Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/500

 492

NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. VIL JUNE 21, 1913.

IZAAK WALTON AND TOMB -SCRATCHING (US. vii. 405). Mrs. A. Murray-Smith in ' The Roll - Call of Westminster Abbey ' (1902), p. 281, says:

" The initials, I. W., roughly scratched with the date, 1658, upon the monument [Casaubon's], are traditionally, but without any historic founda- tion, believed to be those of the great angler. Izaak Walton."

The boys of Westminster School have, no doubt, in the course of centuries been re- sponsible for many additional inscriptions upon the tombs, throne, arid other treasures of the Abbey. One remembers, too, the audacious scholar who stole Richard II. 's jawbone in 1766, and gave it to one of his companions, by whose descendants it is still treasured, with a card attached giving the above account of its origin in their grandfather's handwriting. The perpe- trator of this sacrilege, let us hope, had for- gotten, or never read, the golden lines of Shakespeare, when he thus unkindly added a foot-note to Beaumont's famous apos- trophe :

Here they lye, had realms and lands, Who now want strength to stir their hands.

Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings,

John Bradshaw, who died in the Deanery, was considered by the Westminster boys to haunt the Abbey, especially the south- western tower and its neighbourhood, and one of their number, Lord de Ros, who for a wager passed a night in the Abbey Church in order to confront the ghost, long retained a lively recollection of the unearthly sounds of birds and rats in his cold and dark im- prisonment. A. R. BAYLEY.

CURIOUS COLOPHON (11 S. vii. 409). Is the modern French example quoted by MB. T. H. BARROW more than a revival of what was at one time a common practice in printing ? In the first dated edition of the Bible that by Fust & Schoffer, Mainz, 1462 the colophon to vol. ii. gives not only the year, but the day, the Vigil of the Assumption (14 Aug.).

Sometimes the colophon supplies the date on which the author or translator completed his task. In the colophon to ' The Life of the Noble and Christian Prince, Charles the Great,' Caxton informs the reader that it was " fynysshed in the reducyng of hit in to englysshe " on 18 June, 1485, and " en- prynted " on 1 Dec. of the same year.*

' William Caxton,' 2nd ed., 1882.
 * See the facsimile on p. 307 of Blades's

The custom by which not only the year, but the month or even day of the month, was specified long survived the early days of printing. In Giovanni Casa's ' Latina Monimenta,' " Florentiae, In Officina lunta- rum Bernardi Filiorum," the colophon gives the year (1564), while on the title-page the month and day (10 June) are added.

The use of a colophon in early printed works, when title-pages were not yet in use, was a natural continuation of the practice of writers of manuscripts. The particulars in the latter were sometimes even more detailed. Gardthausen in his ' Griechische Palaeographie ' gives an instance from the year 949 where a monk who copied an Evangelistary has entered month, day, and hour. EDWARD BENSLY.

I do not think that this sort of colophon has anything to do with French copyright law. It is father a bibliographical refine- ment, used in the case of books which have been printed with particular care. Cer- tainly this was the case with my own work, ' Josias Simler et les Origines de rAlpinisme,' which has a colophon of this sort dated (in words) 30 Sept., 1903, with the name of the Grenoble printers.

W. A. B. COOLIDGE.

Grindelwald.

BLAKE AND HIS FRIEND BUTTS (US. vii. 428). MR. BRESLAR will find an interest- ing and well -illustrated account of Blake's friendship with Mr. Thomas Butts in The Connoisseur, vol. xix. p. 92 (October, 1907).

Mr. Butts is there stated to have held a post under Government and to have become Muster-Master General of the Forces, a post now merged in that of Secretary for War. It was in 1793 that he engaged Blake to teach his son, also Thomas Butts, drawing at a yearly salary of 261. ; but the father seems to have profited far more by the lessons than the son did. Their friend- ship appears to have lasted until Blake's death in 1822, and, in spite of the latter's well-known irritability, they apparently never had any serious disagreement. Mr. Butts acquired from time to time a large number of the artist's works, and, though the price he paid for the pictures only one guinea each may seem now ridicu- lously inadequate, it was far more than Blake could obtain for them elsewhere ; and the artist's letters to his patron are expressed in terms of the deepest gratitude.

The son did not share his father's enthu- siasm, and, after the latter's death in 1844,