470 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2>«» S. VII. June 11. '59. 



3. Lord Campbell's Lives of (lie Lord Chan- 

 cellors : 



" Waynflete, William, Bishop of Winchester, Chan- 

 cellor, i'. 309. ; parentage, energy in Cade's Rebellion, 

 310. ; frames statutes for Eton and King's College, 311. ; 

 zeal against LoUardism and Yorkists, ib. ; resigns, 313. ; 

 founds Magdalen College, and receives Richard III. in it, 

 ib. ; love of learning, death, 311." 



On the superiority of these three examples it is 

 needless to enlarge. Compiling an Index may be a 

 very dull and tedious task, but, if given at all,' it 

 should accomplish the useful purpose for which 

 it is intended ; telling you clearly what you will 

 find in the book, regarding any person, place, 

 event, or other subject, which may be the im- 

 mediate object of your search.* 



J. H. Mabkland. 



NOTES ON BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. 



Because I must not flatter myself that all 

 readers of " N. & Q." have read the book upon 

 Bartholomew Fair which Dr. Rimbault kindly 

 undertakes to aid with annotation, I am afraid 

 that I must ask leave to trouble them with a word 

 or two of explanation on my own behalf. 



The book has the material weight of two 

 pounds and three quarters. It contains eighty 

 or ninety woodcuts, all of them facsimiles, of 

 which the cost was much increased by the stress 

 laid on minute accuracy. Its price of a guinea is 

 already a prohibitory one to a large section of 

 the public it addresses, yet it needs the sale of a 

 complete edition to yield very moderate remuner- 

 ation to the author and the publisher. The work 

 might have been twice as thick as it is : it might 

 have contained twice as many illustrations. In 

 that case there would have been fewer odds and 

 ends omitted from the MS., but there would also 

 have been very few people disposed to read, and 

 nobody disposed to print it. 



I had a story to write that extended over seven 

 centuries, and for some periods of it was so fairly 

 beset by material, that when Dr. Rimbault's 

 " Gleanings for a History of Bartholomew Fair" 

 are concluded, I could follow them up with 

 " Leavings from a History of Bartholomew Fair " 

 that would suffice to ensure to your readers a dull 

 feast of scraps every week for the next year or 

 two. 



Permit me to quote what I said of the Fair on 

 the first page of the Preface to its Memoirs : — 



" Bound once to the Life of the Nation by the three 

 ties of Religion, Trade, and Pleasure, first came a time 

 when the tie of Religion was unloosened from it ; then it 

 was a place of Trade and Pleasure. A few more genera- 

 tions having lived and worked. Trade was no longer 



* I feel it due to the publishers of the works of " the 

 Parker Society " to mention the admirable Index, in a 

 separate volume, which closes that series. 



bound to it. The nation still grew, and at last broke 

 from it even as a Pleasure Fair. It lived for seven cen- 

 turies or more, and of its death we are the witnesses. 

 Surely, methought, there is a story here : the Memoirs of 

 a Fair do not mean only a bundle of handbills or a cata- 

 logue of monsters." 



Upon that design to produce, not a scrap-book, 

 but if possible a social history, the work was 

 planned. 



Now Dr. Rimbaclt sets out by telling us he 

 "shall merely remark that it would have been more in- 

 teresting, and certainly more to the purpose, if the author 

 had left much of his early chapters ' unwritten,' and de- 

 voted more space to the 'Fair!' The Elizabethan lite- 

 rature, &c." 



The sole purpose of the volume being to con- 

 nect the story of Bartholomew Fair with the story 

 of society in England, my first chapters (founded 

 upon old charters, and upon an almost contempo- 

 rary MS. narrative), tell of the source of the 

 Fair, and the life of its founder. They condense 

 into nine pages crowded with facts a general view 

 of the early history of fairs in modern Europe, 

 the design being to define the character of their 

 original connexion with the church. The said 

 chapters immediately go on to show the position 

 of the Priory and Fair during tlie Middle Ages, 

 and the strong tie by which the church in the 

 fair was bound at that time to the history of 

 Literature and Commerce. If this was no part of 

 my subject, then the subject was not mine, and I am 

 ready enough to confess that the book was not for 

 me to write. Dr. Rimbatjlt, however, goes on to 

 explain to the misguided author that " the Eliza- 

 bethan literature would have yielded him many 

 Interesting passages, and amongst them the fol- 

 lowing notice of Rayer, &c." Can this really 

 mean that I should have set aside the full con- 

 temporary detail about Rayer, preferring to begin 

 with the extract Dr. Rimbault cites from a ro- 

 mance written 400 years later, and which tells us 

 that Rayer's servants woi'e studs of pure silver 

 and gold, had also bows of pure silver to their 

 violins? 



It needs, I may observe, no erudition to be ac- 

 quainted with the romance of Thomas of Reading 

 here citetl, since that is one of the pieces edited 

 for the whole public by Mr. Thoms in three 

 volumes of Early English Prose Romances ; fami- 

 liar books which occupy a handy place not upon 

 my shelves only or the shelves of antiquaries.* 

 But the only lawful place for that extract from 

 Thomas of Reading in the Memoirs of Bartholo- 

 mew Fair, as I had planned to write them, would 

 have been a note under the ninth chapter, apropos 

 to nothing, though, as Dr. Rimbault justly ob- 

 serves, " valuable as showing the popular opinion 



* May I call Dr. Rimbault's attention to a sentence, 

 which he will find in the editor's preface to this very 

 romance : " It would be tedious to illustrate every point 

 to which our attention might be drawn " ? 



