Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/269

 ii s. VIIL OCT. 4, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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version, appeared in the 1833 'Last Essays of Elia,' but was omitted from subsequent editions, in deference, it is understood, to Mrs. Norris's wish that her circumstances should not be so proclaimed. Lamb, it will be remembered, emphasized the friendship which had existed between his father and Norris :

" He was my friend [he wrote], and my father's friend, for all the life that I can remember .... Those are the friendships which outlast a second generation."

But we must go back some years. In Lamb's essay on ' The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,' in The London Magazine, September. 1821, the following lines ap- peared in his estimate of his father's cha- racter :

' He pleaded the cause of a delinquent in the treasury of the Temple so effectually with S. the then treasurer that the man was allowed to keep his place. L. had the offer to succeed him. It had been a lucrative promotion. But L. chose to forego the advantage, because the man had a wife and family."

This was omitted when the article was next published in the ' Elia ' volume of 1823.

So far we have a Mrs. S (Spinkes) showing kindness to Lamb during his Blue- coat days ; and a Treasurer of the Temple referred to by Lamb as " S." In addition we find Lamb's reference to Randal Norris as having been his father's friend during all the years he could remember in an after- wards-suppressed essay ; and a statement that Lamb's father had successfully mediated in some misunderstanding between a friend and a certain S., his employer (or superior official) in the Treasury of the Temple in a paragraph also subsequently suppressed.

Now on 2 Oct., 1794, when Lamb was in his twentieth year, and had for some five years doffed the long coat in which he had listened to Mrs. Spinkes's (sic) music, Mr. Spinks was the Under-Treasurer of the Temple, and Randal Norris was his clerk ; for, at 10 o'clock of the October morning just named, the latter was present at the Session House on Clerkenwell Green, in response to a subpoena demanding his appearance there as a witness on the part of the Crown in the trial of John Home Tooke, Thomas Holcroft, John Thelwall, and divers others for high treason. The subpoena was endorsed :

" Handle [sic] Norris of Hare Court in the Temple Clerk to Mr. Spinks Under Treasurer of the Society of the Inner Temple."

In a list of Lamb's friends and acquaint- ances of the year 181 2, now before me, I find

both "Mr. Spinks, Temple," and "Mrs. Norris, Inner Temple " ; and the presump- tion is that this Mr. Spinks of 1812 is the same as the official superior of Randal Norris in 1794.

Of the WeatheraZs I have no definite knowledge. The mere fact, however, of Lamb's writing the name in full, whilst veiling to some extent that of the daughter, makes one suspicious of its correctness ; and I am inclined to question w r hether they were not the Weatherwears. Mrs. Weather- head of Walthamstow was acquainted with some of the Lambs' friends in 1812 ; and we do not forget Lamb's substitution of Blakeswoor for Blakesware for purposes of his essay. We remember, too, that Walt- hamstow is but two or three miles, as the crow flies, south-east from Tottenham ; and we think at the same time of Lamb's note on ' The Merry Devil of Edmonton ' :

" How delicious is Raymond Mounchensey's forgetting, in his fears, that Jerningham has a ' Saint in Essex ' ; and how sweetly his friends- remind him ! "

But there remains the mention of certain Weatheralls in the issue of * N. & Q.' for 10 April, 1909, in addition to what we find in Lamb's ' Distant Correspondents.'

J. ROGERS REES.

WEBSTER AND SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.

(See ante, pp. 221, 244.)

So far as I have been able to ascertain,. ' The Duchess of Malfy ' contains no borrow- ings from the ' Conceited Newes,' written by Sir Thomas Overbury " and other learned Gentlemen his friends," published with the second edition of ' A Wife,' dated 1614, and subsequent editions, under the title of ' Newes from Any whence, or Old Truth under a Supposall of Noveltie,' though Webster several times make use of the ' Newes ' as well as the ' Characters ' in first publication of the ' Newes ' being earlier than that of the ' New Characters/ it follows that they afford no assistance in fixing the date of the play. This cannot be earlier than 1616 because, as I have previously shown (US. vii. 106), it borrows from Jonson's play ' The Devil is an Ass,' first acted in that year.
 * The Devil's Law Case.' The date of the

I will deal with * The Devil's Law Case ' parallels with the ' Newes ' and the ' Cha- racters ' together.