examination of edit. 1812, 14, and other people's speculation on that edition. The utmost I have ever heard hazarded was in the paper on Mason, and it amounted only to this. solid ground; but to deduce the inference Music do I hear? Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is, When time is broke and no proportion kept! or as ('Merchant of Venice,' V. i.) How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Not the least pregnant of Mr. Dilke's remarks is one to the effect that he had a and yet be utterly devoid of music. If a "thorough conviction that all speculators, small personality be permissible to emphaled and misled by edit. 1812, 14, are hunt-size my point, music, vocal or instrumental, is to me a thing of beauty" and "a joy for ing in a wrong direction." In that edition, which George Woodfall gave to the world, ever"; yet I know no more of the scales than there are upwards of a hundred letters which a cow does of the zodiac; and I too have are supposed to have proceeded from Junius's sung in humble verse the glories of Calliope, pen. No proof of authorship has been though powerless to twang a string coradduced. Yet it is the letters thus fathered rectly on her divine lyre. upon Junius which have been cited as evidence that Francis was the man. An edition of Junius's authentic letters seems to me to be a desideratum. I have tried to convince more than one publisher of this. The pre-vision for its introduction. vailing opinion among publishers appears to be that the editions (George Woodfall and Bohn) containing the spurious letters are good enough for the public. W. FRASER RAE. WAS SHAKESPEARE MUSICAL? THE editor of the "Pitt Press Shakespeare for Schools" (Mr. A. W. Verity, M.A.) thinks so in his notes to 'King Richard II.' (1899). He says: "No one can doubt that Shakespeare himself had a great love of music, and considerable knowledge too; though not, I suppose, the scientific knowledge of it that Milton had." His "great love of music" I do not impeach; but I very much question his "considerable knowledge" of it. Mere allusions and they are copious, as every one knows-to it, as appreciation of it, hardly constitute a proof of a practical acquaintance with any musical instrument, nor even of a knowledge of the technique of the art. It is mere supposition (and a somewhat strained one) to argue otherwise. That the poet used music in the performance of his plays is a more reasonable conjecture, and quite another question. When, therefore, Mr. Verity states that Shakespeare's use of music is a suggestive subject of study," he is, in my judgment, on Again, that music is a powerful and necessary adjunct to the complete enjoyment and set-off of a dramatic piece is outside discussion. Shakespeare was practical enough to recognize this, and accordingly made proWhen Mr. But con Verity, then, further says that "on the stage, As accomplishment in no wise dims the transcendent brilliancy of his many others. I am simply and solely holding a brief in the whatsoever things are true"; interests of and until Mr. Verity can adduce better proof than mere assertion of Shakespeare's musical knowledge, I shall continue to believe that he was, so far as direct evidence is concerned, entirely ignorant in that line. The efforts made of late years to make him a master of everything to which he has referred have something of the reductio ad absurdum in them. Because he frequently refers to archery, Mr. Rushton Shakespeare an Archer') forthwith turns him into an archer; because he often uses legal terms the same author ('Shakespeare a Lawyer') incontinently makes him a lawyer; because he writes of "sweet music" Mr. Verity would have us believe he was а musician; because his pages bristle with passages about bees and glow worms he is an entomologist, though his numerous and glaring blunders anent those insects give him less claim to that than to the other titles. Clearly Shakespeare, or any man of wide reading and observation, could be generally conversant with all four without actually being any one of them. Macaulay can scarcely be considered a soldier, though he is the author of the 'Battle of Ivry, nor Kipling a sailor because he wrote A Fleet in Being.' But enough. Shakespeare's knowledge, like Gladstone's, was encyclopædic; but it is surely the Ultima Thule of bathos to hoist him into the professorial chair of every branch of it, or at least to credit him with a proficiency which he himself would be the first to repudiate. J. B. McGoVERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester. THE MURDER OF THE EMPEROR PAUL OF RUSSIA. THE accompanying account of the murder of Paul I. of Russia is taken from 'Étude Critique du Matérialisme et du Spiritualisme par la Physique Expérimentale,' by the wellknown writer and chemist Prof. Raoul Pictet, of the University of Geneva, published two years ago. The interest of the historical event in question, and the fact of the work in which the narrative appeared being probably unknown to many readers of N. &Q, may justify its insertion in that valued periodical whose jubilee has just been celebrated so worthily:- I am about to relate an historical event which was told me by an eye-witness of the assassination of the Emperor Paul I, of Russia on 15 Jan., 1804. This witness was one of my aunts, who died at the advanced age of ninety-three years in 1869, having preserved the fulness of all her intellectual faculties until that extreme old age. As a young lady of the Livonian nobility, having been born Countess Sievers, she had been admitted