Mascarille. _Il est raisonnable, celui-là,_ etc.
_Les Précieuses Ridicules_, Sc. vii.
"_It has waited by portals where Garrick has played._"--Page 8.
According to Mrs. Carter (Smith's _Nollekens_, 1828, i. 211), when
Garrick acted, the hackney-chairs often stood "all round the Piazzas
[Covent Garden], down Southampton-Street, and extended more than
half-way along Maiden-Lane."
"_A skill Préville could not disown._"--Page 23.
Préville was the French Foote, _circa_ 1760. His gifts as a comedian
were of the highest order; and he had an extraordinary faculty for
identifying himself with the parts he played. Sterne, in a letter to
Garrick from Paris, in 1762, calls him "Mercury himself."
MOLLY TREFUSIS.--Page 32.
The epigram here quoted from "an old magazine" is to be found in the
late Lord Neaves's admirable little volume, _The Greek Anthology_
(_Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Readers_). Those familiar
with eighteenth-century literature will recognize in the succeeding
verses but another echo of those lively stanzas of John Gay to "Molly
Mogg of the Rose," which found so many imitators in his own day. Whether
my heroine is to be identified with a certain "Miss Trefusis," whose
_Poems_ are sometimes to be found in the second-hand booksellers'
catalogues, I know not. But if she is, I trust I have done her
accomplished shade no wrong.
AN EASTERN APOLOGUE.--Page 43.
The initials "E. H. P." are those of the late eminent (and ill-fated)
Orientalist, Professor Palmer. As my lines entirely owed their origin to
his translations of Zoheir, I sent them to him. He was indulgent enough
to praise them warmly. It is true he found anachronisms; but as he said
these would cause no disturbance to orthodox Persians, I concluded I had
succeeded in my little _pastiche_, and, with his permission, inscribed
it to him. I wish now that it had been a more worthy tribute to one of
the most erudite and versatile scholars this age has seen.
A REVOLUTIONARY RELIC.--Page 48.
"373. St. Pierre (Bernardin de), _Paul et Virginie_, 12mo, old calf.
Paris, 1787. This copy is pierced throughout by a bullet-hole, and bears
on one of the covers the words: '_à Lucile St. A.... chez M. Batemans, à
Edmonds-Bury, en Angleterre_,' very faintly written in pencil." (Extract
from Catalogue.)
"_Did she wander like that other?_"--Page 50.
Lucile Desmoulins. See Carlyle's _French Revolution_, Vol. iii. Book vi.
Chap. ii.
"_And its tender rain shall lave it._"--Page 52.
It is by no means uncommon for an editor to interrupt some of these
revolutionary letters by a "Here there are traces of tears."
"_By 'Bysshe,' his epithet._"--Page 81.
i.e. _The Art of English Poetry_, by Edward Bysshe, 1702.
THE BOOK-PLATE'S PETITION.--Page 87.
These lines were reprinted from _Notes and Queries_ in Mr. Andrew Lang's
instructive volume _The Library_, 1881, where the curious will find full
information as to the enormities of the book-mutilators.
"_Have I not writ thy Laws?_"--Page 93.
The lines in italic type which follow, are freely paraphrased from the
ancient _Code d' Amour_ of the XIIth Century, as given by André le
Chapelain himself.
A DIALOGUE, ETC.--Page 107.
This dialogue, first printed in _Scribner's Magazine_ for May, 1888, was
afterwards read by Professor Henry Morley at the opening of the Pope
Loan Museum at Twickenham (July 31st), to the Catalogue of which
exhibition it was prefixed.
"_The 'crooked Body with a crooked Mind.'_"--Page 108.
"Mens curva in corpore curvo."
Said of Pope by Lord Orrery.
"_Neither as Locke was, nor as Blake._"--Page 115.
The Shire Hall at Taunton, where these verses were read at the
unveiling, by Mr. James Russell Lowell, of Miss Margaret Thomas's bust
of Fielding, September 4th, 1883, also contains busts of Admiral Blake
and John Locke.
"_The Journal of his middle-age._"--Page 118.
It is, perhaps, needless to say that the reference here is to the
_Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_, published posthumously in February,
1755,--a record which for its intrinsic pathos and dignity may be
compared with the letter and dedication which Fielding's predecessor and
model, Cervantes, prefixed to his last romance of _Persiles and
Sigismunda_.
CHARLES GEORGE GORDON.--Page 120.
These verses appeared in the _Saturday Review_ for February 14th, 1885.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.--Page 122.
These verses appeared in the _Athenæum_ for October 8th, 1892.
"_With that he made a Leg._"--Page 137.
"JOVE made his Leg and kiss'd the Dame,
Obsequious HERMES did the Same."
Prior.
"_So took his Virtú off to Cock's._"--Page 137.
Cock, the auctioneer of Covent Garden, was the Christie and Manson of
the last century. The leading idea of this fable, it should be added, is
taken from one by Gellert.
"_Of Van's 'Goose-Pie.'_"--Page 139.
"At length they in the Rubbish spy
A Thing resembling a Goose Py."
SWIFT'S verses on _Vanbrugh's House_, 1706.
"_The Oaf preferred the_ 'Tongs and Bones.'"--Page 145.
"I have a reasonable good ear in music; let us have the tongs and the
bones."
_Midsummer-Night's Dream_, Act iv., Sc. i.
"_And sighed o'er Chaos wine for Stingo._"--Page 145.
Squire Homespun probably meant Cahors.
THE WATER-CURE.--Page 178.
These verses were suggested by the recollection of an anecdote in Madame
de Genlis, which seemed to lend itself to eighteenth-century treatment.
It was therefore somewhat depressing, not long after they were written,
to find that the subject had already been annexed in the _Tatler_ by an
actual eighteenth-century writer, who, moreover, claimed to have founded
his story on a contemporary incident. Burton, nevertheless, had told it
before him, as early as 1621, in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_.
"_In Babylonian numbers hidden._"--Page 180.
"--nec Babylonios
Tentaris numeros."
Hor. i., 11.
"_And spite of the mourning that most of us wear._"--Page 259.
In March, 1773, when _She Stoops to Conquer_ was first played, there
was a court-mourning for the King of Sardinia (Forster's _Goldsmith_,
Book iv. Chap. 15).
"_But he grows every day more and more like the print._--Page 259.
"Mr. _Wilkes_, with his usual good humour, has been heard to observe,
that he is every day growing more and more like his portrait by
_Hogarth_ (i.e. the print of May 16th, 1763)."
_Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth_, 1782, pp. 305-6.
Transcriber's Notes:
Ah, Postumus, we all must go:
'Postumus' unchanged. 'Posthumous' is current spelling.
Hyphenation of the following unchanged:
chairmen chair-men
Masterpiece Master-piece
recall re-call