Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/283

 gth 8. xii. OCT. 3, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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resented, confessing his disappointment in the eighty-sixth Sonnet, which was possibly, but not certainly, written after the publica- tion of ' Lucrece.' The dates of the Sonnets can only be guessed at, the only certainty being that they were published in 1609, in the same year as Barnes died at Durham. There is no evidence to show that all the {Shakespeare Sonnets were the "sugred sonnets " referred to by Meres in 1598. One of them at least (cvii.) was written after the death of Elizabeth in 1603, as it undoubtedly makes reference to the queen's demise, the accession of James, and the release of South- ampton. The date of ' Parthenophil' does not affect my argument.

I hold that my theory is quite feasible that Barnes may have been the author of Sonnet Ixxxvi., and that the "rival poet" referred to was not Barnes, Chapman, or Daniel, but William Shakespeare.

GEORGE STRONACH.

[This discussion must now close, many con- tributors complaining of its length. We want new facts about Shakespeare and his works. Inferential biography has been carried as far as it seems pro- fitable.]

TRANSLATION (9 th S. xi. 481 ; xii. 15). I do not remember the source of the facetious rendering of Shakspeare mentioned by MR. MARCHANT, and think I was only told of it ; but I have seen a French translation of the prison scene were translated "Malheur a toi ! " the terseness of the German, or even the English, being utterly lost. On the other hand, even Longfellow's translation of the beautiful German lyric 'Aennchen von Tharau ' loses by its very exactitude, the iden- tical words being used, but, close as they are, the exact shades of meaning being not quite the same in both languages, Gut, for instance, probably being used in the sense of " estate " in the original, which our English word " good " hardly includes.
 * Faust' in which the evil spirit's words in

W. F. KIRBY.

Chiswick.

THE " ZAUBER-KESSEL " IN ESSEX (9 th S. xii. 206). Some time ago 1 read a similar story in an East Anglian year-book. A ring handle in the church door of a village South wood, if I remember rightly commemo- rates the attempt of two enterprising men to recover a chest of treasure from a pond. Their labours were nearly ended, and as he passed a pole through the ring one of them cried triumphantly, "Hurrah, we have it now, and even Old Nick shan't take it from us," He had better have remained silent,

for instantly a cloud of smoke appeared and a black hand grasped the chest. The adven- turers, undaunted, fought valiantly, but lost all but the ring handle of the chest, which they transferred to the church door. Ariosto's limbo must be rich beyond measure if King Jamshyd's jewelled cup, the Nibelungen hoard, the treasures of the Spanish Main, and all the Zauber-kessel are to be found there. FRANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Brixton Hill.

COUNT DE BRUHL (9 th S. xii. 189). George, Count de Briihl, of Chingford, was the great- nephew of the Saxon Prime Minister vitu- perated by Carlyle. His father, Hans Moritz, Graf von Briihl, nephew of the Prime Minister, was Envoy Extraordinary from the Elector of Saxony to the Court of St. James's from 1764 till his death in 1809, and was eminent not only in diplomacy, but in various branches of science, especially astronomy. He was also a chess-player of European repu- tation, able even to compete with the cele- brated Philidor. He married, in 1767, Alicia Maria, Countess Dowager of Egremont, and by her had George, of Chingford ; another son, who died in infancy ; and a daughter Harriet, who became wife of the sixth, and grandmother of the present, Lord Polwarth, George von Briihl, who was born 23 Decem- ber, 1768, was for some time in the 3rd Foot Guards, but subsequently lived for many years at Cherry Down Farm, Chingford, where he died in February, 1855, as recorded on his gravestone. If MR. WILTSHIRE will look again at the inscription, he will see that the age as he gives it, eighty, was the original form, rightly altered afterwards into eighty- six. About sixty years ago I often saw Mr, George Briihl, as he was generally called, and remember him well as a kind-hearted old cynic, given to soliloquizing in satirical verse, especially against the policy of Sir Robert Peel. R. MARSHAM-TOWNSHEND.

BACON ON HERCULES (9 th S. xi. 65, 154, 199, 352 ; xii. 54, 156). Confirmation of what I have written (partty under the heading of 4 Shakespeare's Geography ') can be found in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses.' There is a slight reference to Iphigenia in one line of that work. Clytemnestra, Orestes, and Electra are not mentioned ; nor is the name, or story, of Brisei's to be found there. Very slight is the allusion to the visit of ./Eneas to Carthage. But in the four lines which relate to Dido the pyre on which she burnt herself is men- tioned. The story of (Edipus is not touched upon. The Thersites of Homer is not that of Shakspeare, The one is a mischievous dema*