into the palace in the capacity of one of the empress's maids of honour. The last few months of the Emperor Paul's reign were signalized by eccentricities verging on madness. This monarch, whose brain was turned by his absolute power, ordered carriages and sledges to be stopped in the streets, and obliged all his serfs, lords, nobles, and villains to alight on the carriageroad and kneel before him as he passed! In short, those about him determined to obtain his abdication by fair means or foul. Some days before the execution of the palace plot my aunt noticed some uneasiness at the drawing-rooms and during the receptions. Various sentences exchanged in a low tone, suspicious behaviour and secret conferences in corners of the rooms, did not escape her observation. The emperor, too, guessed that something was brewing against him, and appeared to be more reserved, as if on his guard. a The very evening of the crime there was grand court at the palace; all the official world and the diplomatic body were invited. The foreboding signs had become so evident that, about midnight, my aunt, who had retired to her rooms, which opened on to the long corridor of the Winter Palace, instead of going to bed, wrote a long letter to her father, who was at that time marshal of the Livonian nobility. She had half-undressed herself and sat writing at her table, with uncovered shoulders and wearing a short petticoat (les épaules nues et en simple jupon). About half-past one an unusual noise was heard in the corridor. This corridor, which was very long, traversed the palace from end to end, and terminated at the emperor's private apartments. Seized with emotion and fear, my aunt hurriedly took up the taper which was on her table and opened her chamber door. At the same moment Count Pahlen, the grand chamberlain, went by very agitated, and accompanied by four other nobles of the Court. What passed through my aunt's mind then no one can say; but this is her true story of what happened. I heard it more than twenty times at least during the two years I lived near to her at Paris in 1868-9, when I was studying at the Ecole Polytechnique and at the Sorbonne. My aunt loved to tell me this tragic adventure, which still moved her so much after sixty-four years that she never dared to write it down. "So I seized my taper, and, impelled by a force for which I cannot even now account, followed Count Pahlen and his four acolytes. Not one of them was astonished to see me following them thus in so unusual a costume. We walked a distance of about sixty yards to the emperor's chamber. The five men only exchanged gestures, not a word was uttered. Count Pahlen entered first without knockBehind him walked his colleague carrying a taper ing; he held in his hand a roll of white paper. in his hand; then all the others and myself entered. The Emperor Paul was seated at his table writing. Evidently he expected something and his suspicions were aroused. Count Pahlen first addressed him: good of the country and your own, your abdication! 'We come, your Majesty, to ask of you, for the Your health condemns you to retirement; all the physicians and we have arrived at the conclusion that your abdication has become necessary. We DR. JOHNSON AND VESTRIS.-Apropos of bring you the document to sign.' the note concerning Dr. Johnson and Vestris, 9th S. iv. 452, the following may be interestThe late Sir Henry Russell, in some ing. MS. notes of his father's life, says : "The emperor drew back a little behind his very large table. It was a heavy piece of furniture; on the emperor's left hand a chandelier of five branches lighted the letter he had begun to write; in front was a malachite paper-press formed of a great ball fixed on a very massive rectangle. "During Count Pahlen's speech, pronounced in a very firm voice, the five men had progressively advanced towards the edge of the table; the second taper was set down beside the inkstand, while the emperor, who was placed on the other side, recoiled involuntarily to increase the distance which separated him from these men. "Yes,' he said; 'you are deficient in respect for me; you think I am too severe with you, and you want to take my place in order to give it to my more yielding successor. I shall resist that......I shall resist that......' and, as he uttered these words, the emperor pushed back his chair towards the partition against which he had been almost leaning, and which was close to the wide fireplace in which some embers were dying out. "Sire, we wish for your abdication at any cost; we require it for the public good.' At the moment he pronounced these words Count Pahlen, a tall and powerful man, passed his arm over the table with sufficient rapidity to seize the emperor's hand. The latter recoiled hastily, and endeavoured with his other disengaged hand to open a door pierced in the wall behind him, a secret door by which he probably expected to escape. "These very violent struggles tilted the table; the two tapers placed upon it fell off and were extinguished, and Count Pahlen, seizing the paperpress with his right hand, struck the emperor on the temple with it while he dragged him towards himself with all his strength. The emperor, whose skull was fractured, sank backwards. The table was rearranged, and Count Pahlen, aided by his accomplices, took the hand of the dying emperor, put a pen into his fingers, and thus signed the abdication of the Emperor Paul I. During all this horrible scene I stood there with eyes wide open, motionless and stupefied, and I held in my hand the taper