Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/13

 12 s. viz. JULY 3, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES. Both these are in a collection formed by Henry Geo. Davis, the local historian. KENSINGTON. The Court Suburb Maga- zine for Objects of Suburban Interest and General Literature. Edited by F. Aikin- Kortright. No. 1, October, 1868. 8vo, 50 pp. In green paper covers, with wood- cut of Gates of Holland House. Published by J. Saunders, 22 High Street, Kensington. At No. 4 imprint became "Issued by the Proprietor, 21 Eldon Road, Kensington." Duration uncertain, but at least 14 monthly issues. The preceding are the few at hand ; obviously the list is incomplete. Additions will be welcome. ALECK ABRAHAMS. 51 Rutland Park Mansions, N.W.2. SHAKESPEARE'S "SHYLOCK." (See 12 S, vi. 244) In my paper at this reference I ven- tured to question Canon Hanauer's charges of want of moral courage and of inversion and distortion of an Italian story by Leti, but refrained from questioning the story itself. This has since been done by the Rev. L. Zeckhausen in the following com- munication to the June issue of The Jewish Missionary Intelligence which I offer as a pendant to my article : " Is Canon Hanauer right when, with reference to Shylock, he charges Shakespeare with a most lamentable want of moral courage ? Has he really ' inverted and distorted the facts of the story ' as related in Lett's ' Vita di Sixto Quinto ' ! It is now generally allowed that the story of Paolo Seche and the Jew Sansone Geneda is a fable pure and simple, and that it cannot even lay claim to originality. Leti incorporated it into his ' Life of Sixtus ' from a tale published ten years earlier at Venice, and with the object, no doubt, of showing oft his hero to special advantage. But what really matters is the fact that there are extant quite a number of tales dealing with the story of the cruel Jew creditor, who demands his pound of flesh, and is frustrated by the same device as that attributed to Portia, This is the burden of Giovanni Florentine's 4 II Pecorone,' published about 1378. Earlier still ( end of the thirteenth century) is the ' Cursor Mundi,' in which Queen Helena forgives the Jew on condition of his pointing out the true site of the crucifixion. When and where the story originated it is difficult to say, but the compilers of the ' Arabian Nights ' already knew it, and it can be read there in the tale of the ' The Seven Wise Masters of Rome.' The villain, however, is here not a Jew. All this goes to prove that there is no need to assume that Shakespeare was familiar with Leti's version of the story, and advisedly substituted a Jew in place of the cruel Christian creditor. The probability is that he was indebted for his materials to some earlier form of the tale, such, for instance, as the English ballad, ' Ser Geruntus the Jew,' " Whilst gladly welcoming Mr. Zech- hausen's clear vindication of Shakespeare from the unwarranted charges levelled.' against him by Canon Hanauer, I must' express my regret that he too has joined the ranks of those who question his originality in his character of Shylock. J. B. McGOVEBN. CATS. The Gentleman's Magazine for- January, 1792, at p. 89, records the death in Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, of " Mrs. Gregg, a single lady, between 50 and 60 ' years of age, remarkable for her benevolence to cats, no fewer than 80 being entertained under her hospitable roof at the time of her decease, at an. - allowance of near a guinea per week. She was in affluent circumstances ; and on the death of a sister, a short time ago, receiving an addition to her income, she set up her coach, and went out almost every day, airing, but suffered no male- servant to sleep in her house. Her maids being frequently tired of their attendance on such Ta numerous household, she was reduced at last to take a black woman to attend upon and feed them, This is the second instance, in our recollection, of an extraordinary attention to the feline race among us. The other "was a person of property, of the name of Norris.at Hackney, who, from the number of cats assembled under his hospitable roof, ac- quired the name of Cat Norris" John Adams in ' A Second Volume of Curious Anecdotes ' (London, 1792), afe p. 333, wrote : " A lady of the name of Griggs died lately at an, advanced age, in Southampton Kow, London. Her fortune was 30.000Z. at the time of her decease. Credite Posteri! Her executors found in her house 86 living, and 28 dead cats. Her mode of interring her iavourites was, as they died, to place- them in different boxes, which were heaped one on another in closets, as are the dead, as described by Pennant, in the Church of St. Giles. She had a black female servant to her she left 150Z. per annum to keep the favourites whom she left, behind." JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT.. A LATE' BRASS. Against the north wall of the chancel of the Chapel of St. Anne, Beeley by Bakewell, Derbyshire, is a small brass inscribed: "Here fieth interred, in Hopes of a Blessed Resurrection the body of John Calvert, late of this parish, gent., who departed this Life, April the 7th, 1710, aged 95." The brass is about a foot square, and; beneath the inscription is a lilliputian figure of a man clad in a shroud in an open coffin, with his face exposed and his hands by his; side. It is an unusually late date for a. brass. Are any others known ? J. W. F..