Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/388

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [i28.m.A TO .,i9i7.

temple 5001. , both of which amounts were raised by public subscription. On May 28, 1849, the statue was unveiled by Mr. Serjeant Adams, and at a banquet held the same evening the health of Dr. Jephson was drunk with much enthusiasm.

JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

(To be continued.)

WILLIAM PITT'S LAST SPEECH. (See ante, p. 241.) As no. one has been able to throw any fresh light on this subject in 'N. & Q.,' I should like to make an addition to my note.

The Town Clerk, Sir James Bell, has been good enough to give me, through a friend, the following information :

" The Guildhall Library contains no official account of the Lord Mayor's Banquet of the 9th November, 1805, but the following con- temporary accounts are taken from The London Chronicle and The St. James's Chronicle :

" ' The Lord Mayor then filled a bumper, and left every one to do the same, as he was going to give the Man to whom at present the World was looking up as the Barrier that was to save Europe from Universal Slavery. He named " The Right Hon. William Pitt." '

" ' The Hall for some moments resounded with the loudest plaudits ; and, as soon as silence could be obtained, Mr. Pitt^ thanked his Lordship for the honour which he" had done him ; but remarked, that Europe must owe its safety to various causes. England, he trusted, had gamed hers by her firmness ; and he hoped that the rest of Europe would follow her example ! ! ! (Very long and loud plaudits.) ' London Chro- nicle, 9-12 November, 1805, p. 459.

" Pitt's speech is recorded in The St. James's Chronicle as follows :

" ' Mr. Pitt returned thanks and said : " Eng- land has saved itself by its firmness, and let us therefore hope that the example set will be followed by all the rest of Europe." ' St. James's Chronicle, 9-12 November, 1805, p. 2, col. 1."

We now get, therefore, eight versions of this speech, all differing more or less. The four volumes of Pitt's speeches contain only his speeches in the House of Commons. Those who would like to correct Macaulay's version of the speech in ' The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 1885, will find it in " Pitt, William, 1759-1806," vol. xix. p. 147, col. 2.

It will probably have been noticed that the Duke of Wellington in 1838 gave to Stanhope an account of a speech which he had heard thirty-three years before.

HARRY B. POLAND.

Inner Temple.

SHAKESPEARE EMENDATION : ' PERICLES.' To attempt an amendment of the text of Shakespeare is usually indicative of more- courage than discretion, but where the text is notoriously corrupt, and the authorship doubtful, it may, perhaps, be permissible- to make a suggestion.

In ' Pericles,' IV. i., where the scene is " An open place near the sea-shore," Dionyza says to Marina, who enters " with a basket of flowers " :

Come, give me your flowers, ere the sea mar it. Walk with Leonine ; the air is quick there, And it pierces and sharpens the stomach.

There is obviously something wrong here. Mr. Fleay in his ' Birth and Life of Marina ' (Transactions of the New Sfiakspere Society, 1874, pt. i. p. 220) reads : Come [go you on the beach,] give me your flowers Ere the sea marre it, walk with Leonine, &c.

Steevens, adopting a discarded suggestion.

of Malone's, reads,

Give me your [wreath of] flowers, ere the sea,

mar it, &c. Malone says that probably the author wrote,,

ere the sea mar it,

Walk on the shore with Leonine, the air Is quick there.

Charlemont thinks " ere the sea mar it " means " ere the sea mar your walk upon the shore by the coming in of the tide," and says Shakespeare was not likely to reflect that there is little or no tide in the Medi- terranean !

It occurred to me, before I had consulted these authorities, that the passage might,, possibly, have run thus : Come, give me your flowers. On the sea margent Walk with Leonine ; the air is quick there, &c.

Shakespeare uses " margent " of the sea- shore in ' A Midsummer Night's Dream ' (II. i. 85), where we have " in the beached margent of the sea."

I would venture to suggest this emenda- tion for what it may be worth.

GEORGE GREENWOOD.

CHIVALRY IN THE VICTORIAN AGE. In reading General Sir George Higginson's ' Seventy-One Years of a Guardsman's Life ' I have been very much struck by the following passages which relate to incidents in the Crimean War :

" You will have heard, I dare say, of the- adventure the Fury steam vessel had in the Black Sea : she took a Russian prize while on a cruise reconnoitring Sevastopol. The Russians sallied out with three frigates, and the poor Fury was obliged to cut her tow-rope and to leave her prize, which she could not sink, as, after taking- the crew out as prisoners, she found that one- unfortunate man had been left behind." P. 103