Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/571

 10 s. XIL DEC. 11, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

471

or what is Mr. Temperley's authority for stating that " Canning replied by quoting from the popular song n ; but I expect that some of your correspondents may be able to clear up the mystery.

I may add that the right way of spelling the name of the Bishop of Exeter is " Phill- potts," and it is remarkable that Walpole (' History,* vol. ii. p. 439) spells it " Phil- potts, n and so do Lord Colchester (see ' Diary and Correspondence, 1 vol. iii. pp. 466-9) and Campbell (' Life of Lynd- hurst,' p. 48).

Now I want to make a further correction. The song is in ' The Poor Soldier/ a comic opera by John O'Keefe, and the music is by William Shield. The opera was per- formed about 1785, and the song with the music was, I believe, sold separately and sung in private houses. Grove in his ' Dictionary of Music,' vol. iii. p. 486, says that Shield was perhaps the most original English composer since Purcell.

The following is an extract from the 1785 edition of the opera :

Enter Dermott with a jug of ale.

Der. I will prime him well before I speak to him a bout Kathleen : ' tis a hard heart that a drop of ale won't soften.

F. L. This brown jug and I are old acquaintance, Dermott.

Der. Indeed, Sir, you are.

AIR V. Dermott. Dear Sir, this brown jug that now foams with

mild ale, Out of which I now drink to sweet Kate of the

Vale,

Was once Toby Filpot, a thirsty old soul, As e 'er crack'd a bottle, or fathom'd a bowl ; In boozing about, 'twas his praise to excel, And amongst jolly topers he bore off the bell.

There is a note to <this stating that this song was not written by O'Keefe.

The version in Brewer's ' Reader's Hand- book,* title ' Toby,* is not quite correct. What a comedy of errors !

HARRY B. POLAND.

Inner Temple.

There is a song called ' The Brown Jug, 1 which was well-known in years gone by. It begins thus in ' The Banquet of Thalia,* York, 1792 :

Dear Tom, this brown jug, which now foams with

mild ale, Out of which I now drink to sweet Kate of the

Vale,

'Twas once Toby Filpot, a thirsty old soul As e 'er crack'd a bottle or fathom'd a bowl.

In ' The Universal Songster,' i. 409, the second line is

(In which I will drink to sweet Nan of the Vale), and " Philpot " appears for " Filpot. 11

In * How's Illustrated Book of Song,' edited by George Hogarth, Part I., 1845, it appears as " Dear Tom, 14 &c., with the vocal and piano scores. How's book calls the air " Old English Air. 11 According to ' The Universal Songster '- and How's book, the author of the song was the Rev. Francis Hawkes. They both speak of it as an imitation from the Latin of Hieronymus Amaltheus.

Perhaps the following epigram of Amal- theus is that which is imitated :

De Horologio Pulvureo. Perspicuus vitro pulvis qui dividit horas,

Dum vagus angustum saepe recurrit iter, Olim erat Alcippus ; qui Gallse ut vidit ocellos

Arsit, & est subito factus ab igne cinis. Irrequiete cinis, miseros testabere amantes,

More tuo, nulla posse quiete frui.

4 Selecta Poemata Italorum qui Latine scripserunt Accurante A. Pope,' Londini, 1740, vol. ii. p. 252.

" Pulvureo " should, I suppose, be " Pul- vereo." ROBERT PIERPOINT.

If Mr. Canning in 1827 applied this nick- name to Dr. Phillpotts, then Rector of Stan- hope and afterwards Bishop of Exeter, he simply made use of an appellative which had been bestowed upon that pugnacious Church- man long before possibly in his under- graduate days. For his father was an innkeeper at Gloucester, while a " Toby Filpot " was a well-known beer-jug. What therefore more natural than that this young man, being already a " Phillpott, 1 ' should receive the complementary name of " Toby/' ?

So long as he remained in the North of England the name stuck to him, but when he vacated the fat living of Stanhope for the See of Exeter, it apparently died out. He, however, received a parting shot from a poetical critic, who issued a satirical brochure with the title-page :

"Bishop Toby's Pilgrimage, or, The Method of Procuring a Mitre. In Six Stages. Narrated by Himself, by way of Advice to his Son. Newcastle : Printed for the Author, by W., E.,andH. Mitchell, and may be had of the Booksellers. 1832." 49 pp. of verse and 4 pp. of notes.

The Rev. Thos. Hayton, Vicar of Long Crendon, Bucks, told me, fifty years or more ago, that when Dr. Phillpotts published his ' Letter to the Rt. Hon. George Canning ' (London, John Murray, Albemarle St., 1827), a pamphlet of 168 pp. in reply to Mr. Canning's speech on the Catholic claims, it was said at Oxford : " Toby is frothing over this time ! "" RICHARD WELFORD. Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

[DICKENSIAN, MR. EDWARD PEACOCK, and S. T. also thanked for replies. ]