Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/109

 10 s. x. A, i, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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throughout ' Englands Parnassus.' If Allot had not had a special thought for Roydon, he chances are that he would have given the lines from the ode to Watson, as he gave " Content's " poem to the Earl of Oxford, and as he has given Brysket's poem and the poem of the Countess of Pembroke to Edmund Spenser.

Tottel did not know how to assign the greater number of the poems in his ' Mis- cellany,' and therefore he put all doubtful ones under the heading of " Uncertain Authors." But it is known that Church- yard, Thomas Lord Vaux, John Heywood, Edward Somerset, and Sir Francis Bryan were amongst the contributors to the col- lection, although only two poems have been traced to Lord Vaux, one to John Heywood, and another, probably, to Edward Somerset. The question now arises, How does Allot assist us in determining the authorship of unassigned poems in Tottel ? What are his credentials ? We shall see.

There are eighteen passages in ' Englands Parnassus ' that have been traced to ' Tottel's Miscellany,' fifteen of these being found by Collier and three by myself, the latter proving to be of such interest as to demand some notice later on. Of these eighteen passages, Allot assigns ten to the Earl of Surrey, five to Sir Thomas Wyatt, one to George Chapman, one to " S. T. B.," and one to " T. W." In addition to these, Allot signs Surrey's name to a quotation of five lines which Collier found in Spencer's found that only one of Surrey's signatures is rightly placed, and two of Wyatt' s ; that four quotations from Wyatt, one from Grimald, and four from "Uncertain Authors " have been wrongly credited to Surrey ; and that we must go to Grimald for one of the supposed Wyatt entries, and to " Uncertain Authors " for the other two.
 * Faerie Queene.' On examination, it is

It is absolutely certain that Allot obtained his quotations from ' Tottel's Miscellany,' and from the second edition of the work, which was published 31 July, 1557 ; why, then, does he toss Tottel's signatures about in this manner ? Am I rash when I say that here, as elsewhere, he did not trouble to consult the editor of the book he was reading, but dashed names down that came most readily to his memory, caring only to remember that such names were signed to poems in other parts of the volume ? Did Allot have better means of knowing the authors than Tottel had ? It seems necessary to ask these questions, because t has been thought that Allot's authority

is of some value in connexion with the Tottel poems. Well, I will endeavour to show once more that Allot is a treacherous guide, and that all his doubtful signatures should be ignored unless corroborated by other and more certain authority.

CHARLES CRAWFORD.

(To be continued.)

" CARDINAL " OF ST. PAUL'S. In the course of his address at the memorial service for the late Rev. W. H. Milman, at St. Augus- tine's, Old Change, the Archdeacon of London made, says The Guardian of 1 July, "an interesting reference to the office of Senior Cardinal which Mr. Milman held as a member of the College of Minor Canons. The Archdeacon said : * The office of Cardinal, which he and one other Minor Canon held in St. Paul's Cathedral, was unique in this country. In an ancient docu- ment we read that ** the Church of St. Paul had before the time of the Conqueror two Cardinals, which office still continues. They are chosen by the Dean and Chapter out of the number of the twelve petty Canons, and are called Cardinales Chori (the hinges of the choir). Not any Cathedral Church in England hath Cardinals beside this, nor are any beyond seas found to be dignified with this title, saving the Churches of Rome, Ravenna, Aquileia, Milan, Pisa, and Benevent in Italy, and Compostella in Spain." The name has sometimes been thought to refer to the four corners of the altar, but as in St. Paul's they have reference to the choir, the probable meaning is the former. Their ducy was to catechise the choristers, to note those absent from the choir (a duty now performed by the Dean's verger), while to the Junior Cardinal fell the office of visiting the sick in the College of Minor Canons and administering to them the Sacraments. The name of Cardinal cannot be found in any writer earlier than Gregory the Great, who died in 604. With the growth of the supremacy of the Roman Church there came a tendency to con- fine the office to the chiefs of the Papal Court, and in other Sees, as at St. Paul's, it gradually dropped into desuetude.'" It may be well to store this in * N. & Q.'

ST. SWITHIN.

GREENE'S * MENAPHON.' In Fleay's 'Bio- graphical Chronology of the English Drama ' (London, 1891) it is stated in the article on Greene :

"My hypothesis as to the identification of

Melicert with Lyly, Menaphon with Marlow,

and Pleusidippus with Greene is too conjectural to claim further notice here ; but I think that Moron, lately deceased, is surely Tarleton " ;

while in the account of Kyd it is said": " Menaphon is Marlow, and Melicert most likely Greene himself." ^

Pleusidippus can hardly have been in - tended for Greene, though from his youth that character might perhaps stand for