Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/313

 12 s. ii. OCT. 14, i9i6.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

307

1. 925. these. Query " those " ? 1. 954. rang'd. Read " raign'd." The rime- word is " const raynd." M. and C. point out that 11. 948-54 arc based on Spenser's poem to 'Sir Chr. Hatton, prefixed to the ' !'. Q.' : Those prudent heads .... And in the neck of all the world to rayne. 1. 981. End of the sentence. 1. 1000. There. Query " Where " ?

G. C. MOORE SMITH.

Sheffield.

(To be continued.)

GARRICK'S FRIENDS. Under this heading -there appeared in The Times of July 8 last ^p. 5, col. 2) the following announcement :

" The chief interest at Messrs. Christie's sale of pictures yesterday centred in the family portraits sent by Lieut. B. A. Wallis Wilson. There can be little doubt that the Sir Joshua Keynolds, ' Por- trait of a Boy of the Wallis Family,' in mauve slashed dress and Vandycke collar and cuffs, sketching in a landscape, represents Albany Charles Wallis, the son of David Garrick's friend and executor, Albany Wallis. He was a Westminster scholar, and was drowned in the Thames on March 29, 1776, at the age of 13, a year or so after the portrait was painted. Garrick erected a monument to the boy's memory in Westminster Abbey, where he is described as ' amantissimi Patris unica Spes.' The portrait was purchased by Messrs. Pawsey & Payne, who also acquired Hoppner's portrait of the boy's father, Albany Wallis, who, in his turn, defrayed the cost of the monument to Garrick, also in Westminster Abbey. Wallis was a solicitor, of Norfolk Street, London ."

Albany Wallis being thus, for the moment, in the public eye (at any rate of the artistic world), it may be due to him to recall his services as an intermediary in bringing to light a lost play written by Fielding. His part is best told in the words of the ' Adver- tisement ' prefixed to the nearly thirty-years- lost comedy, ' The Fathers ; or, The "Good Xatured Man ' :

" The author had shown the play to his friend Mr. Garrick, and entertaining a high esteem for the taste and critical discernment of Sir Charles f Hanbury] Williams, he afterwards delivered the manuscript to Sir Charles for his opinion. Ap- pointed Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of liussia, Sir Charles had not leisure to examine the play before he left England. . . .He died in Russia iin 1759], and the manuscript was lost.

" About two years ago [i.e.. in 1775] Thomas Johnes, Esq., member for Cardigan, received from a young friend, as a present, a tat t< -red manuscript play. . . .Mr. Johnes took the dramatic foundling to his protection ; read it ; determined to obtain Mr. Garrick's opinion of it ; and for that purpose sent to Mr. Wallis of Norfolk Street, who waited upon Mr. Garrick with the manuscript, and asked him if he knew whether the late Sir C'harles Williams had ever written a play. Mr. Garrick east his eye upon it. ' The lost sheep is found 1 This is Harry Fielding's comedy ! f cried .M>

Garrick in a manner that evinced the most friendly regard for the memory of the author."

The play was staged at Drury Lane in 1778, and Garrick, though ill, wrote an excellent Prologue and Epilogue for the occasion. Garrick died the following year, and almost the last words he penned were :

" Mr. Fielding was my particular friend : he had written a comedy, called ' The Good Natured Man,' which being sent to his different friends was lost. It luckily fell to my lot to discover it. Had I found a mine of gold on my own land it could not have given me more pleasure."

This cordiality of sentiment towards a brother artist who had passed into the shade a quarter of a century earlier, and his delicate sympathy with Albany Wallis when he lost his boy, are signal proofs of the genuineness of Garrick's hope that " my likings and attachments to my friends may be remem- bered when my fool's cap and bells will be forgotten." J. PAUL DE CASTRO.

LEWISIAN EPITAPHS AT LLANERCHAERON. On the west end of the Parish Church of St. Non, the mother of St. David, at Llanerchaeron ( = clearing - on- the - River- Aeron, at its confluence with the rill Mydyr), in Cardiganshire, there are two epitaphs, one being :

Here lieth the Body

of lohn Lewis of

Lanerchaeron Gent.

Deceas'd the 8 th of

Septem r 1738 Ag'd 43

O BI02 BPOTOI2 AAHAOZ

This is interesting to the public as showing that Greek was not unclear to some mortals who passed their life in Wales when George II. was king. The other is older :

Behold ye tombd ! Interrd lies one

While liv'd on Earth, made heaven his horn

Obedient to his God : faithfull to his kin

True to his trust: Abhorring sin

A space confin'd in silent dust

Till y Trumpet sound, y' call y p just

In this we remark the anonymity ; the elliptic grammar; the use of / instead of t ; and the singular economical combination of the bottom of 6 and d in " tombed " ; as well as the unusual invocation of the other sepulti. Below it is incised the bust of an angel-trumpeter, facing to the spectator's right ; and above a lion ( = llew) rampant, looking to his left. The latter engraving is the crest, and play upon the name, of the Lewis family, which has its part in the nomination of the Vicar, and is represented in the parish by a widow, aged 103, wh husband died in 1855, and is commemorated by the only other epitaph inside that church. E. S. DODGSON.