Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/9

n s. VIIL JULY 5, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES. and 'Room for the Cobler,' I cannot trace any of the tracts mentioned. L'Estrange suggests that 'Felo de se' is by Wallis, and it seems possible that 'Omnia Concessa a Belo' and 'The Poor Whores' Petition' were also by him. It will be interesting if some reader of 'N. & Q.' can give information as to these, and also as to the dates of the earliest issues, if any are known, of the publications named in the record of 1 Oct., 1664.

Zachary Grey in his 'Review of Mr. Daniel Neal's History of the Puritans,' 1744. has an entertaining passage relating to Wallis. He says:

"About this time [1667] Mr. Neal observes (p. 412) that Ralph Wallis, a Cobler of Gloucester, publish'd an Account of a great number of Scandalous Conformist Ministers, and named their Scandals: but forbears to inform us, how Ralph Wallis came off upon his Tryal. The Author was to be tried for his Life, and when he came before the Judge, he ask'd him Whether his Fault was greater than Oliver Cromwell's? No, said the Judge, nor so great. Pray, my Lord, said he, let not my Punishment be greater; if I must be hang'd, let me be dead and buried, and lie so long in the grave first, then take me up and hang me after: which made the Judge invite him to Dinner, and give him a Guinea instead of an Halter; a thing much the better of the two."

A careful reading of the 'Life and Death ofthe Cobler of Glocester' (1670) reveals more of Wallis's strange career than is suggested in the 'D.N.B.,' though the only pamphlet of his which is mentioned is 'Room for the Cobler of Gloucester.' There a a curious reference to Sir Thomas Overbury. Wallis had a particular friend, Capt. L., who praised his pamphlets, saying they were the works of the "witty Cobler," whereupon he was told that the epithet of witty was above the capacity of a cobler to deserve. He replied,

"Oh Sir, you must understand ho is a Glocestershire-man, and Glocestershire is famous for having two great Wits born in it, instancing in Sir Thomas Overbury, and the Cobler of Glocester."

According to accepted authority, Overbury was born in Warwickshire, and the reputation of Gloucestershire for wit must, indeed, have been at a low ebb if it rested in the hands of Ralph Wallis.

The British Museum Catalogue attributes to Wallis authorship of

"The Cobler of Gloucester reviv'd In a Letter to the Observator's Counrey-Man. London, Printed and sold by H. Hills, in Black-Fryers, near the Water-side,"

but this is, I think, incorrect. The pamphlet is dated 30 June, 1704, and signed "Thy Loving Friend R. Wallis, Cobler"; but, as Wallis died in 1669, this would not seem to be his. Though written in somewhat the same style as tracts known to be by him, the subject-matter is mainly political. The date agrees with references to Queen Anne and Admiral Sir George Rooke. There are allusions to Gloucester and to the Bishop of Gloucester, but these are evidently made to be in keeping with the nom de plume adopted by the writer.

in 'N. & Q.,' 15 March, 1862, suggests a possible relation between the account of Yorkshire schools in 'Nicholas Nickleby' and a narrative of closely corresponding experience to be found in 'Literary Recollections,' by the Rev. Richard Warner (1830), nine years earlier. This hypothesis is disposed of in a brief comment by the editor, based on Dickens's statement in the Preface to the first cheap edition of his novel that his earliest knowledge of such dens of misery had come to him, in some forgotten way, during his boyhood days at Rochester: all the details were obtained through direct observation during an unofficial tour of inspection.

Still, it is interesting to discover that two little-known works of fiction in the eighteenth century made use, in their initial chapters, of an almost identical situation, and show besides unexpected coincidence in definite points of treatment. 'The Placid Man; or, Memoirs of Sir Charles Beville' (1770), contains the following significant passage (i. 44):

"I was accordingly sent to a schoolthe master of which took a journey on foot, or in the waggon, to London, every Whitsuntide holidays, on purpose to advertise, that 'At Stonelands, in Yorkshire, youth are boarded, educated and cloathed, at twelve pounds a year, by Zachary Birch, and proper assistants [his wife and a parish apprentice]. N.B. Mr. Birch is in town, and will take the care of any young gentleman down'; by which means, he sometimes contrived to get his own passage gratisIunderwent the usual discipline of the school, namely, cold, hunger, and beating," &c.

If the procedure of Squeers is thus anticipated here in one noteworthy particular, there is further resemblance discernible in 'The History of the Curate of Craman; Taken from Real Life; By an Unbeneficed Clergyman of the Church of England' (1777), in the second chapter of which is