Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/517

 10 8. XL MAY 29, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

425

" To my cousin Mary Joyce's at a gossiping, where much company and good cheer .... Ballard s wife, a pretty and a well-bred woman, I took occasion to kiss several times, and she to carve, drink, and show me great respect." Pepys* Diary,' 6 Aug., 1663.

TOM JONES.

In the Transactions of the New Shake- spere Society, 1877-9, p. 105, is a note by W. A. Harrison on this passage. Several examples of the non-literal use of the word are given. DIEGO.

JULIUS CESAR'S DEAFNESS (10 S. xi. 243). Shakespeare has no authority for repre- senting Caesar as deaf (' Julius Caesar,' I. ii.) This "is a touch of Shakespeare's own " (note of Mr. Aldis Wright in his edition of 'Julius Caesar'). Nothing is said on the point in the minute accounts of Caesar's personal appearance given in Merivale, ' Romans under the Empire,' chap, xxii., and in the final chapter of Long's ' Decline of the Roman Republic.' B. LEAKE.

CRUSOE RICHARD DAVIS.

AMONGST the lesser-known literary de- scendants of Robinson Crusoe is Crusoe Richard Davis, whose closest affinities, however, are with Peter Wilkins.

The only edition known to me is that published in the first year of the nineteenth century. It will serve the purpose of an analysis of the story if the title-page be transcribed. It reads :

The Voyages and Discoveries

of

Crusoe Richard Davis, The son of a clergyman in Cumberland ; Whose life exhibits more remarkable incidents than the existence of any human being in the known world has hitherto afforded ; among which arc

His Journey to London

after the death of his father, and short stay with his brother. His entering, together with Jack South, on the Greenland Whale-fishery under Captain Smith. On his arrival a-shore, while hunting the wild bear, he and Will Cutts, a mess- mate, lose their way in the woods. Their despair at the approach of winter, and want of food, build themselves a snow hut ; and miserably linger on their lives in that cold country till the ensuing spring, when they begin their peregrina- tion ; and after several long marches, Davis is separated from Will through the means of a

Floating Island ;

the beauty of its verdure, shrubs, and fruits, beyond comparison. He lands on another shore ; where, among various researches, he discovered and caught a

Wild Feathered Woman

with whom he lived, and taught the English Language. He then converts her, and the rest of its feathered inhabitants, to Christianity

. The mode which he took to instruct them, anJ the quickness of their conception. He establishes Laws and ceremonies ; cultivates their lands ;

i goes a-hunting ; kills large serpents, wild goats r and an horned Ass, the skin of which Mary his- feathered W'oman makes into a snug covering ; and when Davis takes a long journey, she, in his- absence, plucks off her feathers, to ingratiate herself in his affection. On his return, our Author is much surprised at her resolution and perseverance in having undergone so painful an.

healed, smooth and white. She relates to him the means by which she effected it ; and being^ beautiful in the extreme, he in consequence makes- her his wife. The ceremony he uses on that occasion. They soon after take a journey across the country ; when strolling on the seashore they find left on its sands, a large fish, with part of a human body ; and the next day behind a jutting rock, discover a vessel that had been wrecked ; from which they take a quantity of valuable articles ; and then, for the sake of its- Iron and timber, break the ship up ; with the materials of which they build themselves an extensive habitation ; and in the course of twenty-six years, through Davis's unremitting assiduity, the uncultivated people of that island are formed into an accomplished and civilized nation.
 * operation. His rapture at beholding her flesh

After which our Hero undergoes a great variety of other very singular and uncommon adventures ; and arrives at last safe with Mary in England ; where he now lives

A Prodigy of the Present Age. London : Printed and sold by S. Fisher, No. 10, St. John's Lane, Clerkenwell ; also sold by T. Hurst, No. 32, Paternoster Row. Price one shilling.

There is no date on the title-page, but on the engraved frontispiece we have October 31st, 1801. Fisher appears to have printed many chapbooks and other publications of a popular character. In the title Crusoe is to be taken as an adjective, although in the British Museum Catalogue it is treated as a noun. I have not come across any clue to the author, but perhaps, as in the case of ' Peter Wilkins,' time may reveal the secret. That romance appeared in 1750, but it was not until 1848 that the name of the author, Robert Paltock, appeared on the title-page,. The creator of Crusoe Richard Davis had evidently derived some of his inspiration from Paltock, and his Mary has evidently been suggested by Paltock's Youwarkee. The manner in which the feathered woman denudes herself of her natural covering, in order to make herself of the same race as her featherless biped of a lover, is told with spirit and naivete. WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

FLYING MACHINES OF THE FAB EAST. If some readers of ' N. & Q.' are collecting materials for the history of aviation, I hold it meet to supply them with the two follow-