422 



NOTES AND QUP:ilIES. 



[2"'i S. X. Dec. 1. 'CO. 



B. M. g. 1. 1648. It sold for 21. 10*. I do not 

 now recollect on what authority, but I have ei-ased 

 the words Jirst edition, as being a mistake of the 

 Catalogue maker, and I doubt not, but that I had 

 at the time some good reason for so doing. 



" I can now only say, that it' Bodley has any 

 other of Brathwait's pieces wliich you have not been 

 able to inspect, you may coinmand my services, 

 and in the course of my Luntings r.nd fcrrettings, 

 if I discover anything more, yo'i may depend on 

 hearing from me. 



" Heartily do I wish success to this and all other 

 of your undertakings, and sincei-ely am I, 

 " Dear Haslewood, 



" Your obliged Friend, 



" Philip Bmss. 



"P. S. A Master Brathwayte kept a private 

 school in London in the year 1633, and liad for 

 one of his scolars Cave Beck' of St. John's Col- 

 lege, Cambridge, afterwards a sclioolmaster, and 

 Rector of St. Helen's in Ipswich. Beck wrote 

 The Universal C/iaracler, bi/ which all Nations 

 may inidcr.itand one another's Conceptions^ London, 

 1657, 8v()." 



Mr. Joseph Haslewood, in his valuable biblio- 

 graphical account of Brathwait's Works, prefixed 

 to his reprint of the first edition of Barnahec's 

 Journal, London, 1820, has conjectured that the 

 •work was first printed about 1650, from several 

 circumstances noticed by the author in the coarse 

 of his Itinerary. He says, p. 71. : — 



" In the last two journies, Baniabee, without abating in 

 humour, displays in himself a rather more staid charac- 

 ter. His amours terminate in disappointments ; and his 

 muse narrates scenes less disgraceful than tippling 

 brawls and sottish revels. At DavlinKtou be marries: 

 and then our Itinerant begins to traffic as a drover or 

 dealer in cattle, solemnly proclaiming the necessity of 

 living chaste, from the eyes of the country being upon 

 him. At a still later period his rambling terminates with 

 settling at Staveley, where the narrative of his journies un- 

 derwent a revision. In performing this task events chro- 

 nicled long before needed an addition, by way of notes, to 

 fashion them to more recent occurre'nccs. Thus the 

 stanza on Kendal which ends the third journey, and 

 Barnabee's note thereon, are of very different dates; as 

 the one must have preceded and the other as certainly 

 followed the eleventh year of Charles I. (1636.) The 

 plague described in the visit to Wansforth Brigs did not 

 happen until the year 1642.* It is therefore conclusive 

 those lines were added during or later than the civil wars. 

 There is also distinct proof of another note hitched upon 

 a stanza to record a subsequent event ; it is that upon 

 Pomfret Castle; for, if we consider the unswerving 

 loyalty of Brathwait, it cannot be doubted that the allu- 

 sion therein is to Stlart, and consequently added after 

 the death of that unfortunate monarch.t This circum- 



[* The plague may have visited Wansforth Brigs 

 during "The Fearful Summer" of 1630, memorialised by 

 the Water Poet. 



t May not Brathwait rather have referred to the exe- 

 cution of Thomas Earl of Leicester, the uncle of Edward 

 II., or to the death of Richard II., Avho were both exe- 

 cuted at Pontefract Castle. At this memorable place also 



stance fixes the time of printing the Itinerary to the In- 

 terregnum, when it was not very easy to obtain a license 

 to publish a work that tended to unveil, or ridicule, how- 

 ever slightl_v, the usurping jjowers; and to publisli with- 

 out license might hazard immediate suppression, as well 

 as render it unsafe for the printer to affix his nauie. 

 However, that name has not entirely, we believe, escaped 

 research. All the capitals and rule ornaments used in the 

 first edition (and several are rather of peculiar character), 

 are found in a little work by Brathwait, nearly contem- 

 porary, printed for J. II. We therefore consider it pro- 

 bable'that the printer was John Haviland, and the time 

 of publication about 1650." 



Again at p. 406. he has a few " more hist words " 

 on the date of the first edition : — 



" It might be expected," he says, "that for a popular 

 work like this, manj' attempts would be made to lix a 

 date to the first edition. One has been considered of 

 some authority. It is found in the Catalogue of the 

 library pf the late John Woodhouse, Esq., sold bv Messrs. 

 Leigh & Sotheby, Dec. 12, 1803, where lot 24" was de- 

 scriljed as Barnabee's Journal with Bessie Bell. Fikst 

 KDrrios. B. M. g. 1. 1648. .A. catalogue with the name 

 of the late venerable, courteous, and honest George Leigh 

 in the front demands attention. With his inspection be- 

 fore the printing, it might be designated an oracle; for 

 he neither indulged in the pastime of puffing, nor spe- 

 ciously drew an audience to his sales by a florid description 

 of worm-eaten, dirty copies. But the date in the present 

 case is not certain. The authority in this instance was a 

 poem in manuscript, copied on the fly-leaves, undoubt- 

 edly bj- Brathwait, entitled : Runtica Academia O.voni- 

 ensis miper reformatcB DescripUo, &c. cloDCXLViii. This 

 authoritj' neither confirms nor refutes the opinion al- 

 ready expressed of the time of publication being 1050, or 

 thereabout.". Had it been after the Kestoration, it is not 

 easj'to believe that our author, whose religion remained 

 untainted bv the times, and his loyalty unimpeached, 

 would have stifled his feelings upon the happening of 

 that cheerful event, when he had already recorded the 

 more melancholy one of the death of Charles I. How- 

 ever, strong as the probability may be for the above date 

 being correctly assigned, there must not be forgotten it 

 supplies no proof as to the time of the Journal being 

 written. The existence of several pieces was announced 

 by our author long before they were submitted to the 

 public. And many circumstances unite to confirm the 

 belief that the Itinerary Avas the lapped and cradled 

 bantling of years, scarcelj', in his own opinion, pubescent, 

 until himself might be believed past the age of such 

 waggery. It may be characterised as a seedling planted 

 in "the 'spring of" youth ; nourished and pruned in the 

 summer of his day.s; courted to blossom amid evergreens 

 that circled his autumnal brow, and which formed the 

 wreath of fame that adorned and cheered the winter of 

 his age, and remains unfaded." 



The original edition of Barnahec's Journal has 

 no date, and is of a very diminutive size. It has 



the innocent blood was shed in 1483, by Richard III., of 

 Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers ; Richard, Lord Grey ; 

 Sir Thomas Vaughan.andSir Richard Haw.<;e. It is to these 

 events allusion is made by Shakspeare in Richard 111. : — 

 " Pomfret, Pomfret! thou bloody prison! 

 Fatal and ominous to noble peers ! 

 AVithin the guilty closure of thy walls, 

 Richard the Second here was hack'd to death : 

 And, for more slander to th}' dismal seat, 

 \Ve give thee up our guiltless blood to drink."] 



