Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/608

 502

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. DEC. as, 1907.

unknown in England), and one by Brown- ing's friend Alfred Domett.

Those who are interested in Longfellow's once popular poem ' Hiawatha ' may be glad to learn that an admirable bibliography of the poem, compiled by Mr. Henry E. Legler, will be found in The Literary Collector (Greenwich, Connecticut) for Nov.-Dec., 1904. From this paper we learn that " not less than seven parodies, nearly, if not quite, as voluminous as the original poem, have been printed in separate book form. The parodies in fugitive form number considerably in excess of one thousand. It has been translated into German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Latin."

Mr. Legler, in addition to a history of the poem, compiled from Longfellow's letters and diaries, gives an account of the principal translations and parodies. Of the former there have been five in German alone ; but both as an object of translation and of parody it seems now to have fallen out of date. Longfellow's fame will rest on his genius as the Poet of the Home.

W. F. PRIDEATJX.

FETTER LANE CHAPELS.

See ' Elim Chapel, Fetter Lane ' (ante, p. 305), and ' Moravian Chapel, Fetter Lane ' (ante, p. 26, 111, 194, 235).

BEFORE the references to these venerable buildings cease to appear in your pages, it may be worth while to make the state- ment at the first reference more precise by saying that the last religious body to occupy " Old Elim " were the Primitive Methodists. But I should also be extremely obliged to any worker in the field of Old London for light upon the sentence which I italicize in the following extract from W. Wilson's ' History of Dissenting Churches &c., in London,' 1810, vol. iii. p. 471 :

" On the site of the present meeting-house [Elim Court J formerly stood a substantial brick building, which is said to have been originally in the occupation of the celebrated Mr. John Wesley."

No biographer of Wesley, and no student of early Methodism in London, so far as I am aware, knows anything of such an occu- pation. Wilson is not too exact when deal- ing with Wesley ; but for this particular statement he must have had some written authority or some informant, one would think ; and in his statement there may be some vague and inexact trace of fact. The interest of the inquiry, moreover, is much larger than the simple elucidation

of this statement of Wilson's. Like several of your correspondents at the other refer- ences above noted, he associates Wesley with the Moiavian Chapel behind 32, Fetter Lane, from the beginning of May, 1738. Ee says (vol. iii. pp. 420 sq.) :

" Shortly after the removal of Mr. Rawlin his old meeting-house was taken by Mr. John Wesley, who formed his first society in that place, May 1, 1738."

[ need not troxible your readers with the-

question whether the Society which was

ommenced on that date should in strictness

e called Wesley's. But of it Wesley writes-

in his ' Journal ' :

"Mon. May 1 [1738]. This evening pur little- Society began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane." [t was not then formed in the (now) Moravian;

hapel, nor did it at first meet in the Lane. Dn this last point Wesley must, I think r be taken as a better authority than Neisserj a copy of one of whose letters I have seen r obtained by Bp. B. La Trobe from Herrnhut,. in which the writer tells Zinzendorf : " On this day for the first time we met in Holbourn." No doubt Fetter Lane is intended by this generalized indication of locality. But the facts are well known. I have also seen a MS. account of th& beginnings of the awakening in England' by William Holland, an early and not- able member of the Fetter Lane* Society. He says :

' Our Society got the name of Fetter Lane Society from the street in which our meetings were- held, for the bookseller's house was too small."

The bookseller was the welt-known James- Hutton, who had for some time held a " society " in his house in Little Wild Street. Some members of this earlier society formed part of the nucleus of that whose movements and meeting-places I want assistance in tracing ; and Benham, ' Memoirs of James Hutton,' p. 29, is clear that this newer one also met at Button's house for a short time, until its increasing numbers obliged them to seek the larger accommodation which they found in Feti er Lane, somewhere. Wesley's word " afterwards " stands, a& against Neisser.

But where in Fetter Lane did they meet when they thus migrated, perhaps in the middle or at tho end of May, 1 738 ? Holland is not definite on this point. It has usually, and perhaps not unnaturally, been assumed (as, e.</., by Benham, p. 29) that they at once took possession of Mr. Rawlin's now empty chapel, that behind 32, Fetter Lane. But the attention of several members of