_Defoe's Quotation from Baxter on Apparitions_ (Vol. ix., p. 12.).--The
story copied by DR. MAITLAND from Defoe's _Life of Duncan Campbell_, is to
be found nearly word for word in pp. 60, 61. of {63} _The Certainty of the
Worlds of Spirits fully evinced by the unquestionable Histories of
Apparitions, &c._, by Richard Baxter, London, 1691. I can trace no mention
of the Dr. Beaumont, author of the _Treatise of Spirits_, unless he be the
"eminent apothecary in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden," stated by Nichols
(_Literary Anecdotes_, vol. ix. p. 239.) to be the father of Mr. Beaumont,
Registrar of the Royal Humane Society.
[Greek: Halieus].
Dublin.
_Barrels Regiment_ (Vol. viii., p. 620.).--If the song referring to
Barrel's regiment was written about 1747, it was not original, but a parody
or adaptation of one in _The Devil to Pay_, performed as a ballad opera in
1731; and which still maintains its place, if not on the stage, in recent
editions of the "acting drama." I have not an old edition of the play, but
quote from a collection of songs called _The Nightingale_, London, 1738, p.
232.:
"He that has the best wife,
She's the plague of his life;
But for her that will scold and will quarrel,
Let him cut her off short,
Of her meat and her sport,
And ten times a day hoop her barrel, brave boys,
And ten times a day hoop her barrel."
May I append a Query to my reply? Was _The Nightingale_ published with a
frontispiece? My copy is mutilated, but has belonged to some person who
valued it much more highly than I do, as he has neatly repaired and
replaced torn leaves and noted deficiencies. Prefixed is a mounted
engraving of a bird in the act of singing, which, if intended for a
nightingale, is really curious; as it is of the size and shape of a
pheasant, with corvine legs and beak, and a wattle round the eye like that
of a barb pigeon. The book is "printed and sold by J. Osborn," and shows
that the post assigned to him in _The Dunciad_ was not worse than he
deserved.