Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/67

 ii s. m. JAN. 28, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

61

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1911.

CONTENTS.-No. 57.

NOTES : Lamb, Burton, and Francis Spiera, 61 Gray's ' Elegy ' : Translations and Parodies, 62 Signs of Old London, 64 "First Aerial Ship," 65 Sweetapple sur- name" Chartuary " : " Tale " " Hie locus odit, amat," &c., 66 "Gourd" or " Goord," Building Term Con- spirators of 1582, 67.

QUERIES : "Tertium Quid " ' Casabianca ' John of Cosington, 67 Dickens and " Shallabalah " ' Pickwick ' Queries Rev. J. Bonar William of Ware Dryden as a Place-Name Early Ships named Victory, 68 Beatrix Gordon Bird Quotations Swallow in Greek Carol Deafness Jacobus Clerk Col. Oakes and Queen Caro- line's Funeral, 69 Sheffield Plate Dish Newenham Abbey Chertsey Cartularies Jeremy Smith Marquis of Ormonde's Guard Belfast Registers Irish Book of Remembrance Alexander Holmes, 70.
 * Farewell to the Swallows 'Bagdad Adders' Fat and

RE PLIES -.-Milton Bibles, 70-Sophie Dawes Miss Wykeham Lady Conyngham ' Young Folks,' 71 T. Hare M. G. Drake J. Forsyth-Coryatand Westminster School "Elze"= Already Royal Christmases at Glou- cester SS. Prothus and Hyacinthus, 72-Guichard d'Angle Isaac Jamineau, 73 The Stair Divorce" Die in beauty " " All comes out even," &c Holwell Family Alexander Glenny Christmas Bough Thackeray and the Stage Exhibition of 1851, 74 Early Graduation ' Kossuth Coppered 'Rev. J. Peacock Andrew Arter's Memorial Quaker Oats W. Mears, Bellfounder, 75 Ship lost in the Fifties Alfleri in England 'Tit for Tat' Authors Wanted Riddle of Claret, 76 Water- Shoes Arms of Somerset Pitt on Disfranchisement, 77 Rats and Plague Hackney and Tom Hood Goats and Cows" Puckled "- Capt. Witham at Gibraltar, 78.

NOTES ON BOOKS:-' A Suffolk Hundred in 1283' Traherne's Poems More's 'Utopia.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

LAMB, BURTON, AND FRANCIS SPIERA.

IN the third appendix to his * Life of Charles Lamb,' 1905, vol. ii. p. 324, Mr. E. V. Lucas includes among " the actual volumes which Lamb possessed, as described in various catalogues," the following : " Springer. Relation of the Fearful Estate of Francis "Spira. 12mo " ; and adds that the copy contains a MS. note, "This Book was written by one Springer, a lawyer." As Mr. Lucas refrains from any comment on this curiously inaccurate ascription, it may be as well to show, in the first place, that there was no .such a person as " Springer, a lawyer," and, secondly, that the man out of whose name this phantom has been called up was not the author of the above-mentioned book.

There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt that Lamb, if it was he who made the memorandum, had drawn an erroneous inference from a passage in his favourite Burton :

There is a most memorable example of Francis JSpira an Advocate of Padua. A* 1545. that being

desperate, by no counsell of learned men could bee comforted, hee felt as he said, the paines of hell in his soule, in all other things hee dis- coursed a right, but in this most mad. Fris- melica, Bellouat and some other excellent Physi- tians, could neither make him eat, drinke," or sleepe, no perswasion could ease him. Neuer pleaded any man so well for himselfe, as this man did against himselfe, and so he desperatly died : Springer a Lawyer hath written his life." ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' 3.4.2.4, pp. 780- 781, 1st ed., 1621.

To " Francis Spira " there is a marginal note " Goulart." The title of Simon Goulart's work in which Spiera' s story can be read is ' Histoires Admirables et Memorables de Nostre Temps.' A second edition of this (first vol.) was published at Rouen in 1606. The part about Spiera is fol. 120 verso 125 verso. I suspect, however, that Burton had been " tumbling over " an English translation, " Admirable And Memorable Histories Containing the wonders of our time. Collected into French out of the best Authors. By I. [sic] Goulart. And out of French into English. By Ed. Grimeston," London, 1607. This version shares with the French editions that I have examined the blunder of 1545 for 1548, but shows several verbal resemblances to Burton's text : " for in all other things he discoursed grauely and constantly," p. 188 ; " neyther was there euer man heard pleading better for himselfe, then Spiera did then against himselfe," p. 194 ; " This which is worthy of considera- tion among the Histories of our time, is drawne out of a discourse published by Maister Henrie Scringer [the French has "M. Henri Scrimger"], a learned Lawyer," p. 196. The learned lawyer was Henry Scrymgeour or Scrimger, 1506-72. See ' D.N.B.' Under the designation of ' Exemplvm Memorabile Desperationis In Francisco Spera Propter Abiuratam Fidei Confessionem ' on pp. 62-95 of ' Francisci Spierse, Qui Quod susceptam semel Euange- licse ueritatis professionem abnegasset, dam- nassetque, in horrendam incidit despera- tionem, Historia A quatuor summis viris, summa fide conscripta," &c., Basel, 1550. The transition from Scringer to Springer may have been hastened by the fact that Jakob Sprenger, part author of 'Malleus Maleficarum,' figures in Burton more than once as Springer.
 * Henricus Scotus " he was the author of

Thus far concerning Springer ; but who wrote the book in Lamb's library ? This work in the earliest edition that I have come across (London, 1649) bears the title "A Relation Of The Fearful Estate Of Francis Spira, In the year 1548. Compiled by