THE CHILD-MUSICIAN.-PAGE 146. These verses originated in an "American story" told me orally by a friend who had found it copied into some English paper. I "romanced" it after my own fashion. After it was published, by the courtesy of one of the most graceful and finished of Trans-Atlantic poets, I was furnished with a more accurate version of the facts. Those who wish to read the true and authentic story of poor little James Speaight must do so in the pathetic prose setting of Mr. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. THE CRADLE.-PAGE 147. The leading idea of these lines is taken from a French Sonnet,-Le Berceau, by Eugène Manuel. "Some moneyed mourner's love or pride.""-PAGE 150. "Thus much alone we know-Metella died, The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!" -Childe Harold, iv. 103. Huddling they came, with shag sides caked of See the picture of Circe by Mr. BRITON KIVIERE, R.A. "A bolder rider than Bellerophon."-PAGE 175. "Eques ipso melior Bellerophonte."—HOR. iii. 12. "The Thefts of Mercury."-PAGE 175. "Te, boves olim nisi reddidisses Risit Apollo."-Hor. i. 10. NOTES "Have I not writ thy Laws?"—PAGE 191. 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. "To brandish the poles of that old Sedan chair!”— A friendly but anonymous critic, whose versatile pen it is, nevertheless, not easy to mistake, recalls, à-propos of the 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 l'heure. 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 recognize in the succeeding verses but another echo of those lively stanzas of John Gay to "Molly Mog" of the Rose Inn at Wokingham, which found so many imitators in their own day. Whether my heroine is to be identified with a certain "Miss Trefusis," whose Poems are sometimes to be met with 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 245. The initials "E. H. P." are those of the eminent (and ill-fated) 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, 12m0, 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.) NOTES "Did she wander like that other?"-PAGE 251. Lucile Desmoulins. Vol. iii. Book vi. Chap. ii. See Carlyle's French Revolution, "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 letter 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. |