"Faulconbridge, in his resentment, would say this to Austria, 'That lion's skin which my great father, King Richard, once wore, looks as uncouthly on thy back, as that other noble hide, which was borne by Hercules, would look on the back of an ass!' A double allusion was intended: first, to the fable of the ass in the lion's skin; then Richard I. is finely set in competition with Alcides, as Austria is satirically coupled with the ass."
One step farther, and Theobald would have discovered the true solution: he only required to know that the shoes, by a figure of rhetoric called synecdoche, may stand for the whole character and attributes of Hercules, to have saved himself the trouble of conjecturing an ingenious, though infinitely worse word, as a substitute.
As for subsequent annotators, it must be from the mental preoccupation of this unlucky "ex pede Herculem," that they have so often put their foot in it. They have worked up Alcides' shoe into a sort of antithesis to Cinderella's; and, like Procrustes, they are resolved to stretch everything to fit.
A. E. B.
Leeds.
GÖTHE'S AUTHOR-REMUNERATION.
The Note in your valuable Journal (Vol. vii., p. 591.) requires, I think, so far as it relates to Göthe, several corrections which I am in the position of making. The amount which that great man is said to have received for his "works (aggregate)" is "30,000 crowns." The person who originally printed this statement must have been completely ignorant of Göthe's affairs, and even biography. Göthe had (unlike Byron) several publishers in his younger years. Subsequently he became closer connected with M. J. G. Cotta of Stuttgardt, who, in succession, published almost all Göthe's works. Amongst them were several editions of his complete works: for instance, that published conjointly at Vienna and Stuttgardt. Then came, in 1829, what was called the edition of the last hand (Ausgabe letzter Hand), as Göthe was then more than eighty years of age. During all the time these two editions were published, other detached new works of Göthe were also printed; as well as new editions of former books, &c. Who can now say that it was 20,000 crowns (thalers?) which the great poet received for each various performance?—No one. And this for many reasons. Göthe always remained with M. Cotta on terms of polite acquaintanceship, no more: there was no "My dear Murray" in their strictly business-like connexion. Göthe also never wrote on such things, even in his biography or diary. But some talk was going around in Germany, that for one of the editions of his complete works (there
appeared still many volumes of posthumous), he received the above sum. I can assert on good authority, that Göthe, foreseeing his increasing popularity even long after his death, stipulated with M. Cotta to pay his heirs a certain sum for every new edition of either his complete or single works. One of the recipients of these yet current accounts is Baron Wolfgang von Göthe, Attaché of the Prussian Legation at Rome.
A Foreign Surgeon.