158 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 96. 



smallest doubt with any one who knows anything 

 about the Privy Council, that the Lord Mayor of 

 London no more beloniis to it than the L^rd 

 Mayors of York or Dublin, or the Lord Provost 

 of Edinburgh, all of whom are equally styled 

 Eight Honorable, which title, I repeat, is the sole 

 and silly pretence of this new-fangled hypothesis. 



C. 



" HOUSE OF YVERY. 



(Vol. iv., pp. 101. 136.) 



Observing the imperfect knowledge which 

 Lowndes and your correspondents apparently 

 have of the work called Anderson's House of 

 Yvery, I send you a few Notes to clear up some 

 points. 



It may be said there were two editions of this 

 work ; one, containing the censorious comments 

 of (I presume) Lord Egmont on tlie degraded 

 state of the peerage ; the second, that in which 

 those comments were cancelled. To the first, no 

 printer's name appeared in the title-page ; to 

 the second is the name of " H. Woodfall, jun." 



Lowndes has entirely mistnken the origin of the 

 different paging in vol. i. The fact is, the original 

 edition of the Introduction contained 41 pages of 

 text, but the cancels reduced that number to 37 ; 

 which p. 37., as Lowmles correctly remarks, is in 

 the second edition misprinted 29. I possess both 

 copies, with and without the cancels. By Lowndes 

 we are led to believe that only p. xxxvii. was de- 

 stroyed; l)ut in trutli they are p. xvi., and parts 

 of pp. XV. and xvii., and nearly the whole of 

 pp. xxxv.-vi., containing the anecdotes of the 

 tailor's son and the apothecary's brother-in-law 

 being sent, or intended to be sent, to foreign 

 courts, as ambassadors from England. Another 

 cancel occurs in vol. ii., of neai-ly the whole of 

 pp. 444-5-6, which occasions Lowndes to say that 

 pp. 446-7 arc missing. The duplicate pages 453 

 to 460 are peculiar to the second edition only. 

 One of my copies contains two additional plates, 

 one of Wardour Castle, the other of Acton Barnell, 

 evidently engraved for the work. The map of the 

 baronies of Duhallow, &c., is only in one copy, 

 viz. the original edition. Unfortunately, this 

 original edition wants all the portraits of Faber, 

 but it has the tomb of Richard Percival of 1190, 

 beginning " Orate," as in Lowndes. It contains 

 also a duplicate portrait of Sir Philip Percival, 

 engraved by Toms in 1738 (who also engraved the 

 AVardour and Acton Burnell Castles) ; and this 

 duplicate is also in the other copy. 



Were I to form any judgment when this work 

 was commenced, I should say about 1738, and that 

 all the engravings for it were done by Toms ; and 

 the first edition was printed in 1742, without any 

 printer's name, and that some copies were so 



bound up. The other copies remained in sheets 

 until the next year, when Faber was employed to 

 engrave the portraits, and till 1744 or 1747 ; 1747 

 being the latest date of Faber's plates. There is 

 some curious information in these volumes, and I 

 would recommend your readers to observe how 

 much the conduct of the Catholics of Ireland, re- 

 corded in vol. ii. p. 271., resembles that of the 

 Catholics of the present day. P. 



ON " back" in the tempest. 

 (Vol.iv., pp.37. 121.) 



I think A. E. B. has not understood Mr. Hick- 

 son's argument in reference to this word. Per- 

 haps the latter may not have expressed himself 

 very clearly ; and not having by me his original 

 paper on the subject, I cannot cite his exact words; 

 but his argument I take to be to this effect : — In 

 the construction of the passage there is a double 

 comparison, which, though perfectly clear to the 

 intelligent reader, causes some confusion when a 

 doubt is first raised as to the meaning of the word, 

 and which can be cleared up only by a thorough 

 analysis. " The cloud-capp'd towers," &c., are 

 first compared with " the baseless fabric of this 

 vision," like ivJdch they " shall dissolve," and after- 

 wards with " this insubstantial pageant," like which 

 (having "faded") they shall "leave not a rack 

 behind." A given object can be said to " leave 

 behind" only that which was originally of its ele- 

 ments, and for this reason only a general term 

 such as wreck or vestige will accord with the con- 

 struction of the passage. 



I am sorry to find that any one should misquote 

 Shakspeare for the purpose of obtaining a tem- 

 porary triumph : probably, however, in the in- 

 stance I am about to cite, A. E. B. has really 

 fallen into the common error of regarding two 

 similes as one. He says, giving the substance of 

 Shakspeare's passage, " the globe itself shall dis- 

 solve, and, like this vision, leave not a wreck be- 

 hind." What Shakspeare in substance does say 

 is, " The globe itself, like this visio7i, shall dissolve, 

 and, like this faded pageant, shall leave not a rack 

 behind." A. E. B.'s question, therefore, " in what 

 was the resemblance to the vision to consist, if not 

 in melting, like it, into thin air ?" is thus answered : 

 The resemblance does consist in dissolving, or 

 " melting" away. 



My object in making these remarks is not to 

 express an opinion on one side or the other, but 

 to draw the attention of your readers to the real 

 question at issue. I therefore say nothing as to 

 whether Shakspeare may or may not have had a 

 prevision of the nebular theory ; though I cannot 

 see that this would be in the least affected by our 

 decision as to the meaning of this word, since the 

 wrack or tcreck of the world might well be repre- 



