Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/207

 ii s. in. MAK. is, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

201

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH IS, 1911.

CONTENTS. No. 64.

NOTES : Totell, Sir Antony St. Leger, and John Harington, 201 The Arrest of Louis XVI., 203 Gray's ' Elegy,' 204 Reform of the Calendar, 205 Flood Superstitions"! f eg s _ White Meats : Wigs : Af ternooning In Black and White Cadie=Caddie, 206.

QUERIES : Terrace " Secular trees " " Sedulous ape " "Seekers" Macaulay's Allusions Bedfordshire Epitaphs : Rev. Robert Smyth Geffery le Bakester de Loffithe Book Inscriptions' Waverley ' : Departed Hero and the Sun's Lingering Light, 207 Plaistow and its Products Sonnets by Rafael Miles Gale Murder on Gad's Hill in 1661 Early English Bookbindings Battle of Barnet Dogs on Brasses and Stone Effigies, 208 Double Dedications Emperor and Painter Thomas Jenner The Lords Smeaton and Smeaton Family Sir John Toinlinson Hibbert Sandy Mackaye in ' Alton Locke ' Hertford Street Historic Fires in Ancient Rome H.M.S. Pactolus Meg Dods and 'The Cook and Housewife's Manual,' 209.

REPLIES : London Gunsmiths, 210 " Almighty Dollar" Smallpox and the Stars, 211 Gratious Street=Grace- church Street Bar " Sinister " Crevequer of Bereford Lamb, Burton, and Spiera, 212 " Cackling clouts": " Carpillions " : " Gainshot" : " Suffice " Sweetapple Surname "Owns" : " Blithering,* 213' A Voice from the Bush 'Canons, Middlesex, 214-Mansel Family- Thomas James Thackeray Baptismal Scarf, 215 Pawper or Pauper Bird, 216 William Mears Arnol- fini Family' Les Arrivants' Litany : Spitting and Stamping the Feet, 217 Thomas Morris-JonesMother's Maiden Name as Children's Surname Pitt's Letter on Superstition, 218.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

TOTTEL' S 'MISCELLANY,'

SIR ANTONY ST. LEGER, AND SIR

JOHN HARINGTON THE ELDER.

THE reason why so little progress has been made in discovering the authors and history of many of the unclaimed poems in Tottel is not the difficulty of research or want of material, but lack of interest in the matter. It seems almost shameful that a piece by Chaucer should have lain undiscovered in this collection of songs and sonnets for more than 350 years, despite the fact that the book is in almost everybody's hands and that Chaucer's work is so well known. And as regards material, there is no lack of it, for in those old days most people of culture, especially those about Court, used verse as a common medium to circulate their thoughts and opinions of things amongst each other, with the result that to-day we possess an enormous mass of the poetry they wrote, much in print, but still more in manuscript.

It ought not, therefore, to be impossible to name the authors of poems in Tottel and in similar miscellanies, especially as names are sometimes appended to the fugitive pieces that passed privately from hand to hand, and that the originals of other posms are to be found at times in the works of well-known writers.

I will try to show now that the search for such authors is sometimes only a surface matter, as in the case of Chaucer's poem, and that Tottel is no more to be trusted than other miscellanies of the same charac- ter. Tottel' s ascriptions to Surrey are accepted for gospel, and he would be a hardy man who would dispute them without over- whelming evidence of a contrary character. The strange thing about it all is that the evidence against Tottel has been available for more than a hundred years, and has been passed by because a meddling editor, who did not know the value of evidence, chose deliberately to put it in the background as much as possible, and to substitute for it matter which he had picked up in odd corners. But I am anticipating, and will return to this side of my subject a little later.

There is no doubt whatever as to the pert played by Sir Antony St. Leger in Tottel. He it was who wrote the epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, Tottel, p. 228 : Lo dead he lives, that whilome lived here, &c. The only strange thing about the matter is that Dr. Nott and others should print the epitaph as the composition of Sir Antony St. Leger, and fail to notice that it appears amongst the " Uncertain Authors " in Tottel. There are two versions of this epitaph, the one printed in the ' Works of Wyatt,' Aldine Poets, p. 236, reading as under:

Sir Antonie Sentleger of Sir T. Wyatt. Thus lieth the dead, that whilome lived here Among the dead that quick go to the ground ; Though he be dead, yet doth he quick appear By immortal fame that death cannot confound His life for aye, his fame in trump shall sound. Though he be dead, yet is he thus alive : No death that life from Wyatt can deprive. Dr. Nott's version corresponds word for word with the epitaph printed in Tottel, his heading only being different :

An Epitaph

on Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, the Wise, the

Learned,

and the Good,

By Sir Anthony St. Lieger.

Sir Antony St. Leger, then, takes his place

by the side of Chaucer as one of the authors