[118] Grainger’s “Biographical History of England,” vol. iii. Grainger has an interesting note concerning Myngs, which we cannot forbear copying: “I am credibly informed that when he had taken a Spanish man-of-war and gotten the commander on board his ship, he committed the care of him to a lieutenant, who was directed to observe his behavior. Shortly after word was brought to Myngs that the Spaniard was deploring his captivity and wondering what great captain it could be who had made Don——, with a long and tedious string of names and titles, his prisoner. The lieutenant was ordered to return to his charge, and if the Don persisted in his curiosity, to tell him that ‘Kit Minns’ had taken him. This diminutive name utterly confounded the titulado, threw him into an agony of grief, and gave him more acute pangs than all the rest of his misfortunes.”
[119] See the “Descriptive Catalogue of the Portraits of Naval Commanders,“ etc., in the ”Painted Hall, Greenwich Hospital,” Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1881, p. 10. The editor of the catalogue states that “this portrait and those numbered 7, 8, 47-49, 102, 105, 107, 110-112 form the series of valuable pictures mentioned in Pepys’ ‘Diary,’ as follows:—‘To Mr. Lilly’s the painter’s, and there saw the heads—some finished and all begun—of the flagg-men in the late great fight with the Duke of York against the Dutch. The Duke of York hath them done to hang in his chamber, and very finely they are done indeed. Here are the Prince’s (Rupert), Sir George Askue’s, Sir Thomas Teddiman’s, Sir Christopher Myngs’, Sir Joseph Jordan’s, Sir William Berkeley’s, Sir Thomas Allen’s, and Captain Harman’s, as also the Duke of Albemarle’s; and will be my Lord Sandwich’s, Sir W. Penn’s, and Sir Jeremy Smith’s.’”
[120] Sutor ultra crepidam feliciter ausus. See Lackington’s Life, p. 45.
[121] Elias Ashmole appears to have been given to astrology and alchemy; see his “Way to Bliss,” a work on the Philosopher’s stone, published 1658.
[122] The Tatler, April 11, 1709. Steele and Congreve assisted in the joke. Congreve pretended to take the side of Partridge by defending him against the charge of “sneaking about without paying his funeral expenses!“ See Timb’s ”Anecdote Biog.” vol. i. pp. 24 and 154.
[123] In regard to Manoah Sibly, see below.
[124] “Crispin Anecdotes,” p. 85. The plates in E. Sibly’s works are by Ames, a Bristol name a century ago. His portrait in the 1790 edition is by Roberts.
[125] His birth is set down as occurring 20th November, p.m., 1752.
[126] They were published at two guineas.
[127] The Secretary of the Swedenborg Society, Mr. James Speirs, has obligingly supplied the writer with most of the facts given above, which are taken from an obituary of M.S. in the Intellectual Repository, a Swedenborg magazine for 1841. Mr. Speirs says that Manoah Sibly was “presumably” born in London, but see above.