Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/338

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330


NOTES AND QUERIES. [*" s. vn. APRIL 27, IDOL


ing for him near Waterford. The ungrateful king's departure from Ireland, whose people staked life and property in his cause, was apparently witnessed by a retinue of seven cavaliers and two soldiers. I shall be much obliged by any information respecting the names of the cavaliers.

HENRY GERALD HOPE. 119, Elms Road, Clapham, S.W.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED.

We live in deeds not years, in thoughts not breaths,

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most

lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. It matters not how long we live, but how.

^ Rejoice that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled.

H. J. B. C.

[We recall something similar to the first, but not identical, in Bailey's 'Festus.'j

A ship came sailing o'er the sea ;

The waves were crisp, the wind was free.


My ship comes sailing o'er the sea, To you a myth, a world to me.


P. J. T.


Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident ; It is the very place God meant for thee.

The priest shall slay the slayer, And shall himself be slain.

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A. [From the still glassy lake that sleeps

Beneath Aricia's trees Those trees in whose dim shadow

The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer,

And shall himself be slain. Macaulay's ' Battle of the Lake Regillus.' These lines serve as an introductory motto to Dr Frazer's ' Golden Bough.']


Qtylit*.

SHAKESPEARE THE "KNAVISH." (9 th S. vii. 162, 255.)

MR. AXON'S discovery brings out a hitherto unnoticed reference to Shakespeare by name and may perchance open out that true life of the poet, as distinguished from a mythical and apologetic one, for which Mr. Halliwell- Phillipps sighed, and of which he despaired ('Outlines,' ninth edition).

That the absolutely dark five years 1587-92 contained much material for comment is clear from the Greene-Chettle lampoonery that Shakespeare winced under this follows' from his forcing a meek apology from Chettle; that he had both power and in-


fluence to suppress it is plain from the paucity thenceforth of nominal attacks. Out of ninety-nine Shakespearian allusions in Dr. Ingieby's ' Century of Prayse ' only twenty-two mention his name, although the most important that from 'Parnassus' speaks of his " hart-robbing life," a somewhat equivocal compliment, which Mr. Lee omits altogether, although I had called his atten- tion to it. In fact, Mr. Lee will not quote Sir John Harington at all, even as to his stating in 'Ajax' that he had witnessed the farce from which Shakespeare subsequently adapted 'The Taming of the Shrew.' But though pens could be controlled, tongues were free. There was then in London a great lady, author herself and a patron of authors, whose warm-hearted eulogies have won for her after three centuries a niche in ' D.N.B.' as Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford. She held what we now term a "salon," and received all the wits and poets, amongst whom, however, Shakespeare, ranking only as a player, was not admitted. He shared the proverbial fate of the absent, and his name was of perennial interest to hostess, her family, and guests. These last envied his adaptive powers, his riches, his rapid rise, and his reluctance to part with money.

The hostess was a Warwickshire lady, daughter of Lord Harington of Combe Abbey, and knew all about the Shakespeares at home. Her cousin Sir John Harington, the queen's godson, was a playgoer, and could tell Lady Bedford any quantity of small talk about the brilliant transformer of other people's ideas for his own benefit.

Both parties in the coterie would use their opportunities. The wits would talk of bor- rowed plumes, of Jack Factotum transforming other people's plays, of hart-robbing and "fellony of ragged groomes" who had held horses at theatre doors, of mimic apes, of "shoddy esquires" and their lust for coat armour. Ben Jonson's fifty-sixth epigram has always been held to apply to Shake- speare, and is intituled 'To the Poet Ape.' In his prologue to the 'Poetaster,' 1601, he asks, "Are there no players here, no Poet Apes?" and again, "Base detractors and illiterate Apes ! "

" Ratsey's Ghost," always applied to Shake- speare, follows suit. But from the hostess's side Sir John Harington cheerfully trots out the Stratford view in his ' Nugse Antiquse ' (ed. 1804, by Park and Malone), vol. i. p. 219 :

" There is a great show of popularytee in playing small game as we have heard of one that shall be nameless (because he was not blameless) that with shootynge seaven up groates among yeomen, and