Page:Notes and Queries - Series 1 - Volume 1.djvu/33

Nov. 10. 1849.] being special instances: but they are, in either case, curious and satisfactory evidence of the care and caution exercised by the monks in cases where their books were concerned; and one cannot but regret that when the time came that the monasteries were destined to be dissolved, and their books torn and scattered to the winds, no attention was paid to Bale's advice for the formation of "one solemne library in every shire of England."

The following verses, which would form a very appropriate song for Autolycus, were arranged as a glee for three voices by Dr. Wilson about the year 1667. They are published in Playford's Musical Companion in 1673; in Warren's Collection of Glees and Catches; and in S. Webbe's Conveto Harmonica. The words were, I believe, first ascribed to Shakspere, by Clark, in 1824, in his Words of Glees, Madrigals, &c.; but he has not given his authority for so doing. It has been stated that they have since been discovered in a common-place book written about Shakspere's time, with his name attached to them, and with this indirect evidence in favour of their being written by him, that the other pieces in the collection are attributed to their proper writers. The late Mr. Douce, who was inclined to believe the song to have been written by Shakspere, once saw a copy of it with a fourth verse which was shown to him by the then organist of Chichester. The poem is not included in Mr. Collier's edition of Shakspere, nor in the Aldine edition of Shakspere's Poems, edited by the Rev. A. Dyce. Perhaps if you will be good enough to insert the song and the present communication in the "," some of your readers may be enabled to fix the authorship, and to furnish the additional stanza to which I have referred.

While on this subject, perhaps I may be permitted to ask whether any reader of the "" can throw light on the following questionable statement made by a correspondent of the Morning Herald, of the 16th September, 1822.

"Looking over an old volume the other day, printed in 1771, I find it remarked that it was known as a tradition, that Shakspeare shut himself up all night in Westminster Abbey when he wrote the ghost scene in Hamlet."

I do not find in Wilson's Shakspeariana the title of a single "old" book printed in 1771, on the subject of Shakspere.

Mr. Editor, I am encouraged by the eminent names which illustrate the first Number of your new experiment—a most happy thought—to inquire whether they, or any other correspondent, can inform me who was the William de Skypwith, the patent of whose appointment as Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland, dated February 15. 1370, 44 Edward III., is to be found in the New Federa, vol. iii. p. 877? In the entry on the Issue Roll of that year, p. 458., of the payment of "his expences and equipment" in going there, he is called "Sir William Skipwyth, Knight, and the King's Justice in Ireland."