Mar. 4. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



199 



family of Constable he belonged ; and where I 

 could find a pedigree of his family. 



Comes Stabuli. 

 Malta. 



Fading Ink. — I have somewhere seen a receipt 

 for an ink, which completely fades away after it 

 has been written a few months. Will some che- 

 mical reader kindly refer me to it ? 



C. Clifton Barry. 



Sir Ralph Killigrew. — Who was Sir Ralph 

 Killigrew, born circa 1585. I should be very 

 much obliged to be referred to a good pedigree 

 of the Killigrew family of the above period. 



Patonce. 



fflinav 9mtti$i tut'th ®tt)Sto*rj$. 



Pcpys. — I have lately acquired a collection of 

 letters between Pepys and Major Aungier, Sir 

 Isaac Newton, Halley, and other persons, relating 

 to the management of the mathematical school at 

 Christ's Hospital ; and containing details of the 

 career of some of the King's scholars after leaving 

 the school. The letters extend from 1692 to 

 1695 ; and are the original letters received by 

 Pepys, with his drafts of the answers. They are 

 loosely stitched, in order of date, in a thick volume, 

 and are two hundred and upwards in number. 

 Are these letters known, and have they ever been 

 published or referred to? A. F. B. 



Diss. 



[It is a singular coincidence that we should receive 

 the communication of A. F. B. on the day of the pub- 

 lication of the new and much improved library edition 

 of Pepys's Diary. Would our correspondent permit 

 us to submit his collection to the editor of Pepys, who 

 would no doubt be gratified with a sight of it ? We 

 will guarantee its safe return, and any expenses in- 

 curred in its transmission. On turning to the fourth 

 volume of the new edition of the Diary, we find the 

 following letter (now first published) from Dr. Tanner, 

 afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, to Dr. Charlett, dated 

 April 28, 1699: — "Mr. Pepys was just finishing a 

 letter to you last night when I gave him yours. I 

 hear he has printed some letters lately about the abuses 

 of Christ's Hospital ; they are only privately handed 

 about. A gentleman that has a very great respect for 

 Mr. Pepys, saw one of them in one of the Aldermen's 

 hands, but wishes there had been some angry expres- 

 sions left out ; which he fears the Papists and other 

 enemies of the Church of England will make ill use 

 of." Is anything known of this "privately printed" 

 volume? In the Life of Pepys (4th edit., p. xxxi.), 

 mention is made of his having preserved from ruin the 

 mathematical foundation at Christ's Hospital, which 

 had been originally designed by him. — Ed.] 



" Retainers to Seven Shares and a Half." — Can 

 any reader of " N. & Q.," conversant with the 

 literature of the seventeenth century, furnish an 



explanation of this phrase ? It occurs in the pre- 

 face to Steps to the Temple, fyc, of Richard Cra- 

 shaw (the 2nd edit., in the Savoy, 1670), addressed 

 by "the author's friend" to "the learned reader," 

 and is used in disparagement of pretenders to 

 poetry. The passage runs thus : 



" It were prophane but to mention here in the pre- 

 face those under-headed poets, retainers to seven shares 

 and a half; madrigal fellows, whose only business in 

 verse is to rime a poor sixpenny soul, a subburb sinner 

 into hell," &c. 



H. L. 



[The performers at our earlier theatres were distin- 

 guished into whole shares, three-quarter sharers, half 

 sharers, seven-and-a-half sharers, hired men, &c. In 

 one scene of the Histriomastic, 1610, the dissolute per* 

 formers having been arrested by soldiers, one of the 

 latter exclaims, " Come on, players ! now we are the 

 sharers, and you the hired men ; " and in another scene, 

 Clout, one of the characters, rejects with some indig* 

 nation the offer of "half a share." Gamaliel Ratsey, 

 in that rare tract, Ratseis G/iost, 1606, knights the 

 principal performer of a company by the title of " Sir 

 Three Shares and a Half; " and Tucca, in Ben Jon* 

 son's Poetaster, addressing Histrio, observes, " Com- 

 mend me to Seven shares and a half," as if some 

 individual at that period had engrossed as large a 

 proportion. Shakspeare, in Hamlet, speaks of " a whole 

 share " as a source of no contemptible emolument, and 

 of the owner of it as a person filling no inferior station 

 in "a cry of players." In Northward Ho! also, & 

 sharer is noticed with respect. Bellamont the poet 

 enters, and tells his servant, " Sirrah, I'll speak with 

 none:" on which the servant asks, " Not a player ? " 

 and his master replies : 



" No, though a sharer bawl : 

 I'll speak with none, although it be the mouth 

 Of the big company." 



The value of a share in any particular company would 

 depend upon the number of subdivisions, upon the 

 popularity of the body, upon the stock-plays belonging 

 to it, upon the extent of its wardrobe, and the nature 

 of its properties. — See Collier's English Dramatic 

 Poetry, vol. iii. p. 427.] 



Maddens " Reflections and Resolutions proper 

 for the Gentlemen of Ireland." — This work, by 

 the Rev. Samuel Madden, was first published in 

 Dublin in 1738, and was reprinted at the expense 

 of the late Mr. Thomas Pleasants, in one vol. 8vo., 

 pp. 224, Dub. 1816. I possess two copies of the 

 original edition, likewise in one vol. 8vo., pp. 237, 

 and I have seen about a dozen ; and yet I find in 

 the preface to the reprint the following para- 

 graph : 



" The very curious and interesting work which is 

 now reprinted, and intended for a wide and gratuitous 

 circulation, is also of uncommon rarity ; there is not a 

 copy of it in the library of Trinity College, or in any 

 of the other public libraries of this city, which have 

 been searched on purpose. (One was purchased some 



