"So took his Virtu off to Cock's."-PAGE 331. 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 333. "At length they in the Rubbish spy "The Oaf preferred the 'Tongs and Bones.'"-PAGE 337. "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 338. Squire Homespun probably meant Cahors. THE WATER-CURE.-PAGE 367. 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, Swift's "little Harrison," 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 369. "" -nec Babylonios Tentaris numeros. " -HOR. i. 11. A CITY FLOWER.-PAGE 381. These verses-as far as I can remember-were my first contribution to a magazine. They appeared in Temple Bar for December 1864, being welcomed with extreme cordiality by the editor, Edmund Yates. OF HIS MISTRESS.-PAGE 427. This translation was made at the request of Professor SAINTSBURY, who included it in his study of the author of the Mémoires de Grammont (Essays on French Novelists, Percival, 1891). TO ONE WHO BIDS ME SING.-PAGE 438. This piece was written in response to a graceful expostulatory villanelle which appeared in Temple Bar for February 1895, and was signed "Cecil Harley." "All grinning as one in a gust of good nature.”—PAGE 446. See Hogarth's Pleased Audience at a Play, 1733. "And spite of the mourning that most of us 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 "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 16, 1763].” -Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, 1782, pp. 305-6. "The furious troops in battle join'd.”—PAGE 454. The quotation is from Addison's Campaign. "They are a school to win."—PAGE 459. In view of the very prolonged popularity which has attended the use of these old French forms in England and America, the following dates may here be preserved. Some of the Triolets at p. 461 appeared in the Graphic for May 23, 1874 ; the Rondeau at p. 466 and the Ballade at p. 486 in Evening Hours for May 1876; the Villanelle at p. 482 in Proverbs in Porcelain, May 1877; the Chant Royal at p. 504 in the Architect for July 14, 1877; and the Ballade à double refrain at p. 500 in Belgravia for January 1878. "PERSICOS Odi."-Page 463. The subjoined "Pocket Version" was appended to this, when it first appeared in the second edition of Proverbs in Porcelain, 1878: "Davus, I detest Persian decoration; Simple myrtle best Suits our modest station : Davus, I detest Persian decoration." Monsieur Isaac de Benserade, in the Hotel de Rambouillet days, translated the entire Metamorphoses of Ovid into Rondeaus. In this, and some similar pieces that follow (cf. pp. 465, 479-481, 485, 502), I have imitated his temerity but not his excess. "ON LONDON STONES."-PAGE 466. Lope de Vega and Hurtado de Mendoza wrote sonnets on Sonnet-making; Voiture imitated them as regards the Rondeau. Here is a paraphrase of Voiture : You bid me try, BLUE-EYES, to write That makes them eight. The port's in sight ;- Now just a pair to end in "oo"— When maids command, what can't we do! "MORE POETS YET."-PAGE 468. The dedicatory initials of this rondeau stand for "John Leicester Warren" (afterwards Lord DE TABLEY). He was so kind as to read the proofs of the volume in which it appeared; and I remember that, years after, at one of our rare meetings, he pleasantly-and with perfect accuracy— recalled the fact that the Homeric epithet "many-buttoned," applied to the page in A Nightingale in Kensington Gardens, had been suggested by himself. This suggestion by no means exhausts my debt to his fine scholarship and fastidious taste. When, some months before his death in 1895, he sent me his last book, I returned him a few verses of acknowledgment. As they pleased him—and as, moreover, Mr. EDMUND GOSSE has been good enough to give them the currency of his delightful Critical Kit-Cats-I may perhaps be pardoned if I reproduce them here : "Still may the muses foster thee, O Friend, Who, while the vacant quidnuncs stand at gaze, Still climb'st the clear-cold altitudes of Song, Still to the summits may thy face be set, And long may we, that heard thy morning rhyme, Hang on thy noon-day music, nor forget In the hushed even-time!" "Our RUSTUM here, without red coat."-PAGE 515. Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley. "But that's FIRDAUSI in the Chair."-PAGE 515. Mr. EDMUND GOSSE, whose Firdausi in Exile and other Poems was published in 1885. |