2»« S. VIII. Aug. 20, '59,] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



145 



■where Merchants will have the Privilege of leaving any 

 Goods they import, without being obliged to pay the 

 Custom till they dispose of the same."— 7%e London 

 Journal, Saturday, March 2, 1722-3. 



If not before known, this is an important ascer- 

 tained date in the history of commerce. W. P. 



ahVLtnti, 



The question of your correspondent (ante, 

 p. 84,), whether Gay was the author of " Molly 

 Mog," reminds me of other questions relating to 

 this genial and gentle poet, which may perhaps be 

 solved through the pages of " N, & Q," Did Gay 

 write "Wine?" Aaron Hill says so (Works, i. 

 339.), iand " Wine" is inserted among Gay's 

 Woi'ks in Johnson's edition of The Poets. But 

 Johnson, it is understood, was in no way re- 

 sponsible for the selection of the works therein 

 printed ; indeed he appears not to have known of 

 the insertion of " Wine," for he makes no refers 

 ence to it in his Life of Gay, which assuredly he 

 ought, and I think would have done ; for, if writ- 

 ten by Gay, its publication preceded that of any 

 other of his known works by three years, being 

 published in 1708, and not in 1710 as stated by 

 Hill. 



Gay was born near Barnstaple, and educated at 

 the Free School in that town. Was his master, 

 or his master's son, or bis master's successor, the 

 author of A Miscellany, or New Poems on several 

 Occasions, by K, Luck, A.M., Master of Barn- 

 staple School, London (Cave), 1736 ? 



The work was published by subscription, and 

 Alexander Pope was a subscriber for two copies. 

 There is no mention in it of Gay. There is, how- 

 ever, a poem " On Mr. Pope's Translation of 

 Homer," the substance of which is contained in 

 the two last lines : — 



" Had Pope and Homer countries chang'd and date ; 

 So Pope had writ ; so Homer would translate." 



Before I conclude I will remind your readers 

 that no answer has appeared to C.'s question (2"'* 

 S. iv. 89.), when and where was first published 

 Gay's Welcome from Greece ? In the notice pre- 

 fixed to Lord Hervey's Memoirs (p. xxiii,), Mr, 

 Croker expresses himself as having no doubt of 

 publication in 1720. This is no proof. I would 

 add to this inquiry, where is the MS. copy, or the 

 copy from which the Welcome was printed in the 

 " Additions to Pope's Works?" The draft, said 

 to be in Gay's handwriting, in the British Mu- 

 seum, is imperfect. Where and when was that 

 draft obtained ? G. T. Q. 



BARON WBATISLAW S CAPTIVITY IN TURKEY. 



Can you, or any of your coi'respondents, inform 

 me who were the Enjjlish and French ambassa- 



dors at Constantinople between 1591 and 1599 ? 

 I have just finished translating Baron Wratislaw's 

 Captivity from the original Bohemian, and am 

 anxious to know the names of the two ambassa- 

 dors to whom he was greatly indebted for his 

 liberation. 



As I believe this singular and interesting work 

 to be entirely unknown in England, except pos- 

 sibly through the medium of a most unfaithful 

 and disagreeable German translation, some ac- 

 count of it may perhaps not be unacceptable to 

 yourself and your readers. Baron Wenceslas Wra- 

 tislaw, when quite a boy, was entrusted to the 

 care of Herr von Kregwitz, ambassador extraor- 

 dinary from the Emperor Rudolph II. to Sultan 

 Amurath III., in the year 1591. After a very 

 pleasant residence in Constantinople, the ambas- 

 sador was detected in a treasonable correspon- 

 dence, and put to death. His suite spent more 

 than three years in various prisons, the galleys, 

 and the Black Tower, but were at length liber- 

 ated mainly through the intercession of the am- 

 bassadors of the English queen (Elizabeth), and 

 the French king (Henry IV.). Baron Wratislaw 

 wrote an account of his journey to Constantinople, 

 residence at Constantinople, captivity, and return 

 home, in four books, in 1599. The work relhained 

 in manuscript till 1777, and was republished in 

 1807. The German translation, which differs so 

 much from the original that it is scarcely to be 

 called a translation. Is dated 1786. The Bohemian 

 has long been out of print, and is very scarce. I 

 obtained my copy, with great difficulty, through 

 the kindness of Mr. Paul Aloys Klar, the editor of 

 the beautiful Prague annual, Libussa. 



Whether I decide on publishing my own trans- 

 lation or not, it will be interesting to know the 

 names of the two ambassadors, if they can be 

 ascertained. A. H. Wkatislaw. 



School Hall, Bury St. Edmund's. 



[" Hernacher sind wir von denen Tiircken nach Galata 

 gef Uhret, und dem Englischen Herrn Ambassador! Uber- 

 antwortet worden. Der Englische Herr Ambassador, so 

 rait Nahmen Eduartus Berthon hiess, und ein fromiyer, 

 Christlicher, freundlicher, audi gelehrter .und schbner 

 Herr gewesen, empfing uns gar gnftdig und freundlich, lo- 

 giret uns unter etliche Zelten in einem Garten bey seiner 

 Wohnung, und liess uns allda Essen und Trincken vollaufF 

 vortragen." (Seidel's Denckwurdige Gesandtsmafft an 

 die Ottomanische Pforte, edit. Haussdorf, Gorlitz, 1711.) 

 The name of Wratislaw appears in this work at pp. 30. 

 and 34.— Ed.] 



WRITERS IN THE QUARTERLY REVIEWS. 



I have for some time been in the habit of 

 marking the names of the authors of the various 

 essays in the margins of my copies of the several 

 Quarterly Reviews. 



I find, from Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey (2nd ed., 

 vol. i. pp. 300, 301.), the following included in a 



