ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. SINCE much of the earlier portion of this work was sent to press, reprints and illustrations of many of the old poets and dramatists have appeared, and valuable contributions have been made to, our biographical literature. A few may be here noticed, as far as our space will permit. Some slips of the pen (not of the press) also require to be corrected. VOL. I. THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN (p. 7).—The Early English Text Society has published (1875) The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune, edited, with introduction and notes, by James A. H. Murray, LL.D. To assist in fixing the age of the Border prophet (commonly called 'Thomas the Rhymer'), we have two documents. He was a contemporary of one who was himself at least old enough to witness a deed in 1189, and in 1294 Thomas de Ercildoun, filius et heres Thoma Rymour de Ercildoun, conveyed by charter, to the Trinity House of Soltra, all the lands which he held by inheritance in the village of Ercildoun. The prima facie purport of this charter of 1294 is, as Dr Murray says, that Thomas is already dead and his son in possession of the paternal property, which he in his turn gives away. Nothing new has been discovered respecting the authorship of Sir Tristrem. Of the Romance and Prophecies, Dr Murray publishes the text of five existing manuscripts, the earliest of which appears to be of date 1430-1440. The poem, in its present form, bears evidence of being later than 1401, the date of the invasion of Scotland by Henry IV., or at least 1388, the date of the battle of Ótterbourne, the last of the historical events hid under obscure words' in the prophecies ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer. The poem represents Thomas as lying on a morning in May under a tree on Huntly banks, while all the shaws about him rung with the songs of the merle, the jay, the mavis, and woodwale (woodlark). A lady gay-a fairy queen-came riding over the lea, and by her magic power transported him to her own country, where he dwelt for three years and more. He asked of her to shew him some ferly (wonder), and she related the series of prophecies, long regarded with awe, which foretold the wars between England and Scotland till the death of Robert III. (1406). Thomas was at length restored to 'middle earth :' She blew her horn on her palfrey, Dr Murray's editorial labours give the reader a great amount of curious and valuable information, historical and philological. CHAUCER (p. 21).-The dates of events in Chaucer's life included in Mr Furnivall's Trial-Forewords, first appeared in the Athenæum. In our first volume, the name of Mr Furnivall was inadvertently curtailed of its fair proportions, being misspelt 'Furnival.' BARCLAY (p. 31).-The late Mr T. H. Jamieson of the Advocates' Library, published in 1874 what may be called a superb edition of Barclay's Ship of Fools, including fac-similes of the original woodcuts, and an account of the life and writings of Barclay, drawn up from materials in the British Museum and elsewhere. A copy of the will of Barclay is also given, extracted from the registry of the Court of Probate. It is dated July 25, 1551, and was proved on the 10th of June 1552. Mr Jamieson seems to establish the fact, that the old poet was born beyond the cold river of Tweed,' as one of his contemporaries expresses it, about the year 1476, but in what town or county is unknown. He crossed the Border very early in life, studied, there is reason to believe, at Cambridge University, travelled abroad, and afterwards entered the Mary Ottery, Devonshire (the birthplace, it will be Church. His first preferment was a chaplainship in St recollected, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge); and from 1490 to 1511, he was warder of the college. He was of the monasteries he obtained in 1546 two livings some time a monk in Ely, and after the dissolution the vicarages of Much-Badew in Essex, and Wokey in Somersetshire-and in 1552 (a few weeks before his death) the rectory of All Hallows, London. He died at Croydon, with which he seems to have been early connected : While I in youth in Croidon towne did dwell. His Ship of Fools was printed by Pynson in 1509. The Eclogues, five in number, were the first attempts of the kind in English. The first three are paraphrases or adaptations from Eneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II., who died in 1464), and the fourth.and fifth are imitations of Jo Baptist Mantuan. Barclay's rural pictures are of the style of Crabbe. The following description of a village Sunday we give in the original orthography : What man is faultlesse: remember the village, There vse they to daunce, to gambolde, and to rage--- Many of the popular proverbs and expressions still in And he that alway thretenyth for to fyght I fynde four thynges whiche by no meanes can For it is a prouerbe, and an olde sayd sawe For wyse men sayth. One myshap fortuneth neuer alone. They robbe Saint Peter therwith to clothe Saint Powle. For children brent still after drede the fire. The Complaynt of Scotland (p. 72).