NOTES "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. "JOVE made his Leg and kiss'd the Dame, Obsequious HERMES did the same." -PRIOR. "So took his Virtú 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 A Thing resembling a Goose Py." -SWIFT's verses on Vanbrugh's House, 1706. "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. NOTES "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." -IIOR. i. II. 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. 66 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 NOTES 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; Davus, I detest. Simple myrtle best Suits our modest station ;- 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 |