Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/487

 ii s. 111. JUNK 24, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

481

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE ,V,, 1911.

CONTENTS. No. 78.

NOTES : King Lear and his Family, 481 The Museums of London Antiquities, 483 - Epitaphiana, 485 Pack-Horse Bridges The Cuckoo and its Call Henry Fielding and the Civil Power" Franklin " : Various Meanings, 486 Battle at Riby, Lincolnshire Tallis and Bird, 487.

QUERIES: 'Waverley' : "Clan of grey Fingon" "Haywra," Place- Name Queen Elizabeth's Portrait with Italian Proverb St. George and the Lamb Bris- bane Family in Ireland, 437 'Lizzie Lindsay '' Kenil- worth': " Manna of Sfc. Nicholas" Matthew Arnold on Modern Hurry Pallium at Canterbury Eligius Morelius and Gilbert Masius Burial Inscriptions Miers, Minia- turist, 488 Heath = Cave Gee Family Ferguson of laverurie : Fergnson-Tepper St. Dunstan and Tunbridge Wells Guy and Simon de Provence, 489 Lush and Lushington Surnames, 490.

REPLIES: 'A Voice from the Bush,' 490 -Sir John Arundel Sir T. Makdougall Brisbane Deadly Night- shade and Pigs -"Mad Archy Campbell," 491 Boothby Family Quarterings Richard B.addeley Book Inscrip- tions -Will Watch. 492 Municipal Records Printed, 493 Junius and the Horsewhipping of the Duke of Bedford, 495 Scots Music' Ralph Roister Doister,' 496 Chartres Cathedral' The Refug^,' 1803-Bonar & Co. Christian Names used by both Men and Women Ananias as a Christian Name Fifleld D'Assigny, 497 Rags left at Wells "Sefton," a Carriage Indexes Locorum to Printed Parish Registers "Porcelain" Father Quiroga and the Thirty Years' War, 498

NOTES ON BOOKS: -'The Hexaplar Psalter '-" Little Guides."

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

KING LEAR AND HIS FAMILY.

WHEN we rise from the reading of the tragedy of * King Lear ' we feel as if we had been long acquainted with its hero ; and yet we did not meet him until he was already old, and it has been estimated that the action of the play is completed in three weeks or a month. A sensation of intimacy per- vades us partly because Lear's name has been familiar from our childhood, and so much is said and written about him day by day ; but mainly because Shakespeare's art makes him so absorbingly impressive that we seem to know all about him, and forget that he had passed through more than a regulation lifetime before we met him, and that we were but witnesses of the climax of his career. For the most part, we are left to think out for ourselves what experi-

ences of long years^were consummated in the dramatist's enthralling plot. As far as I am concerned, I have pleased myself by trying to learn something of Lee.r's ancestors, that I may trace heredity ; and something of his matrimonial experiences, that I may guess what they did for him, and understand the idiosyncrasies of his uncomfortable daughters.

Tradition tells us that Lear was the great- grandson of King Leil, the grandson of Lud Hudibras, and the son of Bladud, King of Britain of that Bladud who, being in youth affected by leprosy, was banished from Court until healed by mineral waters, which, if I rightly recollect, he had noticed were efficacious in curing the cutaneous disorders of swine. Near to the precious springs Bladud founded a city, now known as Bath, and as late as 1699 his statue, with an ex* planatory inscription, was erected within the precincts of the bathing establishment where many sufferers are still relieved. The eighteenth century commemorated him in " Bladud' s Buildings." Now if, as Holin- shed reports, "Lear was admitted ruler over the Britaines, in the yeere of the World 3105, at what time Joas reigned as yet in Juda," we may admit that local memory has been very faithful to that of the beginner of the famous watering-place. But I do not vouch for the date, nor, I am sure, did Shakespeare either. He took an old plot which had been tricked out many a time in verse and prose, which had lately been worked up into a play that he did not dis- regard, and he brought his magic to bear on it as in the period of " once upon a time." One might as well try to find a date for wherein France and Burgundy were con- temporary with Britain, when Celts swore by Apollo, their chiefs might wear spectacles (Act I. sc. ii. 1. 35), and, according to the folios, the " English party " was already in the island (IV. vi. 256). Let us enjoy a state of things that I have heard a lecturer term " a jolly jumble," and bid chronology " lie low." That Shakespeare meant it to do so is evident if he be answer- able for the Fool's remark (III. ii. 95), "This prophecy shall Merlin make, for I live before his time." He was as reckless in this grand tragedy as if he had been writing a burlesque.
 * Red Ridinghood ' as for this great drama,

Geoffrey of Monmouth, whom I cite at second-hand, asserts that Bladud, attempt- ing to fly, fell on the Temple of Apollo and was dashed to pieces. Hence, remarks Dr. Brewer in ' The Readers' Handbook,' when