Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/50

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. x. JULY is, 1914.

This work, published within a short time after the conclusion of the notorious Gordon riots, is certainly Holcroft's. Contem- porary references are to be found in The Town and Country Magazine for July, 1780 (12: 351); Monthly Review for June, 1780 (62: 502) ; European Magazine for Januarj% 1782 (1: 49) ; The Westminster Magazine for August, 1780 (8: 438), as well as in the ' Memoirs ' (p. 99). Lecky (3: 522) refers to it as the best and most complete account brought out at the time. The Town and Country Magazine called it " one of the best productions of this kind that has ever ap- peared in the form of a pamphlet " ; and added, " Our last [June, 1780]. .. .contains the substance of this narrative," but I do not think that this means that the magazine article referred to was done by Holcroft.

In the account of the riots which appears in the ' Annual Register ' for 1780 pp. 1-6 of this pamphlet are reprinted on pp. 254-6. In both cases is given the verbatim record of the Act itself, over which the agitation arose ; and the short explanatory passages in the ' Annual Register ' correspond exactly to the -explanations which accompany the reprint of the Act in this pamphlet.

In The Westminster Magazine for July, 1780, pp. 297 ff., is an account of the riots. The publishers of this magazine were the same as the publishers of the " William "Vincent " pamphlet, Fielding & Walker. Pages 15 ff. and 298 ff., of the pamphlet and the magazine respectively, bear a remarkable similarity. In the magazine article the Parliamentary proceedings are given at greater length ; certain other parts of the narrative are condensed ; and, in an amazing number of cases, entire paragraphs, even pages, are transferred without alteration. And from this I shall assume that Holcroft or some other person rewrote or rearranged his pamphlet for the magazine: I cannot yet determine which. The magazine article is considerably better than the pamphlet: more orderly, and less burdened with details and extraneous matter.

A careful examination of the " second edition, corrected," the only one which I have seen, suggests a few hypotheses which, since I have not yet been able to lay my hands on a first edition, I shall offer tentatively : for objection, correction, or addition. It seems fairly obvious from this copy (Yale University Library) of the "second edition, corrected," that the ten pages (five leaves) containing the Appendix were added to the book in the second edition. The Appendix

refers to the text, and the text to the Appen- dix, by lettered notes, (A), (B), (C), &c. These references in the text are usually inserted at the end of a paragraph, a con- venient place after the tj^pe had all been set. On the several occasions where they are inserted in the middle of a line, the type of the line is so crowded relatively to the set of the type in the lines preceding and follow- ing that we cannot but assume that the parentheses and the letters (A), (B), (C), &c., were put in later : I should assume, between editions. A statement near the end of the Appendix that the author has not changed the text in accordance with a certain correc- tive letter which he prints (the original mis- take is left as in the first edition) leads us to believe that the second edition was printed from the same stand of type.

Examination of the signatures would break the volume quite unequally into a single leaf containing the title, four signa- tures of sixteen pages each, an eight -page signature at the end, and a single final leaf. (This is in the only volume which I have examined, in the Yale University Library.) The single leaf at the end contains the Advertisement, and is printed on one side of the paper only. I should suggest then, from my examination of the " second edition, corrected," only, that the first edition was paged : 2 (including title-page and a blank page)+6 (including the Abstract of an Act passed, &c.) + 7-62 (including the body of the ' Plain and Succinct Narrative,' &c.) + 2 (including Advertise- ment and a blank page). The signature division was, in my opinion, the same as in the " second edition, corrected," which I have examined. But it is obvious that the signa- tures came out evenly, four of sixteen pages each, with the title-page pasted on at the beginning.

Since the above was written I have had time to make an examination of a copy of the first edition, and find nothing contradictory to the above. In the first edition (British Museum copy) the Appendix does not appear at all, " Finis " coming on p. 62. But we can deduce very little from the absence of the " Advertisement," since in this copy the last three leaves have been very badly damaged, and repairing alone has prevented their loss altogether. In this copy pp. 16 have been lost (containing the Abstract, &c.), so that ' A Plain and Succinct Narrative,' &c. (p. 7), would follow directly after the title-page, had not some one inserted six pages from The Sunday Magazine of 11 Feb., 1781.