2nd s. N" 79., July 4. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



n 



walls, till I be carried hence with my feet forward. Wel- 

 com be the will of God, and the Decrees of Heaven. 



" Your Highnesses most humble and mast obedient 

 Servitor, 



"Jambs Howell. 

 « From the Prison of the Fleet 

 this May-d^y, 1647." 



Five-and-fifty months takes us back to De- 

 cember, 1642. During the year 1641 and 1642 

 there are only three letters, one only of which (the 

 one above alluded to of Sept. 7, 1641) alludes to 

 political matters ; he therefore could not or would 

 not print any of his correspondence of those years ; 

 the first most probably being the case, from the 

 fact of his papers being under the control of su- 

 perior power. 



As my copy is considerably earlier than those 

 alluded to by your correspondents, I may, perhaps, 

 be permitted to describe its contents. It consists 

 of four volumes bound in one : the title-page of 

 the first is missing. It is dedicated to his Ma- 

 jesty, but there is no date to the dedication. The 

 letters are in six sections, sect. i. contains 44, 

 sect. ii. 25, sect. iii. 38, sect. iv. 28, sect. v. 43, and 

 sect. vi. 60. The title-page of the second volume 

 is ''• -4 New Volume of Familiar Letters, §c. The 

 Third Edition with Additions, 1655." The dedi- 

 cation, as above stated. May-day, 1647. I find one 

 letter dated Aug. 5, 1648, and another Feb. 3, 

 1649. I suppose these are the " Additions." It 

 contains eighty letters: the last letter is (dated 

 Jan. 3, 1641) to Sir K. D., and relates to a poem, 

 a copy of which accompanied the letter : after the 

 index to the volume follows a poem which, I sup- 

 pose, is the one alluded to (dated Calendis Ja- 

 nuarii, 1641) ; it extends to eight pages, not 

 numbered, entitled " The Vote; or, a Poem-Royal 

 presented to His Majesty for a New Years Gift by 

 way of Discourse twixt the Poet and his Muse." 

 The next volume is entitled " A Third Volume of 

 Familiar Letters of a fresher Date, Sfc. Never 

 Published before, 1655," and contains twenty-six 

 letters. The last volume is entitled " A Fourth 

 Volume of Familiar Letters upon Various Emergent 

 Occasions, Sfc. By James Howell, Esq., Clerk of 

 the Councell to his late Majestic. Never pub- 

 lished before, 1655." It contains fifty letters; 

 there is no year stated to any of these letters (ex- 

 cept two, Nos. 5. and 10.), — only the month and 

 the day of the month. The latest date is Feb. 18. 

 (1654-5 ?) ; the Epistle Dedicatory, to Thomas 

 Earl of Southhampton, is dated March 12th ; in the 

 dedication the year is mentioned as follows : " the 

 year sixteen hundred fifty-five (which begins but 

 now, about the Vernal Equinoctial)." 



I would suggest to your correspondents and 

 others the much better practice of citing (in such 

 works as the one above), instead of the page, the 

 number of the letter or the date, and the person 

 to whom it is addressed, as where ^ book hjis gong 



through several editions, it very rarely happens 

 that the same page answers to the same matter.* 



James Bladon. 



[It may not be generally known that Howell's scat- 

 tered poems were collected into a volume, and published 

 by Payne Fisher. It bears the following title : Poems on 

 several Choice and*Various Subjects, occasionally composed 

 by an Eminent Author. Collected and published by Ser- 

 geant-Major P. F., Lond. 1663. See Centura Literaria, 

 iii. 259— 267.— Ed.] 



CHATTEBTON S PORTRAIT. 



(2°^ S. iii. 492.) 



Mr. Fdlcher's courteous notice of my com- 

 munication on this subject demands an early reply, 

 particularly as Mb. Fulcher has now obtained 

 from Mr. Naylor a more copious description of 

 the portrait. I am more convinced than before 

 that it is not a portrait of Chatterton painted by 

 Gainsborough. I wish I could think that it was : 

 for every admirer of the talents of the wonderful 

 boy would be glad to study the lineaments of his 

 countenance. Mr. Naylor describes him as dressed 

 " in a green, apparently a charity coat." And Mr. 

 Fulcher says, that such a dress " is noteworthy, 

 for it is well-known that Chatterton was placed at 

 Colston's charity school, and that he remained 

 there till July 1, 1767." This period is three 

 years, within a month, before he committed sui- 

 cide, and when Chatterton was in his fourteenth 

 year. In reply, I may be allowed to say, that the 

 dress of the boys at Colston's school is similar to 

 that of the boys at Christ's Hospital, — blue, and not 

 green. Further, it was not until Chatterton was 

 clerk to Mr. Lambert, that any event had oc- 

 curred in his life to attract public attention to his 

 superior talents ; for it was not until Sept. 1768, 

 that he sent to Felix Farley's Bristol Journal his 

 account of the opening of Bristol Bridge, which 

 first brought him into notice. Was it probable, 

 therefore, that Gainsborough had any inducement, 

 until Chatterton's name had acquired celebrity, to 

 have taken his portrait ? Again, -was it probable, 

 after it was taken, that it would not have been 

 presented to his mother, or to one of his family ? 

 But there is no allusion in any life of Chatterton, 

 or in any letter that has been preserved, that any 

 portrait was taken of him. I may add, that there 

 is another charity school in Bristol, where the 

 dress of the boys is green. May not Mr. Naylor's 

 portrait represent one of them ? Mr. Naylor says, 

 " that several persons from Bristol have seen the 



[* Our correspondent's suggestion respecting citations 

 from Howell's Letters would only increase the difficulty 

 of verifying passages, as the earlier editions arc with- 

 out dates, and in the later ones the numberings have 

 been altered, e.g. the letter quoted in the first paragraph 

 of this article as No. 46. is No. 54. of the first edition, 

 1645, and undated. — Ed.] 



\ 



