Audley End.
Winifreda (Vol. iii., p. 27.).—Lord Braybrooke has revived a Query which I instituted above forty years ago (see Gent.'s Magazine for 1808, vol. lxxviii., Part I. p. 129.). The correspondent, C. K., who replied to my letter in the same magazine, mentioned the appearance of this song in Dodsley's Letters on Taste (3rd edition, 1757.) These letters, being edited by John Gilbert Cooper, doubtless led Aikin, in his collection of songs, and Park, in his edition of Ritson's English Songs, to ascribe it to Cooper. That writer speaks of it as an "old song," and with such warm praise, that we may fairly suppose it was not his own production. C. K. adds, from his own knowledge, that about the middle of the eighteenth century, he well remembered a Welsh clergyman repeating the lines with spirit and pathos, and asserting that they were written by a native of Wales. The name of Winifreda gives countenance to this; and the publication by David Lewis, in 1726, referred to by Bishop Percy, as that in which it first
appeared, also connects the song with the principality. An Edinburgh reviewer (vol. xi. p. 37.) says that it is "one of the love songs" by Stephens (meaning George Steevens), a strange mistake, as the poem appeared in print ten years before Steevens was born.
I notice this error for the purpose of asking your readers whether many poems by this clever, witty, and mischievous writer exist, although not, to use the words of the reviewer, "in a substantive or collective form?" "The Frantic Lover," referred to in the Edinburgh Review, and considered by his biographer as "superior to any similar production in the English language," and the verses on Elinor Rummin, are the only two poems of George Steevens which now occur to me; but two or three others are noticed in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes as his productions.
J. H. M.
Replies to Minor Queries.
Did St. Paul's Clock strike Thirteen? (Vol. iii., p. 40.).—Mr. Campkin will find some notice of the popular tradition to which he refers, in the Antiquarian Repertory, originally published in 1775, and republished in 1807; but I doubt whether it will satisfactorily answer his inquiries.
I. H. M.
By the bye (Vol. ii., p. 424.).—As no one of your correspondents has answered the Query of J. R. N., as to the etymology and meaning of by the bye and by and by, I send you the following exposition; which I have collected from Richardson's Dictionary, and the authorities there referred to.