Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/17

 ii s. ix. JAN. 3, i9H.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

11

THORNLEY, MARINE PAINTER. Any bio graphical information about this artist, who practised in the North-East of Englanc apparently about the beginning of the last century, would greatly oblige me. He is not mentioned in either Redgrave or Bryan I should also be glad if any owner of his work would let me have a description o the subject of it, and generally.

W. SENIOR.

Royal Societies Club, St. James's Street, S. W.

PARTITION OF POLAND. Can any reader of * N. & Q.' give me the correct anc original words of Frederick the Great ( spoken, I believe, in French), the substance of which is that the emperors or kings (oi Prussia, Russia, and Austria) communi- cated on the Eucharistic Body of Poland ? I should also be glad to know where they can be found. A. H. C. DOWNES.

ANCIENT VIEWS AND TREATMENT OF INSANITY. Can any reader supply me with references to ancient authors dealing with their view of, insanity and its accepted treatment ? I should also be glad of the like from mediaeval writers. I am especially desirous of collecting particulars of this kind from the more remote and less-known periods of history. RENIRA.

THE SECOND FOLIO OF THE SHAKE-

SPEARE PLAYS, 1632. (11 S. viii. 141, 196, 232, 294, 317.)

ON 7 June last (11 S. vii. 456) I called atten- tion to the fact that, in my copy of the 1632 Second Folio, Milton's supposed gram- matical blunder " starre - ypointing Pyra- mid " was correctly printed " starre-ypointed "Pyramid." In a communication which ap- peared 23 Aug. I stated that I had received notice that a similar copy existed in the Astor, &c., Public Library, New York. And in the issue of 6 Sept. appeared DR. MAGRATH'S letter saying that there was a similar inserted leaf in the 1632 Shakespeare Folio in the Library of Queen's College, Oxford. A facsimile copy of the inserted leaf, with a full description of the meaning of Milton's Epitaph, has been forwarded to all the principal libraries of the world. The description itself has been sent to the 15,000 newspapers of the world's (English) press, with the result that about 10,000,000 copies -of the full description have been circulated,

and another 10,000,000 copies circulated in an abbreviated form. Still only three correctly printed original pages have been reported. The experts of the British Mu- seum and elsewhere are agreed that " this page is evidently an original and con- temporary print, not a reproduction in any modern

sense The paper is contemporary."

And COL. PRIDE AUX, writing in ' N. & Q.' of 6 Sept., says :

" This cancel leaf was evidently printed after the book was on sale, and was issued to purchasers in the same way as cancel leaves are occasionally issued at the present day."

I am myself satisfied as only three have been discovered that the correct leaf was issued only to those to whom Bacon's secrets were entrusted, for it fully reveals that he was the real author of the Shake- speare plays. The six opening lines of Milton's Epitaph on Shakespeare, which are as follows, are those that reveal the secret : What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd

bones,

The labour of an Age, in piled stones Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid Under a starre-ypointed Pyramid ? Deare Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame, What needst thou such dull witnesse of thy Name?

As I explained in my letter to you of 20 Sept., and in my previous letters, and in the 20,000,000 copies that have been circu- lated all over the world, "hallow'd Re- liques" means "what he.hath left us : ' (as Ben Jonson says in his ' Ode ' in the 1623 Folio of the plays), and " what he hath left us " are the plays, &c. ; while the " starre- ypointed Pyramid " is a " Beacon," which in those days was pronounced " Bacon," to be a " witnesse of thy Name." I also]stated that there exist quite a number of books of the period to which Bacon's name has not yet been attached in which will be found a pyramid or a beacon, to reveal to the nitiated the name of the real author.

The matter has provoked, and is still pro- voking, a worldwide discussion, and the criticisms may be summed up as follows : ' * Hallow'd Reliques ' are just the * honour'd bones ' over again." " ' Hallow'd ' cannot be applied to literary remains." " What evi- dence is there that books do exist in. which a pyramid or beacon has been put to reveal Bacon's authorship ? "

Dealing with this last criticism first, I am ble to supply quite a number of such iistances, but as I am now concerned specially with Milton's Epitaph, I will 'efer only to the pyramid, the beacon, he Bacon, from which Milton derived the