which alone had lighted that chamber of crime. It was by the light of that taper that I saw the posthumous signature affixed.' The day following this sinister adventure my aunt left the palace and fell ill of the shock. Afterwards when, restored to health, she recalled those dramatic episodes, it was always impossible for her to analyze the efficient causes of her movements. She has assured me that she felt herself transformed into an automaton all whose movements were obligatory. It would have been impossible for her to have acted of herself. No conscious liberty was left her. I point out this fact because of the rarity of the case, for my aunt was a woman of great powers and of much acuteness of intellect, like most of the women of the eighteenth century, and knew how to observe and to analyze with judgment and sagacity. I have also thought it right to fix this page of tenebrous history, which gives the true version of the so-much-debated end of the Emperor Paul I. Indeed, my aunt was the only witness of the scene, and I have written her narrative as she dictated it. J. LORAINE HEELIS. 9, Morrab Terrace, Penzance, "INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF FAMOUS LITERATURE."-I would warn intending subscribers to this work that it contains American spelling in its most irritating form. I wish some one had warned me. Also it has what I suppose are American emendations, unless they are gross misprints; for instance, "Far from the madd'ning crowd" in the place of the well-known line that has been classic for some hundred and fifty years; That Timour" instead of "Thou Timour" in Byron's 'Ode to Napoleon.' For a work so much vaunted as this has been, the misprints The following are are singularly numerous. a few instances: Humphry Clinker, when he gets into prison, is made to pay "gareish" instead of garnish; Diderot is stated to be the son of a master cutter" instead of cutler; Nelson's famous signal is stated to have been "competed" instead of completed. A Latin quotation from 'Cranford' figures as follows: "Dum spiritus regit_aruts." took me some little time to find out what "aruts" meant; it is a misprint for artus. This is really a very careless misprint. Surely Cowper never put into Johnny Gilpin's mouth the following line (when he got to Ware): "I came because your horse could come." It must have been would, but I have not a copy of the poem handy to refer to. An extract from Saintine's Picciola' is introduced in this language: It Charney, a political prisoner, has fixed his affections on a flower that grew between the stone of his prison" instead of "between the stones" (I believe really it ought to be "between the flags of his prison"). Omissions are conspicuous (if I may be allowed a bull). 'Hohenlinden' is left out, but some dozen pages of the 'Pleasures of Hope' are in. Brilliant diamond the one; somewhat ponderous, and nowadays not much appreciated metal, the other. Not a word is said about "Junius," though his letter to the king is inserted; nor of Wolfe, or how his famous 'Burial' came to be written and street vernacular. It is rather a picturesque phrase, and might be more generally used." "Playing the wag," "hopping it," and "playing the hop" are synonymous terms very common in this district. H. ANDREWS. Gainsborough. What do you think of me? "In 1609, Sir Robert Shirley sent a messenger or chiaus (as our old writers call him) to this country, as his agent, from the Grand Signior, and the Sophy, followed him, at his leisure, as ambassador from both to transact some preparatory business. Sir Robert those princes; but before he reached England, his agent had chiaused the Turkish and Persian merchants here of 4,000l. and taken his flight, unconscious, perhaps, that he had enriched the lan guage with a word of which the etymology would mislead Upton and puzzle Dr. Johnson." given to the world. As regards the prints, there is one illustrative of 'Robinson Crusoe' called the footprint on the sand," which is ludicrous. Crusoe, who ought, according to the story, to be wild with terror, instead of looking at the immense footprint within a yard of him, is shading his eyes with his hands, and, quite calm and placid, not a bit "CHIAUS."-The note on the origin of this agitated, is gazing at Africa or some other place far away in the distance. Johnson, at word in the Historical English Dictionary' a literary party, all the members of "the is very interesting. The usual explanation Club" being present, is haranguing away (as is that of Gifford, given in a note on the usual), but looking at none of them. There'Alchemist,' I. i. :is a print of Goldsmith's house, stated to have been in the "Strand," whereas it was near the little Old Bailey, spelt in one place in the book "Brecknock" Stair (in the singular), in another "Breckneck," which is interesting, if one only knew what the authority is for it; but in no other account of Goldsmith's life have I ever seen this print before. If it is from any authentic source in the British Museum or elsewhere it ought to have been stated. The same applies to a print-rather say a caricature-of Johnson in his Hebridean dress. Did Johnson really ever wear such a dress as this? Who saw it? Who drew it? Who printed it? The best print to my mind is Catiline in the senate house (the authority for which is given) listening to Cicero's famous oration, "quousque tandem," and looking very uneasy under it. In addition to the above defects, the volumes have this disadvantage, they are too heavy to hold in one's hand in an armchair over the