Aug. 30. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



155 



of last December, and repeated in the Illustrated 

 Bosivell, and, I am sorry to say, still more gravely 

 and circumstantially reproduced by the Editor of 

 " Notes and Queries." I have delayed, I say, 

 until I was enabled to satisfy myself more com- 

 pletely as to one of the allegations of your Note. 

 I can now venture to assure you that the whole 

 story of the projected sale to Russia is absolutely 

 unfounded ; and that the Princess Lieven, whose 

 supposed agency is the gist of the story, never 

 beard a syllable about it, till my inquiry brought 

 it to her notice, and that she has giveu it the most 

 absolute contradiction. As there never was any 

 such proposition, I need not say that the interfer- 

 ence against it attributed to Mr. Heber and Lord 

 Sidmouth is equally unfounded. The real history 

 of the affair is this : — Mr. Nash, the architect, had 

 rendered himself very agreeable to George IV. by 

 his alterations and additions to the Pavilion at 

 Brighton, and he managed to obtain (somewhat 

 irregularly, I believe) the job of altering old 

 Buckingham House, which was originally intended, 

 or at least proposed, to be only an extensive repair 

 and more commodious arrangement of the existing 

 edifice. Under that notion, INIr. Nash had little 

 difSculty in persuading the king that the space 

 occupied by so large a library could not be spared \ 

 for that purpose, if the house was to be arranged 

 as a palace both for private residence and for pur- 

 poses of state ; and as there was a very great 

 jealousy in Parliament of the expense of Bucking- j 

 ham House, he was afraid to propose the erection j 

 of an additional building to receive the books. It 

 was then that the scheme was hit on, I know not j 

 exactly by whom (but I believe by Mr. Nash), of ; 

 giving the books to the British Museum.- The 

 principal part of the library occupied three large 

 rooms, two oblong and one an octagon. The former 

 were to have been absorbed into the living apart- i 

 ments, and the octagon was to be preserved as a 

 chapel, which it was proposed to adorn with the 

 seven cartoons of Raphael from Hampton Court. ' 

 All these, and several other schemes, vanished 

 before Mr. Nash's larger views and increased ; 

 favour, which led by degrees to the total destruc- 

 tion of the old house, and the erection of an en- j 

 tirely new palace, which however retains strong 

 evidence of the occasional and piecemeal principle 

 on which it was begun. But in the meanwhile ; 

 the library was gone. / know that some members 

 of the government were very averse to this dis- 

 posal of the library : they thought, and strongh/ 

 represented, that a royal residence should not be 

 without a library; and that this particular collec- 

 tion, made especially ad hoc, shouhl not have been, 

 on any j)rctence, and above all on one so occasional 

 nnd trivial, diverted from its original destination. 

 It is very possible that INIr. Heber may have ex- 



Siressed this opinion ; and I think I may say that 

 .lOrd Sidmouth certainly did so : but, on the other 



hand, some of the king's advisers were not sorry 

 to see the collection added to the Museum pro 

 bono publico ; and so the affair concluded, — very 

 unsatisfactorily, as I thought and think, as regards 

 the crown, to whom this library ought to have 

 been an heirloom ; and indeed I doubt whether it 

 was not so in point of law. It is likely enough 

 that the gift of the library may have been partly 

 prompted by a hope of putting the public in better 

 humour as to the expenses of Buckingham House; 

 but the idea of a sale to Russia never, I am sure, 

 entered the head of any of the parties. C. 



THE "EISELL CONTROVERSr. 



(Vol. iv., pp. 64. 135.) 



I can easily suppose, after the space j^ou 

 have given to J. S. W. (Vol. iv., p. 64.) to sum 

 up on the long-protracted controversy of the 

 Hisell interpretation, that you will scarcely jiermit 

 it to be renewed. J. S. W.'s judgment, though 

 given with much amenity and fulness, I cannot 

 think satisfactory, as towards its close he evidently 

 sinks into the advocate. 



Theobald, a most admirable annotator, has nar- 

 rowed the controversy, very properly, to the con- 

 sideration whether Hamlet was here proposing 

 possibilities or impossibilities. J. S. W. dwells on 

 the whole of the dialogue between Hamlet and 

 Laertes as a rant ; and sinks all the lines and pas- 

 sages that would bring it down to sanity. But 

 this seems to me singularly unjust. Imprimis, 

 Hamlet is not enraged like Laertes, " who hath a 

 dear sister lost," and is a very choleric, impetuous, 

 and arrogant young gentleman. It is this quality 

 which irritates Hamlet, who is otherwise in the 

 whole of this scene in a particularly moralising 

 and philosophic mood, and is by no means " sple- 

 netic and rash." Hamlet, a prince, is openly 

 cursed by Laertes : he is even seized by him, and 

 he still only remonstrates. There is anything but 

 rant in what he (Hamlet) says ; he uses the most 

 homely phrases ; so homely that there is something 

 very like scorn in them : 



——" What wilt tbou do for her ?" 

 is the quietude of contempt for Laertes' insulting 

 rant; and so, if my memory deceive me not, the 

 elder Kean gave it; "JDo for her" being put in 

 contrast with Laertes' braggadocio say. Then 

 come the possibilities : 



" WouVt weep, fight, fast, tear thyself," 



(AJl, be it noted, common lover's tricks), 



" Would chink up cisell, eat a crocodile, 

 I'll do't." 



Now the eating a crocodile is the real difhculty, 

 for that looks like an impossibility; but then, no 

 doubt, the crocodile, like all other monstrous 

 things, was in the pharmacopoeia of the time, and 



