Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/164

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

s. vi. A. 17, 1012.

"Jemmy Brooke"), and as a writer of theatrical compositions and songs, he asso- ciated with the wits of his day. Macklin the letter from Macklin to Brooke which is published by John Taylor shows the closeness and duration of their friendship Hugh Kelly, Goldsmith, Churchill and Wilkes, Garrick and Ross the actor, were among his chief friends.

His wife was a beautiful young woman, " daughter of a respectable tradesman in the City," and they had three children, one son and two daughters. The daughters lived for many years with the family of Taylor, and the elder, " a venerable spin- ster," was alive in 1832. But Brooke was an irritable man who frequently gave way to passion. His wife left him and went on the stage, first at Edinburgh, then at Norwich, excelling " in comic characters, particularly old ladies." He thereupon published in the newspapers a pathetic appeal for her return, but she would not. When she became ill and could act no longer, she was supported by the husband of her married daughter. She died in 1782, and was buried in the old churchyard at Mary- lebone. Taylor was struck " with the beauty of her countenance and the dignity of her figure." He never knew a " more amiable and intelligent woman."

Brooke, who was then described as of Rathbone Place, died (after a short illness] on 23 Oct., 1807, in his eightieth year. Their younger daughter, Clarissa Sarah, was called Clarissa in compliment to Samuel Richardson, her godfather. She married, as his third wife the licence was dated 30 June, 1774 Philip Champion de Cres- pigny, the King's Proctor and M.P. for Aldborough in Suffolk, who died in 1803.

Taylor states that a portrait of Mrs Brooke was painted by Worlidge, and that it was in the possession of her elder daughter He adds that a mezzotint engraving of it is mentioned by Boswell. This is in the ' Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides,' under dates of 6 and 7 Sept., 1773. Dr. Johnson was much pleased with his entertainmen at " Corrichatachin, a farm of Sir Alexander Macdonald's possessed by Mr. MoKinnon." They found " many good books in the house. . . .a mezzotinto of Mrs. Brooks [sic] the actress (by some strange chance in Sky)." The reference by Taylor enables us to settle the identity of this lady with Mrs. Brooke. Birkbeck Hill quoted Croker's suggestion that the subject was Mrs. Brooks, an actress, the daughter of a Scotchman, but negatived

his theory by pointing out that the first appearance of Mrs. Brooks on the stage was

n 1786.

Several states of the mezzotint are set out by Mr. O'Donoghue ('Catalogue of British Museum Portraits'). They are:

1. Half length to r. . in hat and mantle : oval ranie. Engraved by 11. Houston ; published jy S. Okey. Same plate reworked. Pub. J. Bowles ; engraved Houston.

2. Copy from later state of preceding. En- raved by C. Corbutt (E. Purcell) ; pub. R. Sayer.

3. Another copy with variations. Engraved C. Corbutt (R. Purcell).

By the portrait chroniclers she has been rroneously called the wife of John Brooks the engraver.

(John Taylor, 'Records of my Life,' i. 31-8 ; ii. 12 ; Gent. Mag., 1807, pt. ii. p. 1080; Foster's 'Baronetage.')

W. P. COURTNEY.

ECKWALD THE DWARF IN GOETHE (11 S.

v. 329 ). A note in the ' ' Jubilaums- Ausgabe ' ' of Goethe's works, Stuttgart and Berlin, n.d. (Cotta), vol. xx. p. 235, mentions that Egwald is the name of- the dwarf king who in the chap-book (Volksbuch) ' Der gehornte Siegfried ' assists the hero in battle with a giant. Goethe refers to the little monarch in another place, ' Belagerung von Mainz ' (1793), vol. xxviii. p. 245 of the same edition, this time under the name of Edwin :

" Eine Kolonne Marseiller, klein, schwarz, buntscheckig, lumpig gekleidet, trappelten heran, als habe der Konig Edwin seinen Berg aufgetan und das muntere Zwergenheer ausgesendet. Edwin is, no doubt, a mere lapse of memory for Egwald.

The earliest extant edition of the Volks- buch bears the imprint " Braunschweig und Leipzig, 1726," and it was probably com- posed not much before that date. It ] founded on an older poem, ' Der Hiirnen Seyfrid,' which was printed at Nurnberg about 1540, and possibly also earlier. Both works will be found in a cheap reprint by Wolfgang Golther (Halle, 1889), forming a double number of the series called " Neu- drucke deutscher Litteraturwerke des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts." The poem was put together about 1520 out of two earlier poems, now lost, belonging to the Nibelung cycle. The one containing the adventures with the dwarf is judged to have been written originally between 1230 and 1300.

In the Volksbuch the dwarf appears as Egwald or Egwaldus ; in the poem he is called Eugel and (with the diminutive