fire, the pleasantest way of reading, and yet scarcely heavy enough to require a table. But the principal drawback is, what I mentioned at the commencement, the irritating American spelling; a secondary one, that though there are probably some four hundred prints in the work, there is not, so far as I can find, any index to them. To refer to Goldsmith's house just now, I had to look through the contents of some fifteen volumes before I came to it, and then found it placed with his 'Traveller' (this, I need hardly say, spelt Traveler'). To those "about to purchase" I would give, not one word of advice, but two-"Caveat emptor." W. O. WOODALL. The Historical English Dictionary' comments upon this:— "But no trace of this incident has yet been found outside of Gifford's note; it was unknown to 1756, also to Skinner, Henshaw, Dr. Johnson, Todd, Peter Whalley, a previous editor of Ben Jonson, and others who discussed the history of the word. Yet most of these recognized the likeness of chouse to the Turkish word, which Henshaw even proposed as the etymon, on the ground that the Turkish chiaus is little better than a fool.' Gifford's note must therefore be taken with reserve. I cannot offer any further explanation of the word, but I have traced Gifford's authority, and this may yield a clue. Gifford copied without acknowledgment a note on p. 15 of W. R. Chetwood's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ben. Jonson, Esq.,' Dublin, 1756: "Chiaus, a Turkish Messenger that was in England in the year 1610, sent by Sir Robert Shirley as his Agent from the Grand Seignor and the Persian King. Shirley followed in two Years after as Ambassador from both those Princes; but his Agent, in the mean Time, had choused the Turkish and Persian Merchants out of 4,000l. and had gone off. Thence, we conjecture, is derived the Word chouse, to cheat; for the Turkish Word Chiaus is pronounced as we pronounce chouse, to bite or cheat." This carries the explanation back to 1756; but it is admittedly a conjecture, and no authority is cited for the story of the agent. PERCY SIMPSON. PORTRAIT BY THE MARCHIONESS OF GRANBY. "Another slang phrase was registered in the Penge Police Court, when a small boy was brought up for neglecting to attend school. He confessed that he had been hopping the wag,' which, being-In 'L'Image de la Femme,' noticed by your translated, means playing truant. The School Board reviewer 9th S. iv. 549, the portrait by the representative acted as interpreter, and said it was Marchioness of Granby alleged to be Mrs. "FLANNELIZED." In a recently published novel (Jasper Tristram,' by A. W. Clarke) a youth is referred to as having "flannelized," meaning that he had dressed himself in cricketing or boating flannels. As this is the first time I have noticed this expression in any work of literary pretensions it may be worth while recording it in the pages of 'N. & Q.' FREDERICK T. HIBGAME. (( 'BOYTRY." "-In Robert Ashley's translation from the French of Louis le Roy, entitled 'Of the Interchangeable Course or Variety of Things' (1594), there occurs, in fol. 86b, "puerilitie or boytrie." Only a single quotation (1542) for what seems to be the same word, boytrye-but undefined, and apparently in a different sense-is given in the Oxford Dictionary.' As regards the epenthetic t in its -try, boytry is like deviltry, current in East Anglia and the United States. F. H. Marlesford. "BATHETIC."-Coleridge is generally credited, but on insufficient grounds, with this unhappy invention. Edward Du Bois, in his 'Piece of Family Biography' (1799), vol. iii. p. 16, writes of "a phalanx of authors or authorlings, pathetic and bathetic," adding, in a foot-note: Why not bathetic, from bathos, as well as pathetic, from pathos ?" For one reason, because, as Dr. Murray remarks, pathetic is not from pathos. F. H. Marlesford. THE DISCOVERER OF PHOTOGRAPHY.-I note in your highly interesting historical sketch of N. & Q's' jubilee (9th S. iv. 365) you quote MR. JOHN MACRAY in N. & Q.' for 8 Dec., 1860, who there gives Lord Brougham as the discoverer of photography. In Miss Meteyard's book on china I remember reading that Tom Brierly, Wedgwood's partner at the latter end of the last century, was credited with the discovery, which happened during his attempts to give to earthenware a silver ustre. In her book is given a representation of a photograph taken of a tea service made in this silver lustre by Brierly. It would be interesting to know for certain who was the first discoverer. HAROLD MALET, Colonel. CHURCH OLDER THAN ST. MARTIN'S. — In the grounds of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital at Canterbury (which was formerly a cemetery) there is an interesting ancient chapel, evidently of Roman origin. It is called St. Pancras's Church. I inspected it, at the invitation of the secretary of that institution; it is a small building, but appears to be a genuine remnant of antiquity. G. A. BROWNE. Camberwell. ENIGMA BY W. M. PRAED. The short prayer attributed to Bishop Atterbury (see 9th S. iv. 68, 137) reminds me of the poetical charade by the above-named author in its brevity and appropriateness. The answer is said to be unknown, though many guesses have been hazarded. W. M. Praed died in 1839: Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt, Sooth! 'twas an awful day! My first to all the brave and proud My next, with her cold and quiet cloud, Before to-day's be done! And both together to all blue eyes That weep when a warrior nobly dies. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge. |