Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/387

 ii s. iv. NOV. 11, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

381

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1911.

CONTENTS. -No. 98.

NOTES : Gibber's ' Apology,' 381 Casanova in England 382 Nicholas Grimald : John Grymbolde John Weevei and Shakespeare, 384 Prof. V. E. Mourek Hough ton Hall Pictures St. Olave's, Silver Street, 385 Lord Rose- bery on Books The Act against Profane Swearing Francois de Gain de Montaignac Bearded Soldiers, 386.

QUERIES : Maryland Proverb : " Shoe her horse round ' John Ledyard, Traveller John Bankes, Haberdasher, 387 Printing : an Unpublished Manuscript Bill of Rights Society Precedence Author of Sonnet News- paper " Editions " ' The Noon Gazette and Daily Spy ' Haggatt Family Lowther Family, 388 Robert Ball- Prisoner at Plumpton Luck Cups Burrell Family Dorehill Family Early Arms of France ' Progress of Error 'William Alabaster R. Anstruther Cambridge Cormell Cockerell Covert Hare Family Pedestals of Statues Walters : Halley : Ward, 389 Orange Emblems, 390.

REPLIES : Municipal Records Printed, 390 Mrs. Dal- rymple Elliott Eighteenth-Century School-Book, 392 Rhoscrowther Epicurus at Herculaneum, 393 Coloman Mikszath's Works in English Weare and Thurtell- Le Botiler or Butler Family Statues in Venice West- Country Charm, 394 John Lord : Owen Private Lunatic- Asylums ' Nibelungenlied 'Friday as Christian Name Hamlet as Baptismal Name Stonehenge Diatoric Teeth, 395 -Obsolete Fish, 396 Haldeman Surname- Noble Families in Shakespeare London's Royal Statues, 398 Aspinshaw, Leather Lane, Holborn MacClelland Family Axford Family, 399.

NOTES ON BOOKS : -Escott's 'Masters of English Journalism ' ' Woodstock ' ' The National Review.'

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

GIBBER'S 'APOLOGY.'

have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them all." Lord Macaulay may say what he likes ; I decline to believe that a great work can be executed by a small man. Notwithstanding his wealth of illustration, Macaulay only shows that Boswell had many weaknesses and a few serious faults. The lives of Marlborough and Napoleon afford sufficient evidence that the possession of weaknesses and faults does not prevent a man from being great. Macaulay himself gives a list of Johnson's flaws and infirmities, l>ut he does not deny his greatness. Every great man has his imperfections, just as ordinary mortals have theirs, but surely the best criterion of greatness is the capacity to do great things. Boswell was vain ; so were Wolfe and Nelson ; he sometimes drank too much ; so did William Pitt ; he laid his
 * ' MANY of the greatest men that ever lived

inner soul bare to the world ; so did St. Augustine. All the rhetoric in the world will not convince me that Boswell had not in him the quality of greatness.

Gibber affords another example of those whom the world has agreed to treat with contempt. He happened to fall foul of a great satirist, and people have accepted him at the satirist's valuation. No epithets were too bad for him, and doubts were even thrown upon his personal courage at a time when a readiness to use the sword was a part of every Englishman's equipment. Yet no one can deny that ' An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Gibber ' is the finest theatrical history in the English language, and that its author must have possessed some elements of greatness. His contemporaries recognized this fact, and the book went through several editions within twenty years of its first pub- lication. During the nineteenth century only two separate editions were published, so far as my knowledge goes that of Bell- chambers, which appeared in 1822, and Mr. Nimmo's fine issue of 1889, which was edited with much taste and learning by the late Robert W. Lowe. It is rather surprising that the ' Apology ' has not been included in one of the numerous series of standard English works which are in course of being produced in such profusion by Mr. Dent and other publishers of the present day. Should such an issue be in contemplation, the follow- ing remarks may, perhaps, be of service to the editor.

I have in my possession a copy of Bell- hambers's edition of the ' Apology,' which I purchased some five-and-thirty years ago, and which is enriched by a large number of manuscript annotations. Who the writer was I have no means of knowing, but he must tiave been a person who had an intimate knowledge of the literary history of the eighteenth century. I propose to reproduce two or three of the most important of these annotations.

The ' Apology ' was dedicated "To a /ertain Gentleman," who is generally iden- tified with Henry Pelham. This identifica- tion is accepted by Mr. Lowe, who, after quoting in its support Davies's ' Life of Garrick,' ii. 377, and John Taylor's * Records of my Life,' i. 263, adds: "From the nternal evidence it seems quite clear that this is so." My annotator, however, sug- ests that it was George Bubb Dodington, to whom Gibber subsequently dedicated, under date 1 Jan., 1746/7, his ' Character and bnduct of Cicero Considered,' 1747. A perusal of MB. W. P. COURTNEY'S excellent