476 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 294. 



" Could we with ink" Sec (Vol. ix., p. 179, &c.)- 

 —The following may be added to the notes on 

 these lines. Under date a.d. 1200, this passafje 

 occurs in Berington's Literary Hist, of the Middle 

 Ages : 



" If the high thundering Redeemer of mankind had 

 bestowed on me a hundred iron tongues, the sky were 

 changed into a sheet of paper, the sea into ink, and my 

 hand could move as rapidly as the running hare, it would 

 not be in my power fully to explain to you the excellence 

 of the oratorical art." 



It is not unlikely that the words of John the 

 Apostle (xxi. 25.) had something to do with this 

 imagery ; but we cannot forget that there are two 

 or three other passages with which every classical 

 reader is familiar, and which may have been still 

 more influential. 

 ■ Homer, Iliad, ii. 484 — 493., rendered by Cow- 



« . . . . Their multitude was such, 

 That to immortalise them each by name, 

 Ten mouths, ten tongues, an everlasting voice, 

 And heart of adamant would not suffice." 



Virgil, Georgics, ii. 40 — 46., rendered by 

 Dryden : 



" Not that my song in such a scanty space, 

 So large a subject fully can embrace — 

 .Not though I were supplied with iron lungs, 

 A hundred mouths fill'd with as many tongues," &c. 



. Again, ^neid, vi. 625 — 627., also by Dryden : 



" Had I a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, 

 And throats of brass, inspired with iron lungs, 

 I could not half these horrid crimes repeat. 

 Nor half the punishment those crimes have met." 



It is easy to see how such passages could be 

 varied and imitated, to produce the lines alluded 

 to above. B. H. C. 



" Youth's Tragedy" (Vol. xi., p. 342.). — Lowndes 

 has, I presume, but copied Bindley's Catalogue, in 

 assigning the initials "T. S ," upon the title of 

 Youth's Tragedy, 1671, to Thomas Sherman ; and 

 I fear your correspondent must rest content with 

 this simple identification of the author of his mo- 

 rality with a name otherwise unknown. 



The tragedy seems to have been popular with 

 the younger sort in its day, having readied a 

 fourth impression in 1672, which edition contains 

 "The Argument, in Eleven Couplets, answering to 

 the Eleven Scenes, or Dialogues, between Youth, 

 the Devil, Wisdom, Time, Death, the Soul, and 

 the Nuncius," not in tlie first. 



.In 1709 this alleirory made its appearance again 

 under the title of Youth Undone : a Tragick Poem, 

 composed by way of Discourse between the above- 

 named, with a Preface, in which a new hand, in 

 the vein of Jeremy Collier and Arthur Bedford, 

 attacks the Modern Stage, and even interpolates 

 a passage in the body of the poem denouncing 

 that brothel of impurity. Youth's Tragedy, not- 



withstanding its honest and virtuous design, had 

 not, probably, much eflfect in reforming the stage, 

 and we hear no more of it as a distinct publi- 

 cation.* 



The notion of dramatising Youth beset by coun- 

 teracting influences of good and evil was not, 

 however, lost upon Master Benjamin Keach, who 

 worked it up afresh in his War with the Devil, or 

 the Young Man's Conflict with the Powers of Dark- 

 ness, in 1676 ; and in this shape the tragedy is still 

 circulated, and will continue to be until the end of 

 time, if John Dunton is a true prophet. J. O. 



London Topography : The New Road in 1756 

 (Vol. xi., p. 382.). — I cannot help smiling, that 

 Mrs. Capper, the Duke of Bedford's tenant, 

 should be so blinded by self-interest, as not to 

 foresee that the projected road would, by the 

 grant of building-leases on either side of it, pro- 

 duce a hundred-fold the amount of rent paid by 

 her for the field she rented. Nay, when the present 

 leases expire, the ground-rents may amount to as 

 many thousands. Yet even the ground-landlords 

 themselves seem, at first, when the bill was brought 

 into Parliament, not to have been alive to their 

 own interest in this particular ; as Horace Wal- 

 pole informs us in his Memoirs of George the 

 Second (vol. ii. pp. 32, 33.) : 



" A new road towards the Eastern Counties, by which 

 the disagreeable passage through the city would be 

 avoided, had been proposed to be made on the back of 

 London. The Duke of Grafton had estates there, which 

 by future buildings likely to accompany such an improve- 

 ment, would be greatly increased. Part of this road was 

 to pass over grounds of the Duke of Bedford, but in so 

 small proportion as he thought would not indemnify him 

 for the desertion of other buildings, which he had to a 

 great amount in worse parts of the town. He conse- 

 quently took this up with great heat. The Duke of 

 Grafton, old and indolent, was indifferent about it . . . 

 But in less than a year he (the Duke of B.) proposed to 

 the Duke of Grafton's friends to extend the plan of the 

 road."- 



C. H. 



Engraving of a Battle (Vol. xi., p. 365.). — The 

 engraving represents General Rapp conveying to 

 Napoleon the news of the defeat of the Russians 

 and Austrians at the battle of Austerlitz, in 1S05. 

 The print is from the painting by Girard, executed 

 for Napoleon. The prisoner on horseback behind 

 General Rapp is the Russian Prince Repnin. 



F. C. H. 



* In the Museum copy a reference is made to the En- 

 glish Theatre, vol. xxxv. ; but not being able to lay my 

 hands upon this, perhaps the Editor will say if Fouth's 

 Trtigedy is there reprinted or described. [We cannot find 

 the English Theatre in the Catalogues of the Museum ; 

 but on "turning to Bindley's Catalogue, part ii. lot 709., 

 the work is called " Sherman's Youth's Tragedy, a Poem, 

 1672."] 



