Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/190

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. ix. MAR. 7, wu.

This confirms the view that Wilkes intended to print the whole. Faden, in negotiating with Farmer, describes what Curry had to sell as " three sheets of revises with the corrector's marks on them " (Add. MS. 22,132, f. 293). In a statement in Add. MS. 22,132, f. 223, we read :

" The first proofs were printed off in black Ink and afterwards corrected by Mr. Wilkes with his own hand, and the Revises or fair proofs were printed off in red ink, which being again corrected from the manuscript, there were 13 fair copies worked off in red and afterwards delivered to Mr. Wilkes. And the revise copy remained with Mr. Michael Curry, the compositor, as his property 4is usual."

In the House of Lords Curry gave the following testimony :

" I corrected the first proofs and Mr. Wilkes the latter, and from his corrections I put it in the Press."

The pages complained of are shown him, and he says :

" The three half-sheets in red are my revises, and the other paper in black is a proof with Mr. Wilkes's corrections."

Samuel Jennings, examined, said on being shown the black proof :

" I found it on the floor in Mr. Wilkes's house.

" Q. ' Do you know of whose handwriting the four words wrote in the margin of the last page of the proof are ? '

"A. 'I know Mr. Wilkes's handwriting, and I believe them to be his handwriting.' "

XXX. H. of L. Jour. 417.

Farmer's 'The Plain Truth with

several extracts from the work itself given as a specimen of its astonishing Impurity,' enables us to say what those words were. The black proof, which Jennings found on the floor, he took to Farmer at the " Red Lion " in June, 1763, and Farmer says that the first words which caught his eye were those ridiculing Bute. Then he quotes his specimen, and comparing this with the passage in the Information (with which the quarto and the Dyce copy correspond), we see that Wilkes substituted four words in the parody on verse 81, " The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day," for those that appeared in the black proof. It is needless to give particulars ; let it suffice to say that the revised version was the grosser.

That, then, which Sandwich produced in the Lords was a red revise of Curry's and four pages of a black proof containing, as we learn from Farmer, from verse 47, " Then in the scale," down to verse 86, which closely but obscenely paraphrases Pope's lines, and confirms us in the certainty that only ten or twelve lines, with notes, made a page in the original.

I have been somewhat prolix in this demonstration because there has been so much discussion among considerable authors as to what was the true version. I can now briefly sum up the case for and against the quarto of 1871, the Dyce copy, and, subject to the disadvantage of not having seen it, a copy 'noticed by Ashbee.

"No copy" [wrote the editor of the quarto], " can claim to be an original, that is, one of the original thirteen copies struck off at Wilkes's private press, unless it answers in every particular to the curiously minute bibliographical description given by Kidgell, and no copy can claim even to be a reprint of the original unless it contains all the passages quoted and alluded to both by Farmer and Kidgell."

Ashbee justly says :

" No copy can be considered original which does not answer the following requirements : i. It must be a parody of Mr. Pope's ' Essay on Man' almost line for line. ii. It must oe printed in red. iii. It must have * a frontispiece curiously engraved on copper, which contains the title of the poem "An Essay on Woman," a motto very suitable for a work which is calculated to depreciate the sex, a most obscene print by way of decoration, under which is en- graved in the Greek language and character the Saviour of the World.' iv. The title is succeeded by a few pages of advertisement and design."

To this I would add : (1) Any original must be of twenty-four pages octavo, and have on an average ten to twelve lines of vSrse to a page. (2) The three Latin words above referred to must be found on such title-page, for Wilkes in the Advertisement says :

"The reader will excuse my adding a word con- cerning the frontispiece. I must here correct a little mistake of the learned primate [referring to Stone] about the motto [quoting the words]."

This would be pointless unless the motto occurred on the frontispiece, and we can hardly doubt that this was added as ordered on 14 Oct., 1762. He then goes on in a gross strain to correct the primate as to the true interpretation of the motto, and thus introduces his sneer at Hogarth which again refutes the contention as to Potter's authorship (see Dilke in ' N. & Q.,' 2 S. iv. 1), for the reference was solely occasioned by Wilkes's eleventh - hour decision to include this pleasantry at the Archbishop's expense, he being of Bute's party.

Applying these tests, we see at once that the Dyce copy is not a true original, and the quarto no exact facsimile. Each has a printed frontispiece; each omits the Latin words ; neither is of twenty-four pages, but the Dyce of thirty, and the other of thirty-four.