Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/260

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 . v. OCT., 1919.

his MS. catalogue entitled ' My Collection of Prints and Drawings (as far as extant and recoverable) relating to the Cities of London and Westminster and their Environs.' This only includes two west views of Temple Bar, so his collection was not so complete as his zeal and opportunities would lead us to expect.

The eighteenth- century illustrations are very numerous, and I do not claim to have listed all, but only noted the most remark- able.

Hogarths's view provided in the eleventh plate (8) of the ' Hudibras ' set is fictitious, as it illustrates an incident occurring twelve years before Temple Bar was built (vide Pepys's 'Diary,' Feb. 11, 1660).

Another familiar illustration of Temple Bar is the print with the heads of Townley and Fletcher exposed on poles above the pediment. The original 4to etching (9) is very scarce, but has been re-engraved, and the lithograph inserted at p. 26 of ' Temple Bar, the City Golgotha,' correctly represents the illustrative part of the print. There are in the original eight verses below an imprint : " Published Sept. 20, 1746. Price 6cL" Of great interest are the parodies of this engraving. One represents Lord Bute and George III. walking through the arch, and another has the head of Fox as the fearful example of treason.

The Battle of Temple Bar (10) illustrated in The Oxford Magazine, 1769, is not an important illustration and of the published engravings the 4to views by Roffe after W. Capon (11), published by W. Richardson, May 8, 1797, and by Neagle after E. Dayes (12), published by Stockdale, 1799, are probably the most interesting. There are other important views: the engravings by Malton and Morle but I must express a preference for two important paintings in which Temple Bar is illustrated con- spicuously ' The Reception of George III.,' now in the corridor of the Council Chamber at the Guildhall, and a canvas by John Colet, painted between 1741 and 1780, now in the possession of Child & Co. The water-colour drawings of this and the later period, by Schnebbelie, T. H. Shepherd, and others, are numerous, but in many instances suspect of being ingenious reconstructions or copies from engravings. Each must be strictly judged for its topographical accuracy. I also exclude some engravings that, cropped of their imprints, cannot be identified.

The nineteenth-century illustrations of Temple Bar are numerous, but, as book illustrations, without special merit. When

in the seventies the clearance of buildings for the new Courts of Justice caused the subsidence and consequent propping of the centre arch, the photographers were active and I have before me a very full series ilh trating the stages of its decay and fina demolition. Of published illustrations ii this period some call for special notice.

The Illustrated Times of Feb. 18, 1871 (p. 103), provides an excellent view of the interior of the room. A rare etching by C. W. Sherborn is of interest, and in a letter accompanying the example before me he says :

" I have this day forwarded a proof impression of my work on Temple Bar. On the left you will see 1 have introduced the entrance to the Temple and Child's old Banking house where Nelly Gwyne used to Bank. On the right the Cock Tavern, one of the oldest in London, with the cock carved by Gibbons."

He adds that he stood at the corner of Chancery Lane to obtain the view.

The removal and rebuilding of Temple Bar was so much a topic of the hour and subsequent sentiment that illustrations of it frequently occur in Christmas greeting cards, menus of city banquets, and other less familiar forms of publicity. It is a distinc- tion singular to this city gate, but makes almost impossible this or any other effort to provide a complete iconography.

ALECK ABRAHAMS. 51 Rutland Park Mansions, N.W.2.

' THE TRAGEDY OF NERO ' AND 'PISO'S CONSPIRACY.'

IT is peculiar how responsible historians of literature, deeply versed in their subject,, careful and erudite as they may be, some- times persist, one after the other, in making the same mistakes as to matters of fact, or in reproducing uncritically the uncritical assertions of earlier historians. It is easy to make mistakes, but some mistakes seem so ludicrous and so apparent that one wonders how they first came to be made, and, more, how they continued to be repeated. Of such a mistake ' The Tragedy of Nero ' presents an interesting example.

' The Tragedy of Nero, Emperour of Rome,' published in 1675 and acted at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the same year, was the first of those tragedies written by poor Nat Lee, dark with the overlooming melancholy of madness, yet so luridly and so beautifully lit at time* with the fierce lightning flashes of his gem a- Its probable production on the stage was in the early