Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/349

 [12 s. vii. OCT. o, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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conform to Ouikshank's ideas he told me, which aocounts for his having done so few for West.

I asked him the real names of " Small Fry " and one or two other pseudonyms of persons whose drawings he etched. He taid that he could not tell, and that he often etched sketches for publishers, and never knew the names of the artists, who were frequently amateurs. I said," West seems to have been a very dilatory man.' Cruik- shank laughed and said : Yes, he \vas, the boys used to go into his shop, and abuse him "like anything," for his frequent delays in publishing continuations of his plates.

No wonder the boys complained when we know some of the facts. To give only two examples : West's characters and scenes in the 'Pilot ' were published in 1828, but the side-scenes were not issued until 1833. 'The Forty Thieves' ho issued in 1819, but plate 6 is dated and did not appear until 1827, and so on.

I have not 'Meg Merrilies ' (Douglas No. 1003), but I feel certain from the descrip- tion that it is similar to one I have of Mrs. Egerton as 'Madge Wildfire,' a celebrated character impersonated. by a celebrated actress. My print is initialed J. R. C., and under the above number, at p. 164, Captain Douglas says: "Reid simply gives this without signature or imprint, it is a very common plate,* but I think it is from a book. Pailthorpe has facsimilied it: value 105." F. W. Pailthorpe etched a number of good prints ; he was son of a printseller who carried on business in London.

But though as Douglas states, the Egerton print is from a book, my print of 'Madge' is evidently not abstracted from a book, nor has*it ever been in one as can be seen from the edge of the paper all round, The size of the doubled ruled lines forming a border, is six and a half inches high and four and a quarter wide.

For years I have been endeavouring to identify the source of my print, and only since 1 began this note have I discovered from whence it came. It is, as Captain Douglas surmises of "Meg," from a book. It is not one of West's. These prints are exactly the same as a class of similar portraits issued in 'The Mirror of the Stage,' a

?eriodical published by E. Duncombe in 825 in five volumes octavo, which were unknown to Douglas. The copy in the

it is common ? if he means it is often for sale.
 * Surely Capt. Douglas is mistaken in saying

National Library is very incomplete, but they considered it so rare that the remnants of five volumes, only make one, and 'The- Mirror ' is not enumerated by Douglas, though it has a number of J. R. C. 's portraits,. Unfortunately, this particular plate that I possess is wanting in the National Library copy. If 1 have not said enough to relieve- myself of the suspicion of having abstracted it (!) I may say that the copy of the ' Mirror" of the Stage ' was bound in the National Library when it was acquired in 1870, and nothing could be cut out without its- showing ! ! RALPH THOMAS.

ITALIAN LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

FRANCESCO MONTANI DI PESARO. II.

THAT Montani was a man of deep culture' can be seen all through the essay, but more- especially on p. 54, where he quotes an English poet 'Edmond Waller's Poems written upon several occasions' in English and not in an Italian translation. There is no evidence to prove that any other critic of the beginning of the Settecento did know English directly or had studied it, and only later with Antonio Conti, who translated Pope (Cf. Brognoligo : L' Opera Letteraria- di Antonio Conti : Ateneo Veneto, 1894), do we enter into that period of Anglomania- in Italy which produced the ' Frustra- Letteraria ' of Baretti. Montani knew English, and perhaps some analogy with Bacon may be discerned in his theories.

At p. 7 he fulminates against those critics : " who, finding themselves in possession of such a- stupid mind as to carry out very well the office ot- body to a fine design, desire often ardently either to contaminate the finest writings with then? reflections or to profane them and insult them- with praise."

"In truth, he who sets out to write with, eagerness, opening out a vastly broader way to the life of his spirit than that which Nature can ever concede to his body, will have to build more,- in my opinion, from what he has in his head, relying more on the vibrations [yibrazioma*- new use] and creations of his brain than on that- which he finds in his inventories reason not De^g, dependent on authority but authority being the daughter of reason." .;&'

' ' It is much too un certain, this clothin g in novelty and this giving absoletis nitorem, fastiditis graiwm ; and without that, writing does not mean increas- irg or enrichirg the literary world with produc- tions of one's own spiiit ; without tLat it *s nct * called creation but compilation."