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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. x. JULY 25, 1914.

-fore, have been about 55 when he left Hammersmith for Binfield. The Backetts .(Magdalen Pope and her husband ) were living At Hall Grove, near Bagshot, within a ride of Binfield, in 1711, and were there in 1717, as the poet's correspondence shows. Un- fortunately, this correspondence was revised before publication by Pope himself, and is, therefore, un trustworthy ; but Mr. Court- hope gives a letter found among the Homer MSS.* in the British Museum, from "which we learn that the elder Pope devoted his attention to gardening. Sir William Trumbull of Easthampstead, near Binfield, wrote on 15 June, 1706 :

" I wish I could learn some skill in gardening ironi your father (to whom with your good Mother all our services are presented with thanks for the Artichokes), who has sent us a pattern that I am afraid we shall copy but in miniature : rfor so our Artichokes are in respect to his."

LUCIUS FITZGERALD.

SHAKESPEARE CRITICISMS : "THE EXTREME JTARTS OP TIME " (' LOVE'S LABOUR 'S LOST,' V. ii. 750, GLOBE). The Folio reads : The extreme parts of time, extremelie formes All causes to the purpose of his speed :

"*" Forming a cause extremely " is at best a very strained expression, if, indeed, ade- quate sense can be made of it. But the slightest possible change makes for clearness and sense, viz. :

The extreme part of time's extremity forms .(" extremity " being probably written " ex- tremetie "), i.e., not merely time's extremity, but the extreme part of that extremity. ''^Time's extremity " occurs in the ' Errors,' V. i. 307 ; and " time," " extremities," and " extreame," in collocation, in ' Borneo and Juliet,' II. Prol., 13 and 14. Shakespeare revised ' Borneo and Juliet ' in 1596, and very probably had this latter passage in mind when revising ' Love's Labour 's Lost ' viz., in 1597. HENRY CUNINGHAM.

" EVERY MAN HAS HIS PRICE." (See 10 S. vii. 367, 470, 492.) In ' N. & Q.' for 15 June, 1907, MR. ALFRED F. BOBBINS, discussing Walpole's connexion with the maxim " Every man has his price," quoted the passage from Sir William Wyndham's speecli in which it iirst occurs (1734), and the pertinent sen- tences from Walpole's rejoinder. Then he mentioned the absence of comment in the daily and weekly periodicals, and asked

Dope's translation is in the Britisli Museum, and is largely written on the backs of loiters.
 * Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 2. The MS. of

concerning contemporary allusions to the matter of which the earliest he had found bears the date 12 Oct., 1766. The topic is of some interest, and inasmuch as no addi- tional references have since appeared in ' N. & Q.,' the following brief notes are, perhaps, worth recording.

The speeches quoted by MR. BOBBINS from ' The Parliamentary History of England ' are both to be found in The Gentleman's Magazine, iv. 589-92, 641-4 (November- December, 1734), and are there said to have been delivered on 13 March.

Ten years later, in February, 1744, was pub- lished a verse satire against Walpole, entitled ' The Equity of Parnassus.' A vignette on the title-page is a caricature of the nobleman arraigned before the bar (literally) of the Muses. Lines 195-8 are these : Since, as thou say'st, each Mortal has his Price, And every Heart is all compos'd of Vice, Thy darling Deamon* shall thy Doctrine quote, And with thy own fell Maxim cut thy Throat.

The poem is an anonymous folio of sixteen pages, printed for C. Corbett.

R. H. GRIFFITH. The University of Texas.

MUFFINS. Only within the last few days have I found time to read ' The Confounding of Camelia,' which has been lying on my table for twelve months or more. It con- tains much that surprises me and that con- tradicts my knowledge of human customs. In its way nothing struck me more than to find that the elegant and detestable heroine " ate a muffin " (p. 185) at afternoon-tea, and that later on (p. 195) Mrs. Jodsley, the vicar's wife, should be shown with " a muffin in one hand and a cup of tea in the other." The muffins on which I have been nourished from youth until now are soft, bread -like disks about 5 in. in diameter. They are toasted externally, split by being torn asunder, and then prodigally buttered, and quartered by means of a cut perpendicu- lar and a cut horizontal. Not many girls would consume an entire muffin at 5 o'clock tea ; not many clergywomen would sit in a drawing-room grasping a whole one in the hand.

I suspect that muffins north of the Trent and muffins in some part of the south of England known to Anne Douglas Sedgwick are of different varieties. There is, perhaps, some confirmation of this in a quotation which the ' N.E.D.' gives from Jerome K. Jerome's ' Idle Thoughts ' (p. 120) : " I

Corruption.