Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/229

 ii. SEPT. 3, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

185

in 1625, between the death of James I., 27 March, and his successor's coronation on 1 May, the Captain is dead. At I. ii. occurs the following :

O ! you are a Butter-woman ; ask Nathaniel, The clerk there.

Nath. Sir, I tell her she must stay

Till emissary Exchange, or Paul's send in, And then I ''11 fit her.

Reg. Uo, good woman, have patience:

It is not now as when the Captain lived.

The last line is a parody on a stock quota- tion from the old play * Jeronymo. 3 The title "emissary Buz" is still carried on in the office of the Staple in the same scene. In Fletcher's 'Fair Maid of the Inn,' Act IV., the Captain is referred to again as a ghost :

Coxcomb. I would set up a press here in Italy, To write all the corantos for Christendom

For. I conceive you : You would have me

Furnish you with a spirit to inform you

It shall be the ghost of some lying stationer, a

spirit

Shall look as if butter would not melt in 'a mouth ; A new Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus !

Coxc. Oh, there was a captain was rare at it.

For. Ne'er think of him. Tho' that captain writ

a full hand-gallop, and Wasted, indeed, more harmless paper than Ever did laxative physic, &c.

And see also Shirley's ' Love Tricks ' (1625 ?), and elsewhere in the ' Staple of News ' and little doubt that this act in the latter play is largely the work of Ben Jonson. Ward ('Eng. Dram. Literature') says it is "a posthumous comedy by Fletcher, perhaps finished by some other hand," and considers the elaboration of allusions in the manner of Jonson. See, for Jonson again, in ' Hollo, Duke of Normandy,' and also in * Love's Pilgrimage,' by Fletcher.
 * Fair Maid of the Inn.' I think there can be

But to return to the Captain. In a letter of John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, dated 4 Sept.. 1624 ('Court and Times of James I.,' ii. 473-4), I believe we learn who this Captain was. He says :

" Sir James Crofts, our oldest pensioner at Court, and Captain Gaitford, our newsmonger and maker of gazette*, are gone the same way."

This Gaisford, or Gainsford, was a well- known writer, whose works will be found mentioned in Lowndes, Hazlitt's 'Index,' &c. His usual publisher was N. Butter, and his last publication was ' An Answer to G. Wither's Motto ' (1625), over which work of Wither's Ben had got into trouble. From the date of Gainsfprd's death and from Chamberlain's description of him I have little doubt he is our missing Captain, and the probability is heightened by the likeli- hood of "Grave Master Ambler" being an ana-

grammatic hit at Master Chamberlain, who- was an indefatigable " newsmaster of Paul's," and the main part of whose name supplied the sobriquet. There is evidence in a pre- vious letter of Chamberlain's (ii. 356) that that letter- writer did not take Ben's part in the scrape he got into for personating Wither as " Chronomastix " in his 'Time Vindicated.'' Moreover, Ben dearly loved an anagram.

H. C. HART.

" DOLLY VARDEN" UP TO DATE. I notice in the Daily Chronicle of 6 August a police- case which would appear to assume that the young lady's name is now (if applied to one), regarded as an insult :

" In justification of an assault, a woman pleaded at Southward that the prosecutrix called her ' Dolljr Varden.' * We know Dolly Varden was one of Dickens's most charming creations,' said the- defending solicitor, ' and a paragon of her sex ; but to call a woman " Dolly Varden " in this neighbour- hood is to grossly insult her.' Accepting this view, after further inquiry, the court dismissed the case.' y HERBERT B. CLAYTON.

39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

CAPT. FALCONER'S ' VOYAGES.' So far back as 28 January, 1860, MR. J. H. VAN LENNEP, dating from Zeyst, near Utrecht, made inquiry in ' N. <fc Q.' (2 nd S. ix. 66) regarding his query he states the difficulty of even thea procuring a copy of this now extremely scarce book, and goes on to say that the Literary Gazette for 1838 mentions that in that year a fifth 12mo edition was reprinted from the one dated 1734. I have before me a, copy of the sixth edition, published in 1769 ; the'contents of the title-page I shall quote presently. But before doing so let me remark that the early popularity of the book has veritably thumbed it out of existence, and this is evident from the fact that in 1838- the edition reprinted in that year was de- signated the fifth. The existence of the sixth edition, issued in 1769, could not then- have been known. The wording of the title- page of the latter reads :
 * The Voyages of Capt. Richard Falconer.' In

"The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures, And Imminent Escapes of Capt. Richard Falconer. Containing The Laws, Customs, and Manners off the Indian* in America; his Shipwrecks: his- marrying an Indian Wife ; his remarkable Escape- from the Island of Dominico, &c. Intermixed with The Voyages and Adventures of Thomas Randal, of Cork, Pilot ; with his Shipwreck in the Baltick, being the only Man that escaped ; his being taken by the Indian* of Virginia, &c. and an Account of his Death. [Four lines quoted from Waller.] The Sixth Edition, Corrected. To which is added, A Great Deliverance at Sea, by W. Johnson, D.D. Chaplain to his Majesty. London : Printed for G. Keith in Gracerhurch-Mreet, and F. Blyth, No. 87. Cornhill. 170!). '