Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/516

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NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vm. NOV. .so, 1907.

It was repeated at Bartholomew Fair a year later, but not under the same man- agerial auspices, Gates having now joined Miller and Mills to produce a new opera, ' The Banish'd General ; or, the Distressed Lovers,' while his old partner, Fielding, had allied himself with Hippisley and Hall to present ' The Emperor of China, Grand Volgi ; or, the Constant Couple and Virtue Rewarded,'

Written by great Author of the Generous Free- Mason, A greater Author, or Actors, you ne\ T er did gaze on.

But it was announced in The Grub-street Journal of 26 Aug., 1731, that

At Yeates's great Booth, which Cow - lane now

faces,

Will be perform'd with wonderful Grimaces, And seen, we hope, e'er [sic\ long by one and all, An Opera Tragi-Comi-Farcical. The Generous Free Mason it is nam'd, Or, Constant Lady, for her beauty fam'd : Together with the Humours of Squire Noodle, And those more comic of his servant Doodle. Note, in the Songs true Men and Women join, And not, as usual here, Cows, Sheep, and Swine.

The emphasis of promise indicated in the last two lines was borne out by an advertisement in The, Daily Post of two days later, which incidentally declared that

"" this Artificial Opera will be presented after a different Manner to any ever yet shewn, and the Songs throughout the Whole are not what People can neither hear nor be delighted with (they are not in the Squeaking Tone), and tho' Performances of this kind have been so often ridicul'd, [Mr. Yeates] makes no Doubt of giving (as he has frequently done) a general Satisfaction to his Audience."

ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

" ATTTO CHROME." An article in The Liver- pool Post and Mercury, of 2 October, headed ' Marvels of Photography,' describes how MM. Auguste and Louis Lumiere discovered the secret of taking photographs in colours. Plates coated with starch grains, previously dyed in various colours, called " autochrome plates," are used, along with a special yellow screen.

At present results are confined to trans- parencies, but a method is now in course of preparation by means of which ordinary paper prints may be made in colours.

WM. JAGGARD.

SIBYL : BURKE'S IMAGE. Boswell's '' Johnson ' (ed. Birkbeck Hill, vol. iv. p. 59) has the well-known epigram concerning Croft's ' Life of Dr. Young ' by "a very eminent literary character " (Burke) : "It has all the contortions of the Sybil, without the inspiration."

This is one of the very few notable things

which do not appear in Dr. Hill's wonderful Index under a separate heading. Nor is it in the Index to the convenient one-volume edition of Boswell edited by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald (Bliss, Sands, 1897).

Literary coincidences and correspond- ences are overdone nowadays, but it may be worth while to point out that Burke may have consciously or unconsciously recalled this same image in The Spectator, No. 160 :

" In Short, a modern[Pindarick writer, compared with Pindar, is like a sister among the Camisars, compared with Virgil's sybil : there is distortion, grimace, and outward figure, but nothing of that divine impulse which raises the mind above itself, and makes the sounds more than human."

The eighteenth-century spelling " Sybil," now commonly repeated when the word is a Christian name, perhaps on account of Disraeli's ' Sybil,' is, as has been pointed out in these columns, less correct than " Sibyl." HIPPOCLIDES.

KINGSLAND ALMSHOTJSES : COMING CHANGES. Under this heading I noted at 10 S. vi. 262 and 303, changes likely to come about at no distant date. Up to the present time, so far as casual observers can tell, nothing has been done with reference to the Almshouses of the Worshipful Com- pany of Ironmongers. In the case of those belonging to the Company of Framework Knitters there is something to record. Rather more than half the houses are down, Nos. 1 to 6 (including also the little archway which led to the rear garden) having been demolished during September. The ground of that portion of the site has been taken by Messrs. Carwardine & Co., Ltd., the well-known millers and flour factors of City Road, for the erection of mills and warehouses. It is said that there will be frontages in Kingsland Road and Pearson and Maria Streets. It is expected that the last-named thoroughfare will be remodelled, as a great many of the house- holders are under notice to yield up posses- sion at an early date. The Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters have taken some steps towards looking after the poor of their craft, for on Monday, 30 September, Sir W. P. Treloar, the then Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Sheriffs, proceeded to Leicester to lay the foundation stone of the new alms- houses, which are situated at Oadby, just outside the boundaries of the borough. There will be twenty houses in all, that is, eight more than there were in Kingsland Road ; and it is hoped that large firms will be induced to build and