JOSEPH KNIGHT.
SHERIDAN.
Garrick and
Sheridan.Knight also wrote a life of Garrick, published by Kegan Paul in 1894, and edited 'The Dramatic Works of Sheridan,' issued by Henry Frowde in 1906. On the last day of the latter year he
wrote to me in reference to it:—
"To-day I left with Mr. Randall for you a copy of the Sheridan, which, though of little worth, you will prize as in fact mine. To-morrow will begin 1907, which I trust will be a happy and prosperous year for yourself and all who belong to you. I left for your perusal a very kind and effusive letter of our good friend Ebsworth. Your nephew will tell you my views on that. I am very proud of his good opinion, which is indeed a much coveted and very honouring tribute. I don't want, however, to push myself or blow my own trumpet in 'N. & Q.' Do with the matter, however, as you wish. God bless you at this and every other time."
First
Circulating
Library.Although his contribution to the Sheridan volume is limited to 32 pages, he brings much of his own special knowledge and research
to the brief and succinct notes. For instance, in reference to the formation of a Public Circulating Library in London he quotes the first entry relating to circulating libraries in the 'New English Dictionary,' being an advertisement dated June 12th, 1742, Librarian Samuel Fancourt; and in 1783 The Gentleman's Magazine, p. 941, mentions a statement that "the first circulating library was opened by the Rev. Mr. Fancourt. . . . fifty or sixty years ago. It was afterwards removed to Crane Court, Fleet Street " ('N.E.D.,' ii. p. 427). Mr. Fancourt died in poverty in London at the age of
ninety in 1768. There is a full and interesting account of him and his projects in the 'Dictionary of National Biography.'
Ebsworth's praise of the Sheridan book was specially gratifying to Knight, as Ebsworth's grandfather Robert Fairbrother (p. 290) had been an intimate friend of the dramatist.
'THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.'
Sylvanus
Urban.A correspondent in The Times on the 1st of July, 1907, called attention, in the following terms, to the fact that no mention had been made of Knight's "Sylvanus Urban" papers in The Gentleman's Magazine:—
"Few men were so well fitted to fill the historic chair of that writer as Mr. Knight; he combined the urbanity of a true man of letters with the sylvanity (if it may be called so) of a Yorkshireman who never allowed the traces of his origin to be whittled away by a long life in London. . . . His minute intimacy with English and French literature of all dates was the more surprising in that he had enjoyed none of the visual facilities of education, and had acquired it entirely of his own initiative."
