Chapter 9

"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 50.

Lucile Desmoulins. See Carlyle's _French Revolution_, Vol. iii. Book vi. Chap. ii.

"_And its tender rain shall lave it._"--Page 52.

It is by no means uncommon for an editor to interrupt some of these revolutionary letters by a "Here there are traces of tears."

"_By 'Bysshe,' his epithet._"--Page 81.

i.e. _The Art of English Poetry_, by Edward Bysshe, 1702.

THE BOOK-PLATE'S PETITION.--Page 87.

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.

"_Have I not writ thy Laws?_"--Page 93.

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.

A DIALOGUE, ETC.--Page 107.

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 108.

"Mens curva in corpore curvo." Said of Pope by Lord Orrery.

"_Neither as Locke was, nor as Blake._"--Page 115.

The Shire Hall at Taunton, where these verses were read at the unveiling, by Mr. James Russell Lowell, of Miss Margaret Thomas's bust of Fielding, September 4th, 1883, also contains busts of Admiral Blake and John Locke.

"_The Journal of his middle-age._"--Page 118.

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_.

CHARLES GEORGE GORDON.--Page 120.

These verses appeared in the _Saturday Review_ for February 14th, 1885.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.--Page 122.

These verses appeared in the _Athenæum_ for October 8th, 1892.

"_With that he made a Leg._"--Page 137.

"JOVE made his Leg and kiss'd the Dame, Obsequious HERMES did the Same." Prior.

"_So took his Virtú off to Cock's._"--Page 137.

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 139.

"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 145.

"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 145.

Squire Homespun probably meant Cahors.

THE WATER-CURE.--Page 178.

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, 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 180.

"--nec Babylonios Tentaris numeros." Hor. i., 11.

"_And spite of the mourning that most of us wear._"--Page 259.

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 print._--Page 259.

"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 16th, 1763)."

_Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth_, 1782, pp. 305-6.

Transcriber's Notes:

Ah, Postumus, we all must go: 'Postumus' unchanged. 'Posthumous' is current spelling.

Hyphenation of the following unchanged: chairmen chair-men Masterpiece Master-piece recall re-call