Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/305

 12 8. V. Nov, 1919. ]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

299

numerous manuscripts, a list with the pres marks being given,. The ' Tractatus d contractibus inter ementes et vendentes, beginning " Honorabilibus magne disore ciones," &c., is said to exist only in manu scripts.

The ' Tractatus de contractibus ' o: Heinrich von Oytta is said by the ' Allge meine Deutsche Biographie ' to be printec in vol. iv. of Gerson's Works (apparently the 1483 (1484) book described above) According to Fabricius' Bibliotheca,' iii 210, col. 2, it was also published separately but no details are given.

EDWARD BENSLY.

The Catalogus Bibliothecae Bodlejanse, Oxonii, 1843, vol. secundum, page 141 (sub : Gersonus (Joannes), Cancellarius Parisiensis) contains the titles of four different Tractatus, 4to, Col. Ulv. Zell. s.a., and Tractatus varii, 4to, s.l. et a., to which the foot-note at p. 18 of Roscher's work quoted and Henricus de Hassia's Censuum ' two misprints of this title corrected may possibly refer. H. K.
 * Tractatus de Contractibus et de Origine

'THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH' (12 S. v. 211, 248). The smithy mentioned by Long- fellow in his poem, ' The Village Black- smith,' stood on the west side of Brattle Street, between Story Street and Farwell Place in Cambridge, Mass., U.S. The poet passed it in his walks between his home and Harvard College, where he was a professor. In his diary of Oct. 5, 1839, we read : " Written a new Psalm of Life. It is * The Village Blacksmith.' ' A year later, Oct. 25, 1840, in a letter to his father, he says : " I have written a kind of a ballad on a blacksmith. A song of praise to our ancestor of Newbury." In The Knicker- bocker Magazine of New York, November, 1840, vol. xvi. p. 419, the poem was first printed.

The blacksmith shop disappeared years ago, but the " spreading chestnut tree " was allowed to remain, standing outside of the curbstone till, in May, 1876, it was declared to be an obstruction in the high- way and was cut down, the poet vainly expostulating against the act. Prof, and Mrs. E. N. Horsford saved the wood, however, which was made into a chair, finished in imitation of ebony, from a design furnished by W. P. P. Longfellow, the poet's nephew, and presented by the children of Cambridge to the poet, on the anniversary of his birthday, Feb. 27, 1879. This occasioned the poem, ' From My Arm-

Chair.' A tablet has been placed in the sidewalk near the site of the tree.

It may be of interest to add that James Russell Lowell in his poem ' An Indian Summer Reverie' (1840?) stanzas 34-35), refers to the same smithy. The smith's name was Dexter Pratt. Though born ia South Framingham, Mass., 1799, he was for a long time a resident of Cambridge, and was buried in that city at Mount Auburn, with his wife Rowena Houghton.

EDWARD DENHAM. New Bedford, Mass.

Dexter Pratt, the "village blacksmith," resided on Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass. r and plied his trade hard by in a smithy "under a spreading chestnut tree." The house, erected in 1811, was acquired by Pratt in 1827, and is still standing, but the smithy and the chestnut tree no longer exist. The figure of Dexter Pratt is one of those represented in low relief on the Longfellow Memorial in Longfellow Park, Cambridge. E. BASIL LTJPTON.

10 Humboldb Street, Cambridge, Mass.

The original of the " smith " in the poem is said to have been Henry Francis Moore, a blacksmith in the neighbouring town of Medford, Massachusetts, whom Longfellow often visited and was fond of chatting with. WILLIAM FRANCIS CRAFTS.

69 Cypress Street. Brookline, Massachusetts.

CONSPIRACY ' (12 S. v. 254). MR. NICOLL attributes to Langbaine and to the authors of the ' Biographia Dramatica ' an error into which they did not fall. These writers do not suggest that ' Piso's Conspiracy ' is
 * THE TRAGEDY OF NERO ' AND * Piso's

dentical with Lee's ' Nero, Emperor of Rome.'

Langbaine says, in that part of the

Dramatick Poets ' which deals with un- known authors : " Piso's Conspiracy. . . .is only the Tragedy of Nero (before men-

ion'd)," &c. This statement does not refer

o Lee's tragedy, which was not by an unknown' author and was duly attributed to

ee on p. 324. It refers to an unknown

uthor's ' Nero's Tragedy ' mentioned on ). 542, but omitted from the index to the

ook an omission which may possibly lave misled your correspondent. Lang- mine says that this play was mentioned by Kirkman (viz., in 1671), thus showing that t was an earlier play than Lee's.

In the 'Biographia Dramatica' (1812) it s stated that ' Piso's Conspiracy ' is no more han the ' Tragedy of Nero,' a little altered iii. 157), and that the latter play was.