Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/199

 9* s. xir. SEW. s, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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vestry in the hope of seeing the registers. Lying on the church chest which held the books was a small strip of metal. I took it up and read on it, in seventeenth-century capitals, the words : Whos dvst lyeth here my own remaine Tho now is parted yet once shall meete againe. JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS. Monmouth.

SHAKESPEARE'S GEOGRAPHY (9 th S. xi. 208, 333, 416, 469; xii. 90). As it would be impos- sible for me, even if allowed a complete number of ( N. & Q.,' to reply to the argu- ments of MESSRS. THOMAS BAYNE, C. M. PHILLIPS, E. YARDLEY, E. F. BATES, and JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT, it is needless for me to attempt to dispute their contention that Bacon's mistakes were due to want of verifi- cation and those of the writer of the Shake- speare plays to ignorance, and that the numerous classical quotations in the dramas were not drawn direct from their Latin authors, but were simply hackneyed. Does it not seem strange that a man in his works should use Latin quotations fitting accu- rately into the context without knowing their meaning?

Books have been written to show the learn- ing and classical knowledge of the author of the plays, but apparently modern Shake- speareans will have none of it, although Canon Beeching names a number of Latin authors whom Shakespeare must have read at school, and MR. YARDLEY acknowledges that *' Shakespeare, apparently, must have known something of Plautus." How else he could have obtained the plot of 'The Comedy of Errors' is a mystery to Shakespearean commentators. To those who maintain, as MR. YARDLEY does, that *' there are no signs of classical learning in his great plays," " that he had neither read nor was capable of read- ing Latin," and that he " had never read Greek," I would recommend a study of Mr. Churton Collins's articles in the Fortnightly Review on the subject 'Had Shakespeare read the Greek Tragedies?' The Daily News was very indignant at Mr. Collins proving his case and thus "strengthen- ing the hands of the Baconians," at the same time stating :

" It is right to say that in the article not a little evidence is adduced to show that Shakespeare might conceivably have acquired the necessary classical knowledge in the grammar school at Stratford. [Canon Beeching, as Shakespearean as Mr. Collins, also gives this as the only feasible ex- planation of the classical knowledge he finds in the plays.] There is nothing absolutely impossible in the supposition that he did so, except the strong evidence that, as a matter of fact, he did not."

As a classical knowledge does not fit into the life of Shakespeare, ergo the classical know- ledge displayed in the dramas is not classical knowledge. Had Shakespeare been educated at Oxford or Cambridge, or even West- minster School (as Ben Jonson was) any school but that of Stratford the classical knowledge would have been detected and held up to admiration without doubt. Sad necessity, however, may cause men to be wilfully blind.

MR. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT maintains that Bacon and Shakespeare "made no blunder" about Aristotle's view of youth and ethics. In that case both Bacon and Shakespeare had read Greek, either Aristotle's * Nicomachean Ethics ' or Plato's * Euthydemus,' all in favour of Shakespeare's derided classical knowledge. MR. WAINEWRIGHT evidently agrees with Mr. Collins on this point. As to MR. PHILLIPS'S discovery that in my letter I annexed seven lines from Devey's notes in his edition of Bacon's works, I find that the errors in Bacon to which I alluded were entered years ago in my commonplace book, without any reference to the name of the discoverer, who was evidently Devey, and to whom I return thanks for a valuable piece of information. It is very improbable, despite this annexation on my part, that in the course of a few centuries my name will be taken or mis- taken for that of Mr. Devey.

GEORGE STRONACH.

COFFEE MADE OF MALT (9 th S. xii. 68). Coffee, I need hardly say, never has been, and never can be, really made of malt, but malt coffee, so called, which is, I believe, a mixture of malt and coffee, is well known. The late Mr. Michael Conroy, F.C.S., of Liverpool, introduced a brand of this a good many years ago, which is still obtainable, and for which he claimed that it was more digestible than coffee pure and simple. This, if true, would be owing to the diastase in the malt, but as the action of malt-diastase is, as Squire says, " greatly retarded by a very slight acidity," it is doubtful whether it would con- tinue " in the presence of normal gastric juice." C. C. B.

It may perhaps be in point to state that a coffee, or rather a substitute for coffee, pre- pared from cereals, is sold in the United States under the name of " Postum." The grains are roasted and are probably first malted. JOHN PHIN.

Paterson, N.J., U.S.

MALLET USED BY SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN V 9 th S. ix. 346, 493; x. 17, 136, 218). The mallet mentioned at the first reference was