Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/504

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

x. DKO. 20, 1902.

raent " never denied, would he not be credited with the authorship? How many people kept the secret of the authorship of the " Waverley Novels " till Scott acknowledged them as his ? This acknowledgment Bacon could not afford to make, for many reasons. Bacon also may have pledged his friends to respect his incognito. As it is, the state- ments of Ben Jonson, made after Shake- speare's death, do not appear to me to be incompatible with his being in the secret. He practically put the heads of Shakespeare and Bacon under the same hat when he declared of the former that his works were superior to "all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth," and of the latter that his works were to be " preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome." Mr. F. G. Fleay says : " Little value is to be attributed to the abundant praise lavished on him [Shakespeare] by Jonson in com- mendatory verses after his death." What he said of him during his life was far from com- plimentary, but " De mortuis," &c.

As to the testimony of Heminge and Condell (even they may have been in the secret, and purposely misled their readers), Dr. Ingleby, editor of 'The Centurie of Prayse' and 'Shakespeare Allusion Books,' writes : " Unfortunately for their credit and our satisfaction, their prefatory statement contains, or at least suggests, what they must have known to be false "; while Mr. Madden declares: "The authority of the First Folio is uniformly rejected, the asser- tions of its editors discredited They suc- ceeded in imposing on the simple, guileless Ben Jonson, who was induced to lend the authority of his great name to their under- taking." How little they knew of Shake- speare may be gathered from their statement that the plays in the Folio were printed " absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them," and their placing on the title-page the words, "Published according to the True Originall Copies." Mr. Sidney Lee, in refer- ence to this, remarks : " It is doubtful if any

play were printed as it came from his pen

The First Folio text is often markedly inferior to that of the sixteen pre-existent quartos, which were available for the use of the editors." Convicted in one false statement, Hemminge and Condell's general testimony as to Shakespeare must be accepted with caution.

My letter is already too long, so I am pre- cluded from replying to MR. WILSON'S other arguments, e g., the restriction of the line "And made myself a motley to the view " to the vocation of an actor, although it seems

to me to apply equally well to that of a play- writer, and his meaning of the words "a despised weed." Whatever may have been the intention of the writer when he wrote the plays, there can be no doubt that he has, as Bacon says, " procured the good of all men." GEORGE STRONACH.

LORD'S PRAYER IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY (9 th S. x. 445). How any one in the present century can attribute this version to the twelfth century passes all comprehension. The absurdity of it was fully exposed by me in/ N. & Q.' (6 th S. xii. 169) in 1885, when I pointed out at the same time that it abounds in errors. Perhaps I may just repeat here what I have said already, that " Pope Adrian died in A.D. 1159, quite half a century before the earliest known instance of the metre in which this version is written." Our know- ledge of the history of our own language still leaves much to be desired. See ' A Stu- dent's Pastime,' p. 206.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

DREAM-LORE (9 th S. x. 269, 351). I remem- ber as distinctly as if it had occurred last night a dream with which I was visited a little before I was four years old. I thought that two men, neither of whom I knew, had possession of me, and were lowering me into a well. I was very frightened. There was water at the bottom, but each time these evil men lowered me down the water suddenly disappeared. It seemed to vanish into the bottom, but rose again as soon as I was drawn up. The well in my dream was in a part of the garden at Northorpe Hall, near here, with which I was quite familiar, but in my waking life I could not find any trace of it on or near the spot. EDWARD PEACOCK.

Kirton-in-Lindsey.

" PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM " (9 th S. x. 348, 412). As MR. C. S. WARD remarks, much the same question was asked at 9 th S. iii. 287 ; but it certainly was not answered at ibid. 334, for his reply at that reference simply cited an obiter dictum from the 'D.N.B.' which did not give the information I still desire. POLITICIAN.

AN HEUSKARIAN RARITY IN THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY (9 th S. viii. 377 : ix. Ill, 415 ; x. 14, 97, 191). Leaving to students of Elizabethan English the defence of the use of the article an before nouns substantive beginning with the aspirate h or the letter y, whether written or only supplied in pronunciation, as before university or JEuskartan, I beg to say that HeusTcarian has a better claim than