.
Cambridge, July 12. 1851.
To those who are familiar with the Form of Cury, edited by Dr. Pegge, no explanation can be necessary for the name of this street, or rather lane. It seems, indeed, strange that any one who calls himself a Cambridge man should have failed to discover that it was the peculiar quarter of the cooks of the town; as we in London have our Poultry named from the Poulters (not Poulterers, as now corruptly designated) who there had their shops.
F. S. Q.
The Cambridge senate-house is called "Curia," and therefore it may be supposed that "Petty Cury" means "parva curia," from some court-leet or court-baron formerly held there; the town-hall is at the end of it to this day. The only objection to the above is, that in the Caius map of Cambridge, A.D. 1574, now in the British Museum, Petty Curie is a large street even then, whilst neither town-hall nor senate-house exist.
J. EASTWOOD.
Surely there can be little doubt that the name of this street at Cambridge is a corruption from the French "petite écurie." We knew little enough about such matters when I was an undergraduate there; but still, I think, we could have solved this mystery. Might I be permitted to suggest that as the court stables at Versailles were called "les petites écuries," to distinguish them from the king's, which were styled "les grandes écuries," although they exactly resembled them, and contained accommodation for five hundred horses; so the street in question may have contained some of the fellows' stables, which were called "les petites écuries," to distinguish them from the masters'. Should this supposition be correct, it would seem to imply that at one time the French language was not altogether ignored at Cambridge.
H. C.
Workington.
THE WORD "RACK" IN THE "TEMPEST."—THE NEBULAR THEORY.
(Vol. iii., p. 218.; Vol. iv., p. 37.)
MR. HICKSON seems to court opinion as to the justness of his interpretation of rack. I therefore express my total and almost indignant dissent from it.
Luckily, neither in the proposition itself, nor in the manner in which it is advocated, is there anything to disturb my previous conviction as to the true meaning of this word (which, in the well-known passage in the Tempest, is, beyond all doubt, "haze" or "vapour"), since few things would be more distasteful to me than to encounter any argument really capable of throwing doubt upon the reading of a passage I have long looked upon as one of the most marvellous instances of philosophical depth of thought to be met with, even in Shakspeare,—one of those astonishing speculations, in advance of his age, that now and then drop from him as from the lips of a child inspired,—wherein the grandeur of the sentiment is so out of all proportion to the simplicity and absence of pretension with which it is introduced, that the reader, not less surprised than delighted, is scarcely able to appreciate the full meaning until after long and careful consideration.
It is only lately that the nebular theory of condensation has been advanced, for the purpose of speculating upon the probable formation of planetary bodies. Yet it is a subject that possesses a strange coincidence with this passage of Shakspeare's Tempest.
Perhaps the best elucidation I can give of it will be to cite a certain passage in Dr. Nichols' Architecture of the Heavens, which happens to bear a rather remarkable, although I believe an accidental, resemblance to Shakspeare's words: accidental, because if Dr. Nichols had this passage of the Tempest present to his mind, when writing in a professedly popular and familiar style, he would scarcely have omitted allusion to it, especially as it would have afforded a peculiarly happy illustration of his subject.
I shall now quote both passages, in order that they may be conveniently compared:
"Our revels now are ended—these our actors
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air—INTO THIN AIR:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all that it inherit—shall dissolve—
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."
"—— in the laboratory of the chemist matter easily passes through all conditions, the solid, liquid, and gaseous, as if in a sort of phantasmagoria; and his highest discoveries even now are pointing to the conclusion, that the bodies which make up the solid portion of our earth may, simply by the dissolution of existing combinations, be ultimately resolved into a permanently gaseous form."—Nichols' Architecture of the Heavens, p. 147.
Had we no other presumption to lead us to Shakspeare's true meaning but what is afforded by the expression, "into air—thin air," it ought, in my opinion, to be amply sufficient; for no rational person can entertain a doubt that Shakspeare intended the repetition, "thin air," to have reference to the simile that was to follow. The globe itself shall dissolve, and, like this vision, leave not a rack behind! In what was the resemblance to the vision to consist, if not in melting, like it, into thin air? into air unobscured by vapour, rarified from the slightest admixture of rack or cloud.
Shakespeare knew that atmospheric rack is not insubstantial; that it is corporeal like the globe itself, of which it is a part; and that, so long as a particle of it remained, dissolution could not be complete.
And shall we reject this exquisite philosophy—this profundity of thought—to substitute our own mean and common-place ideas?
A. E. B.
Leeds, July 22.
P.S.—Apart from the philosophical beauty of this wonderful passage, there are other aspects in which it may be studied with not less interest.
How true is the poetical image of the rack as the last object of dissipation! the expiring evidence of combustion! the lingering cloudiness of solution!