Diss.
[It is a singular coincidence that we should receive the communication
of A. F. B. on the day of the publication of the new and much improved
library edition of Pepys's _Diary_. Would our correspondent permit us
to submit his collection to the editor of Pepys, who would no doubt be
gratified with a sight of it? We will guarantee its safe return, and
any expenses incurred in its transmission. On turning to the fourth
volume of the new edition of the _Diary_, we find the following letter
(now first published) from Dr. Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph,
to Dr. Charlett, dated April 28, 1699:--"Mr. Pepys was just finishing a
letter to you last night when I gave him yours. I hear he has printed
some letters lately about the abuses of Christ's Hospital; they are
only privately handed about. A gentleman that has a very great respect
for Mr. Pepys, saw one of them in one of the Aldermen's hands, but
wishes there had been some angry expressions left out; which he fears
the Papists and other enemies of the Church of England will make ill
use of." Is anything known of this "privately printed" volume? In the
Life of Pepys (4th edit., p. xxxi.), mention is made of his having
preserved from ruin the mathematical foundation at Christ's Hospital,
which had been originally designed by him.--ED.]
"_Retainers to Seven Shares and a Half._"--Can any reader of "N. & Q.,"
conversant with the literature of the seventeenth century, furnish an
explanation of this phrase? It occurs in the preface to _Steps to the
Temple, &c._, of Richard Crashaw (the 2nd edit., in the Savoy, 1670),
addressed by "the author's friend" to "the learned reader," and is used in
disparagement of pretenders to poetry. The passage runs thus:
"It were prophane but to mention here in the preface those under-headed
poets, retainers to seven shares and a half; madrigal fellows, whose
only business in verse is to rime a poor sixpenny soul, a subburb
sinner into hell," &c.