—A new edition of this rare work has been published by the Early English Text Society, edited from the originals, with introduction and glossary by James A. H. Murray, LL.D. The full title of the work is, The Complaynt of Scotlande, with ane Exortatione to the Thre Estaits to be Vigilant in the Deffens of their Public Veil (Weal), A.D. 1549. The object of the unknown author was to rouse the nation in support of the Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise, and the French interest, in opposition to the English faction in Scotland originated by Henry VIII., and continued by the Protector Somerset and the Protestant Reformers. There is no contemporary notice of the Complaynt or its author. The language of the work is what Dr Murray calls the Middle Scotch of the sixteenth century-the same as the works of Bellenden, Gawain Douglas, and Lyndsay, but with a larger infusion of French words. The author himself says he used 'domestic Scottish language most intelligible for the vulgar people.' Dr Murray concludes that the only things certain as to the author are, that he was a thorough partisan of the French side-that he was a churchman attached to the Roman Catholic faith-and that he was a native of the Southern, not improbably of the Border counties. On the subject of the Scottish language we quote a brief summary by the learned editor: "The language of Lowland Scotland was originally identical with that of England north of the Humber. The political and purely artificial division which was afterwards made between the two countries, unsanctioned by any facts of language or race, had no existence while the territory from the Humber to the Forth constituted the North Anglian kingdom or earldom of Northumbria. The centre of this state, and probably of the earliest Angle settlement, was at Bamborough, a few miles from the Tweed mouth, round which the common language was spoken north of the Tweed and Cheviots as well as south. This unity of language continued down to the Scottish War of Independence at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and even after that war had made a complete severance between the two countries, down to the second half of the fifteenth century. In England, previous to this period, three great English dialects, the Northern, Midland, and Southern, had stood on an equal footing as literary languages, none of which could claim pre-eminence over the others as English par excellence. But after the Wars of the Roses, the invention of printing, and more compact welding of England into a national unity, the Midland dialect-the tongue of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, of the court and culture of the country assumed a commanding position as the language of books, and the Northern and Southern English sank in consequence into the position of local patois, heard at the fireside, the plough, the loom, but no longer used as the vehicles of general literature. But while this was the fate of the Northern dialect in the English portion of its domain, on Scottish ground it was destined to prolong its literary career for two centuries more, and indeed to receive an independent culture almost justifying us in regarding it, from the literary side, as a distinct language.' LODGE (p. 102).—The Fig for Momus is misprinted Comus. SHAKSPEARE (p. 145).—Mr J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, author of an excellent Life of Shakspeare, 1848, founded chiefly on papers in the Council Chamber of Stratfordon-Avon, and on the results of searches in the Record Offices of London and other depositaries, commenced in 1874 Illustrations of the Life of Shakspeare. He confines himself to facts connected with the personal and literary history of the poet, and does not enter on questions of style, or metre, or æsthetic criticism. These Illustrations, of which only one part is yet published, promise to be valuable. We learn from them that when Shakspeare came to London some few years before the notice of him by Greene in 1592, there were at the time of his arrival only two theatres in the metropolis, both of them on the north of the Thames, in the parish of Shoreditch. James Burbage, by trade a joiner, but afterwards a leading member of the Earl of Leicester's Company of Players, in 1576 obtained from one Giles Allen a lease of houses and land on which he built his theatre. It was the earliest fabric of the kind ever built in this country and emphatically designated 'The Theatre.' It was practically in the fields. The other theatre (which was in the same locality) was named The Curtain.' Mr Halliwell-Phillipps adds: 'The earliest authentic notice of Shakspeare as a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company which has hitherto been published, is that which occurs in the list of the actors who performed in the comedy of Every Man in his Humour in 1598; but that he was a leading member of that company four years previously, and acted in two plays before Queen Elizabeth in December 1594, appears from the following interesting memorandum which I had the pleasure of discovering in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber: To William Kempe, William Shakespeare, and Richarde Burbage, servauntes to the Lord Chamberleyne, upon the Councelles warrant dated at Whitehall xv. to Marcij, 1594, for twoe severall comedies or enterludes shewed by them before her Majestie in Christmas tyme laste paste, viz., upon St Stephens daye, and Innocentes daye xiij li. vj s. viij d., and