"HOUSE OF YVERY."
(Vol. iv., pp. 101. 136.)
Observing the imperfect knowledge which Lowndes and your correspondents
apparently have of the work called Anderson's _House of Yvery_, I send
you a few Notes to clear up some points.
It may be said there were two editions of this work; one containing the
censorious comments of (I presume) Lord Egmont on the degraded state of
the peerage; the second, that in which those comments were cancelled. To
the first, no printer's name appeared in the title-page; to the second
is the name of "H. Woodfall, jun."
Lowndes has entirely mistaken the origin of the different paging in vol.
i. The fact is, the original edition of the Introduction contained 41
pages of text, but the cancels reduced that number to 37; which p. 37.,
as Lowndes correctly remarks, is in the second edition misprinted 29. I
possess both copies, with and without the cancels. By Lowndes we are led
to believe that only p. xxxvii. was destroyed; but in truth they are p.
xvi., and parts of pp. xv. and xvii., and nearly the whole of pp.
xxxv.-vi., containing the anecdotes of the tailor's son and the
apothecary's brother-in-law being sent, or intended to be sent, to
foreign courts, as ambassadors from England. Another cancel occurs in
vol. ii., of nearly the whole of pp. 444-5-6, which occasions Lowndes to
say that pp. 446-7 are missing. The duplicate pages 453 to 460 are
peculiar to the second edition only. One of my copies contains two
additional plates, one of Wardour Castle, the other of Acton Burnell,
evidently engraved for the work. The map of the baronies of Duhallow,
&c., is only in one copy, viz. the original edition. Unfortunately, this
original edition wants all the portraits of Faber, but it has the tomb
of Richard Percival of 1190, beginning "Orate," as in Lowndes. It
contains also a duplicate portrait of Sir Philip Percival, engraved by
Toms in 1738 (who also engraved the Wardour and Acton Burnell Castles);
and this duplicate is also in the other copy.
Were I to form any judgment when this work was commenced, I should say
about 1738, and that all the engravings for it were done by Toms; and
the first edition was printed in 1742, without any printer's name, and
that some copies were so bound up. The other copies remained in sheets
until the next year, when Faber was employed to engrave the portraits,
and till 1744 or 1747; 1747 being the latest date of Faber's plates.
There is some curious information in these volumes, and I would
recommend your readers to observe how much the conduct of the Catholics
of Ireland, recorded in vol. ii. p. 271., resembles that of the
Catholics of the present day.