Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/127

 n s. ix. FEB. 14, 1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

121

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY Ik, 191k.

CONTENTS. No. 216.

NOTES : John Wilkes and ' The Essay on Woman,' 121 Barbour and Patrick Gordon, 123 Inscriptions in Holy Trinity Churchyard, Shaftesbury, 124 "O nox quam longa est quse facit una senem " Disraeli's Juvenilia, 125 W. E. A. Axon : Two Reminiscences St. James's Square, " Place Royall " A Novel Assize, 126 "Species" in the 'N.E.D.,' 127.

QUERIES : Vanbrugh's Epitaph Cleansing Week Cromwell and Queen Henrietta Maria Shadwell : ' The Tory Poets ' Colonels of the 24th Regiment, 127 Octopus, Venus's Ear, and Whelk Macaulay and Lath- bury The Younger Van Helmpnt Tying Legs after Death Biographical Information Wanted Stewart Family of Wilmont Rev. William Gordon, Barbados, 128 Marten Word "Bill" in Wordsworth C. Stirling Graham : W. Macnie of Stirling Six Clerks' Office Haseldine and Carter Families Railway Smoking- Carriages, 129 " Life's uncertain," &c. Brigadier Walter Stapleton Murder of a Priest near Reading- William Harbord " The thin red line," 130.

REPLIES : Lesceline de Verdon, 130 Parishes in Two or More Counties, 132 Christmas Eve Anno Domini, 133 T. Hudson, Portrait Painter Uncollected Kipling Items, 134 Cricket in 1773 Heraldry of Lichfield Cathedral 'The Autobiography of a Dissenting Minister,' 135 Jamaica : Stevens and Read Families" Widows' men " Shilleto Throwing a Hat into a House, 136 Nightingale Family " Memmian naphtha - pits " in Tennyson Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici Words and Phrases in 'Lorna Doone' Ancient \ 7 iews of Insanity "Loveless as an Irishman "The Havamdl " Maggs," 137.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' History of the Royal Society of Arts ' Fifteenth-Century Books ' ' Records of the Smythies Family'' Holborn and London Citizens.'

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

JOHN WILKES AND 'THE ESSAY ON WOMAN.'

SINCE a certain famous essay on Chatham, in which the incomparable stylist sum- moned to his aid that brilliant imagination ever at his command when he wished to limn the indistinct features of History with crisp and brilliant touches, and compared ' The Essay on Woman ' with a work of Mr. Pope's which, it is suggested, does not exist ' The Imitation of the Second Satire of the First Book of Horace ' every school- boy has known how Sandwich came by the name of Jemmy Twitcher, and Jack Wilkes was fined and confined by my Lord Mans- field for endeavouring to subvert all religion and morality within these realms.

Ever since 1763 the pamphleteers and critics have waged a truceless war as to the authorship and nature of the ' Essay,' the

constant tendency in later times being to fix the authorship upon Thomas Potter, and to deny the participation of Wilkes, and, further, to deny that the work was of the character assigned.

A gradual accession of MSS. to the British Museum and a rich and inedited store of Wilkes papers in the Guildhall enable the conscientious critic to attack with some hope of solution the many debatable points.

The questions that arise are : Who wrote the parodies ? What were the parodies ? Do any reliable copies still exist ? To which may be added the minor query : How did the Government obtain the poems ?

First as to the authorship. I shall try to overthrow the view which, since C. W. Dilke's paper in The Athenaeum of 3 Jan., 1852 (reprinted in ' The Papers of a Critic '), and his contributions to ' N. & Q.,' 2 S. iv. 1, 21, 41, has, with more or less confidence, been expressed by Rae (Fort. Rev., Sept., 1868, and 'Wilkes, Fox, and Sheridan'), G. F. R. Barker (Walpole's ' Mem. of Geo. III.,'i. 62n.), Lecky (' Hist, of Eng.,' iii. 76), and by Mr. Rigg in the ' D.N.B.' (' Wilkes ') : " That the evidence proving Potter to be the author is overwhelming " (' Wilkes, Fox, and Sheridan,' 489) ; or, as Mr. Barker puts it, that " Potter was probably the sole author."

I shall attempt to show that the whole* of the manuscript title-page and all was in Wilkes's own writing ; that he had been, as Curry swore, many years engaged on it ; and that he did not put the finishing touches to it till after the death of Potter and the accession of George III. Then I shall en- deavour to clear up what little doubt remains, after Mr. Ashbee's careful investiga- tions (' Index Librorum Prohibitorum '), as to what the libel was.

It has been vehemently denied that the manuscript was in Wilkes's writing, and that he was " the author," as distinct from he printer and publisher. So far as the trial in the King's Bench on 21 Feb., 1764, is concerned, it is true, as Mr. Rae savs that

'no evidence was offered proving Wilkes to

lave been the author He was found guilty for

printing and publishing the Essay."

It is true, but it is not pertinent. Mere authorship of a libel is no offence apart from publication. What Algernon Sidney had said a century before (8 ' State Trials,' p. 868) has always been the true law :

"It is a right of mankind that they may

write in their own closets what they please and

no man can be answerable unless they publish it."