by waye of her Majesties rewarde, vj li. xiijs. d., in all xx li." This evidence is decisive, and its great importance in several of the discussions respecting Shakspeare's early literary and theatrical career will hereafter be seen.' When Shakspeare acted before Queen Elizabeth in December 1594, the court was at Greenwich. The poet was then in his thirtieth year, and had published his Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. The Illustrations contain a petition from the Burbage family to the Lord Chamberlain in 1635, from which we learn some particulars concerning Shakspeare and the theatres of his day: 'The father of us, Cutbert and Richard Burbage, was the first builder of playhowses, and was himself in his younger yeeres a player. The Theater [in Shoreditch] hee built with many hundred poundes taken up at interest. The players that lived in those first times had onely the profitts arising from the dores, but now the players receave all the commings in at the dores to themselves, and halfe the galleries from the houskeepers [owners or lessees ?]. He built his house upon leased ground, by which means the landlord and hee had a great suite in law, and, by his death, the like troubles fell on us, his sonnes; wee then bethought us of altering from thence, and at like expence built the Globe, with more summes of money taken up at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeeres; and to ourselves wee joyned those deserveing men, Shakspeare, Hemings, Condall, Philips, and others, partners in the profittes of that they call the House; but making the leases for twenty-one yeeres hath been the destruction of ourselves and others, for they dyeing at the expiration of three or four yeeres of their lease, the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to strangers as by marrying with their widdowes and the like by their children. employed the feminine endings sparingly in many of his Mr Ward then takes up the question as to the authorship of Henry VIII., the style of which in many parts resembles that of Fletcher, as had been pointed out thirty years ago to Mr Spedding by Mr Alfred TennyThe resemblance consists chiefly in the abundance 'Thus, Right Honorable, as concerning the Globe, son. where wee ourselves are but lessees. Now for the Black- of feminine endings, and in certain characteristic tricks friars, that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at of Fletcher's style, which are of frequent occurrence in extreame rates, and made it into a playhouse with great Henry VIII. This theory, if correct, would assign to charge and troble; which after was leased out to one Fletcher some of the finest passages in the play-as Evans that first sett up the boyes commonly called the Wolsey's affecting soliloquy and Cranmer's prophecy. Queenes Majesties Children of the Chappell. In pro- Mr Ward regards these tests as only extreme developcesse of time, the boyes growing up to bee men, which ments of tendencies which indisputably became stronger were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to in Shakspeare's versification with the progress of time, to and as Henry VIII. was one of the latest, if not the strengthen the king's service; and the more strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wearing out, very latest of Shakspeare's dramatic works, they would it was considered that house would be fitt for ourselves, in that play reach their highest point. and soe purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, &c.' The Globe Theatre, in Southwark, was erected in 1599 (not in 1594 or 1595, as all the biographers, from Malone to Dyce, have stated), the timber and other materials of the Shoreditch Theatre being used in its construction. It was burned down in 1613. Shakspeare was one of the partners in the 'profits of the house'-meaning, probably, the profits of the establishment after all expenses were paid, and he would also have his emoluments as actor and author. With respect to the Blackfriars Theatre, the reference in the above petition to the king's service, shews that the Burbages became lessees after the accession of James in 1603. Shakspeare was 'placed' there, along with others, by the Burbages, but whether as actor only, or as sharer in the profits, as before, is not stated. His dramas were most likely the chief source of his income as of his fame. Another of Mr Halliwell-Phillipps's discoveries is the existence of a third John Shakspeare in Stratford-onAvon, contemporaries. Besides the poet's father, the alderman, there was a John Shakspeare, a shoemaker, well known to the biographers. But there was also an agriculturist of the name, who in 1570 was in the occupation of a small farm of fourteen acres, situated in the parish of Hampton Lucy, near Stratford. His farm was called Ingon or Ington Meadow. This John Shakspeare, the farmer, has always been considered to be the poet's father, but it appears from the Hampton Lucy register that the tenant of Ingon Meadow was buried in September 1589, whereas the alderman, the poet's father, survived till 1601. Chronology of Shakspeare's Plays (p. 145).