58 NOTES AND QUERIES. a ix. JULY 10,1021.
immortality. This was all that Bacon and Milton and Keats did, and they did it modestly. "Correctly to predict their own immortality" is certainly not vanity, but to announce it bombastically by lowering others most certainly is. This was my point—and not a debatable relative superiority—which Mr. Armstrong has overlooked.
May I add as a pendant to my estimate of Dante's inferiority to Shakespeare in certain powers what Dr. Paget Toynbee, in his recent 'Britain's Tribute to Dante' (ad ann. 1819), chronicles thus:—
Shelley, in a letter to Leigh Hunt from Livorno (Sept. 3), dissents from the view that Michael Angelo is the "Dante of painting, and asks where he has equalled . . . all the exquisite tenderness and sensibility and ideal beauty, in which Dante excelled all poets except Shakespeare?"
St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.
The Newspaper Placard (11 S. x.
483; 12 S. i. 13, 77, 129, 230, 317, 435;
ii. 114). My uncle, Mr. J. Passmore
Edwards, was, I believe, the first to print
" contents bills " as they are usually
called in newspaper offices by a w r eb
machine, in connexion with The Echo,
of which he was the proprietor. This must
have been in the early '80's of the last cen-
tury, or possibly the late '70's. I remember
the installation of the little machine
(American, I think), in an upper room in
Catherine Street, Strand, which quickly
printed the bills on a reel of paper, instead
of the older press, in which the sheets had
to be fed in by hand. The slow process
of the earlier mode of printing necessitated
these contents bills being set up before the
edition of the paper to which they referred ;
and, as the most important news frequently
came in at the last moment, it was often
found that this, which would be most
effective in selling the paper, could not be
put in the bills. The installation of the
web machine enabled the bills, with the
latest " lines," to be printed simultaneously
with the paper.
Although bills setting forth the contents
had long been utilized to advertise the
morning papers, it was the evening papers
that gave the lead in the big headlines
designed to catch the public eye. The
morning papers were slow in giving up
the older form of bill, which detailed in
smaller type the headings of many features
of the paper. This is still in vogue with
the suburban and some provincial papers.
Some of the London morning papers long
seem to have regarded it as hardly re-
spectable to issue a contents bill at all ;
The Times was, I think, about the last to
- come into line in this respect.
May I take this opportunity to put on record another instance of enterprise in connexion with The Echo ? It must also be in the early '80's that I heard John Bright speak at a meeting of the Liberation I Society at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Before concluding his speech he had put into his hand a copy of The Echo containing the opening passages of the speech, and he publicly commented on this journalistic enterprise. FREDK. A. EDWARDS. SIR BENJAMIN HAMMETT (12 S. ix. 12) Was Alderman of Portsoken Ward, 1785-98, knighted August, 1786, Sheriff of London 1788-9, elected Lord Mayor in 1797, but | declined to accept office and paid the fine. !He was M.P. for Taunton, 1782-1800; died July 22, 1800. Will [P.C.C. 6C3 .Adderley] proved Aug. 30, 1800. He was a member of the Haberdashers' Company, I of which he was Master in the year 1785-6. | In Parliament he voted with Pitt's adminis- tration. His son , John Hammett, succeeded | him as M.P. for Taunton, and retained the
- seat till his death. The somewhat scandal -
j ous ' City Biography ' which credits him I with the qualities of " meanness, ignorance
- and impudence " records that he was a
I native of Taunton, son of a barber in that town, and afterwards a footman in the ser-
vice of " Vulture " Hopkins, the noted
- usurer, whose wife's sister, daughter of Sir
'James Esdaile (Lord Mayor, 1777-8), ad- vanced him money which enabled him to make successful building speculations. In 1781 he became a partner with his father- in-law in the banking firm of Esdaile, Hammett and Esdaile established in that year, in which the name Hammett remained until 1832 ; the bank (then Sir James Esdaile, Esdaile, Grenfell, Thomas Co.) finally stopped payment in 1837. ALFRED B. BEAVEN. INSCRIPTIONS AT ST. NICHOLAS, DEPT- ,FORD (12 S. ix. 4). For a full account of ' Captain George " Sheloocke " referred to in jthe above list, see Sir John Laughton's ! ' Life of Captain George " Shelvocke," ' in the D.N.B.,' vol. 52, pp. 46-8. R. B. Upton.
