above, the following passage from Molière, which shows that Chairmen are much the same all the world over :— 1. Porteur (prenant un des bâtons de sa chaise). Çà, payez-nous vitement ! Mascarille. Quoi ? 1. Porteur. Je dis que je veux avoir de l'argent tout à Pheure. Mascarille. Il est raisonnable, celui-là, &c. -Les Précieuses Ridicules, Sc. vii. "It has waited by portals where Garrick has According to Mrs. Elizabeth 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 228. Préville was the French Foote circa 1760. His gifts as a comedian were of the highest order; and he had an extraordinary faculty for entering completely into the parts he played. Sterne, in a letter to Garrick from Paris, in January 1762, calls him "Mercury himself." MOLLY TREFUSIS.-PAGE 235. The epigram here quoted from an "old magazine" is to be found in Lord Neaves's admirable little volume, The Greek Anthology (Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Readers). Those familiar with eighteenth-century literature will recognise in the succeeding verses but another echo of those lively stanzas of John Gay to "Molly Mog" of the Rose Inn at Wokingham, which, in their own day, found so many imitators. AN EASTERN APOLOGUE.-PAGE 245. The initials "E. H. P." are those of the eminent (and illfated) Orientalist, Professor PALMER. As my lines entirely owed their origin to his translations from Zoheir, I sent them to him. He was indulgent enough to praise them warmly. It is true he found anachronisms; but as he said that these would cause no serious 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 249. '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 251. Lucile Desmoulins. See Carlyle's French Revolution, Vol. iii. Book vi. Chap. ii. "And its tender rain shall lave it.”—PAGE 252. It is by no means uncommon for an editor to interrupt some of these revolutionary letters by a "Here there are traces of tears." A ROMAN ROUND-ROBIN.-PAGE 265. This piece of flippancy first appeared in the Spectator for 13th November 1875, and was pleasantly rallied in a later number by the present Laureate, Mr. ALFRED Austin. TO A CHILD.---PAGE 277. These lines were written for the Garland of Rachel (an English imitation of the famous Guirlande de Julie), which was issued in 1881 from the private press of Mr. H. DANIEL of Oxford. "By Bysshe' his epithet."-PAGE 280. i.e. The Art of English Poetry, by Edward Bysshe, 1702. THE BOOK-PLATE'S PETITION.-PAGE 287. 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. A DIALOGUE, ETC.-PAGE 301. 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 302. "Mens curva in corpore curvo." Said of Pope by Lord Orrery. "Neither as LOCKE was, nor as BLAKE."-PAGE 309. The Shire Hall at Taunton, where, on September 4, 1883, these verses were read at the unveiling, by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, of Miss MARGARET THOMAS's bust of Fielding, also contains busts of Admiral Blake and John Locke. "The Journal of his middle-age."-PAGE 311. 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 prologue and dedication which Fielding's predecessor and model, Cervantes, prefixed to his last romance of Persiles and Sigismunda. A POSTSCRIPT TO "RETALIATION."-PAGE 313. On the 22nd June, 1896 these verses were read for the author by the Master of the Temple (Canon AINGER) at the dinner given in celebration of the five hundredth meeting of the Johnson Society of Pembroke College, Oxford. They then concluded with a couplet appropriate to that occasion. In their present place, it has been thought preferable to leave them-like Goldsmith's epitaph on Reynolds-unfinished. "When his pistol miss'd fire, he would use the "He [Johnson] had recourse to the device which Goldsmith imputed to him in the witty words of one of Cibber's comedies: 'There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.'" (Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 100.) "You found he had nought of the bear but the "Let me impress upon my readers a just and happy saying of my friend Goldsmith, who knew him [Johnson] well: 'Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner; but no man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of the bear but his skin.'" (Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 66.) "That he made little fishes talk vastly like "If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like WHALES." (Goldsmith to Johnson, Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 231.) "But read him for Style,—and dismiss from your thoughts, The crowd of compilers who copied his faults.”—PAGE 314. These, or like rhymes, are to be found in Edwin and Angelina, and for the matter of that—in Retaliation itself: "Say, where has our poet this malady caught? Or, wherefore his characters thus without fault?" But the practice is not confined to Goldsmith: it is also followed by Pope and Prior. HENRY WADSworth Longfellow.-PAGE 316. These verses appeared in the Athenæum for April 1, 1882 CHARLES GEOrge Gordon.-Page 317. These verses appeared in the Saturday Review for February 14, 1885. VICTOR HUGO.-PAGE 318. These verses appeared in the Athenæum for August 8, 1885. Alfred, LORD TENNYSON.-PAGE 319. These verses appeared in the Athenæum for October 8, 1892. "With that he made a Leg."-PAGE 331. -PRIOR. |