-Metrical tests have lately been applied to the text of Shakspeare, with a view to ascertain the probable dates of the plays. In the transactions of the 'New Shakspere Society' we find observations on this subject from Mr Spedding, Mr Fleay, Mr Furnivall, and others. It is also taken up by Mr Ward in his able History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, two volumes, 1875. Mr Ward thus notices what are called 'stopped lines' and 'feminine endings of lines:' 'A stopped line is one in which the sentence or clause of the sentence concludes with the line; but it is not always possible to determine what is to be regarded as the clause of a sentence; whether, for example, and is to be regarded (in strict syntax of course it is not) as beginning a new clause. The 'stopping' of the sense is, in short, often of more importance than the stopping of the sentence, with which it by no means always Dodsley's Select Collection of Old English Plays was originally published in 1744; a second edition, corrected, and possessing explanatory notes by ISAAC REED, was issued in 1780. In 1814 MR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE edited a continuation of Dodsley, or at least a collection of old plays, in six volumes. A third edition of Dodsley, with additional notes and corrections by And a fourth edition, Reed, by OCTAVIUS GILCHRIST and JOHN PAYNE COLLIER, appeared in 1826. enlarged from twelve to fifteen volumes, has been published (1876) by WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT. Besides this vastly improved edition of Dodsley, Mr Hazlitt has edited the works of Gascoigne, Carew, Browne, Suckling, Lovelace, Herrick, &c, He has also given the public new editions of Brande's Popular Antiquities and Warton's History of Poetry. Mr Hazlitt is a grandson of the critic and essayist (ante, p. 375); he was born in 1834, and called to the bar in 1861. Mr John Payne Collier, referred to above, was early He was born in London in 1789. In 1820 he in the field as an editor of Elizabethan poets and dramatists. published The Poetical Decameron, and in 1831, his History of Dramatic Poetry-both works of merit which gratified the lovers of our old literature, and tended conAnother meritorious labourer in the same field, is the siderably to increase the number of such students. REV. ALEXANDER GROSART of St George's, Blackburn, Lancashire. Mr Grosart has edited the poems of Giles Fletcher, Crashaw, Lord Brooke, Southwell, Vaughan, Marvell, &c. ; and is now engaged on the works in verse and prose of Spenser and Daniel. He has also edited editions of the Scottish poets Michael Bruce, Ferguson, and Alexander Wilson, and the prose works of Wordsworth; the latter in three volumes, undertaken by request and appointment of the family.' SELDEN (p. 327).-The birthplace of the learned John Selden was Salvington, near West Tarring in Sussex. SWIFT (p. 486).-' His grandfather was vicar of GoodSwift in his autobiography says settled in Ireland.' rich in Herefordshire. . . . Three of the vicar's sons four, but the exact number seems to have been five. The eldest, Godwin, was the uncle to whom the dean owed his education. The autobiography has a remarkable passage concerning the infancy of Swift: 'When he was a year old, an event happened to him that seems very unusual; for his nurse, who was a woman of Whitehaven, being under an absolute necessity of seeing one of her relations, who was then extremely sick, and from whom she expected a legacy, and being at the 'The number of feminine endings of lines, or of lines same time extremely fond of the infant, she stole him ending with a redundant syllable: the application of on shipboard unknown to his mother and uncle, and this test cannot be regarded as establishing more than carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he congeneral conclusions. While it is certain that Shakspeare | tinued for almost three years. For, when the matter coincides. 799 Godwin, 1876: 'Whatever view may be taken of the breach between husband and wife, it is absolutely certain that Harriet's suicide was not directly caused by her husband's treatment. However his desertion of her contributed, or did not contribute, to the life she afterwards led, the immediate cause of her death was that her father's door was shut against her, though he had at first sheltered her and her children. This was done by order of her sister, who would not allow Harriet access to the bedside of her dying father.' was discovered, his mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage, till he could be better able to bear it. The nurse was so careful of him, that before he returned he had learned to spell; and by the time that he was three years old he could read any chapter in the Bible.' With the single exception, perhaps, of Lord Macaulay, we have no other instance of such infantile precocity. It appears from Forster's Life of Swift that the dean had first written two years,' then altered it to almost three,' and finally struck out 'almost.' Hawkesworth altered the word to 'five,' and The Life of Godwin, referred to above, is a work of was copied by Scott. P. 486.-The statement that great interest and importance. Godwin never willingly Sir William Temple left Stella a sum of £1000 is in- destroyed a written line, and his biographer found a correct. In Temple's will the legacy is thus given: I vast quantity of letters and manuscripts, some of which leave a lease of some lands I have in Monistown, in the had never been opened from the time they were laid county of Wicklow in Ireland, to Esther Johnson, aside by Godwin's own hand many years before his servant to my sister Giffard' (Lady Giffard). Mr Forster death in 1836. All were handed over to Mr Kegan has shewn that the account which Swift has given in | Paul by Sir Percy Shelley, the poet's son, and the correshis autobiography of his college career is too unfavour-pondence includes letters from Charles Lamb, Coleridge, able. The dean says he was stopped of his degree for Shelley, Wordsworth, Scott, Mackintosh, Lady Caroline dullness and insufficiency; and at last hardly admitted Lamb, Mrs Inchbald, and others, besides the letters in a manner little to his credit, which is called in that which passed between Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft college speciali gratia. Mr Forster obtained part of a during their brief married life. Perhaps nothing in college roll indicating Swift's place at the quarterly | literary history or biography was ever so painful, and examination in Eastern term 1685, and of the twenty in some aspects revolting, as this Godwin-Wollstoneone names therein enumerated none of them stand craft-Shelley story. really higher in the examination than that of Jonathan Swift. He was careless in attending the college chapel; in the classes he was ill in philosophy, good in Greek and Latin, and negligent in theology.' Mr Forster says: The specialis gratiâ took its origin from the necessity of providing, that what was substantially merited should not be refused because of a failure in some requirement of the statutes; upon that abuses crept in; but enough has been said to shew that Swift's case could not have been one of those in which it was used to give semblance of worth to the unworthy.' MRS INCHBALD (p. 255).—Of this remarkable woman many particulars are related in the Life of Godwin, by Mr C. Kegan Paul. Mrs Shelley (Godwin's daughter) says of her : 'Living in mean lodgings, dressed with an economy allied to penury, without connections, and alone, her beauty, her talents, and the charm of her manners gave her entrance into a delightful circle of society. Apt to fall in love, and desirous to marry, she continued single, because the men who loved and admired her were too worldly to take an actress and a poor author, however lovely and charming, for a wife. Her life was thus spent in an interchange of hardship and amusement, privation and luxury. Her character partook of the same contrast: fond of pleasure, she was prudent in her conduct; penurious in her personal expenditure, she was generous to others. Vain of her beauty, we are told that the gown she wore was not worth a shilling, it was so coarse and shabby. Very susceptible to the softer feelings, she could yet guard herself against passion; and though she might have been called a flirt, her character was unimpeached. I have heard that a rival beauty of her day pettishly complained that when Mrs Inchbald came into a room, and sat in a chair in the middle of it, as was her wont, every man gathered round it, and it was vain for any other woman to attempt to gain attention. Godwin could not fail to admire her; she became and continued to be a favourite. Her talents, her beauty, her manners were all delightful to him. He used to describe her as a piquante mixture between a lady and a milkmaid, and added that Sheridan declared she was the only authoress whose society pleased him.' GENERAL INDEX. PAGE 631 734 648 I Arnold, Life of, by Dean Stanley; ex- 55 367 761 474 173 585 Athenæ Oxonienses, by Anthony à 367 780 Athenæum, the, journal, established by 544 American Notes by Dickens; extracts, Addison, Life of, by Lucy Aikin, i.... 477 ii... 519 Address to the Mummy, parody by Horace Smith, ii... 161 American Ornithology, by A. Wilson; J. S. Buckingham, ii. 780; Mr 653 195 Athenaid, by Glover, passages from, i.. 682 89 582 219 671 by Rev. C. Pitt, i. 704; into Scotch, 467 177 and the Source of the Nile, ii.. 788 681 613 343 628 AIKIN, LUCY, biographer, ii. Anatomy of Melancholy, by Burton; ANCRUM, EARL OF, poet, i. Angels' Whisper, the, by Lover, ii.. 23 372 ATTERBURY, DR, theologian, i. AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES; The Birds of Augustus Cæsar characterised, by C. AUSTIN, MRS SARAH, translator, ii. 706 123 AYTON, SIR ROBERT, poet, i.. 815 282 Antiquities, Popular (Brand's), edited Baby's Debut, parody by J. and H. 160 393 BACON, LIEUT. T., traveller, 804 BACON, LORD, i. .... 771 92 Antoinette, Marie, from Burke, i.... Robert Grant and Admiral Smyth, ii. 742 Bacon, Lord, Letters and Life, by 249 784 653 450 585 272 as dramatist.. 229 extract, i. 303 Arcadia, by Sir P. Sidney, i... 187 BAILLIE, LADY GRISELL, poet, i.. 710 ALFORD, DR HENRY, theologian; ex- tracts, ii...... 674 Architecture, The Seven Lamps of, by Baillie of Jerviswood and Lady Grisell 723 Baillie, Memoirs of, ii... 342 Alfred, a Mask, by David Mallet, i.... 627 Arctic Expeditions, ii.. 786 Arden of Feversham, anonymous drama, i.... 141 ALFRIC (Anglo-Saxon writer), i... 4 Arden of Feversham, drama, by Lillo, BAIN, ALEX., PROF., psychologist, ii.. 751 791 372; 372 567 All Fools, by George Chapman, i...... 167 Areopagitica, by Milton; extract, i... dramatist, i. Ballads by the Hon. W. Spencer, ii... 150 529 Balaklava, Battle of, by Russell, ii.....620 185 125 182 |