Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/34

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. JULY n, 1903.

'N. & Q.' I append this curious clipping, taken from the first page of the Chicago Daily News for Tuesday, 2 June :

"A special to the Globe- Democrat from Enid, O. T., says Junius Brutus Booth, the actor, and nephew of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, has fully identified the body of the man known as David E. George as his uncle. George, or Booth, committed suicide here Jan. 14 last, and in his effects was found a letter directed to K. L. Bates, of Memphis, Tenn. Mr. Bates came here at once and fully identified the body as John Wilkes Booth. He then went east, and has obtained positive identification of the body from the dead man's nephew and from Joseph Jefferson, Miss Clara Morris, and a score of others who knew him in his early days.

" According to Mr. Bates's story, he had acted as Booth's confidential agent and attorney for nearly forty years. After Lincoln was shot the assassin escaped to the Garrett plantation in Virginia. According to Mr. Bates, the man who was killed was named Ruddy. Being warned, Booth left Garrett's and was taken care of by friends in Central Kentucky. He later settled at Glenrose Mills, Tex., where he conducted a store for several years as John St. Helen."

I have often heard the opinion expressed that President Lincoln's assassin escaped death. EUGENE F. McPiKE.

Chicago, U.S.

JOHN GILPIN : SHAKSPEARE IN 1790. Many vulgar errors, whether exposed by Sir Thomas Browne or in ' N. & Q.,' continue to be accepted as truth. Reading in a weekly journal, what has been shown to be untrue, that John Gilpin " was one John Beyer, who lived in Cheapside and died in Bath in 1790,' I have turned over the pages of the Bath Chronicle, for 1790 and failed to find the name of Beyer among the deaths. Christopher Gilpin did die in that year, but there is no reason for concluding that he ever lived in Cheapside and was a citizen of London.

The following paragraph, which I also found, seems to me worth reproducing. Il appears in the number for 11 March, 1790 :

" Tuesday last the collection of Shakespeare'?

plays, 1623 (commonly called the first folio), wa

sold at Mr. Eg

The Dukes of Grafton and Roxburgh were the com

Mr. Egerton's Auction-Room for 35^. 14,

petitors for this volume. The latter was victorious At the same sale ' Romeo and Juliet,' 4to, 1589, wa purchased for 11. fw., and ' Hamlet,' 4to, 1604, fo 17/. 6s. Qfl. A three-guinea subscription receipt fo. Alderman Boydell's ' Shakespeare ' was likewis disposed of at the same time for QL 8.s."

FRASER RAE.

COLERIDGE AS A TRANSLATOR. Coleridge' translation of the * Piccolomini ' and ' Wa] lenstein's Death ' is certainly open to criticism but the judgment delivered at 9 th S. xi. 48 leaves much to be desired on the score o leniency. The hypothesis that the " glamour

hich surrounds Coleridge's name accounts or the estimation in which his version is eld is somewhat difficult to accept. Its failure n publication may have been because so ex- iusively German a theme militated against bs popularity. One suspects that it owes the majority of its readers to Carlyle's enthusiasm or German literature. But apart from this, oes the translation " bristle " with palpable rrors 1 No better authority need be sought ban the late Prof. A. Buchheim, who termed ruly, if the accusation be well founded. )n the other hand, it is evident on casual nspection that Coleridge's version differs onsiderably from the printed German text. 3ut this difference consists mainly of omission ,nd addition. Some years ago, on comparing he translation (ed. Eossetti) with the 1834 ext in Schiller's 'Sammtliche Werke,' I irrived at the conclusion that some five mndred lines were unrepresented in English, ind that some two hundred did not appear n the German. Thus there are nine scenes vanting over twenty lines apiece (e.g., the Piccolomini,' I. ii.). This, of course, indicates much greater divergence from the German
 * ' excellent" a strange epithet to use,
 * han Coleridge's apologies in his prefaces and

lotes would lead one to expect. The only explanation would seem to be that the Ger- man manuscript he used differed considerably
 * rom the text as printed. Whether this MS.

copy still exists I do not know, but it is evidently of cardinal importance in judging the fidelity of the translation. For Coleridge would hardly have the temerity to say in his preface that he had endeavoured to render bis author literally if he were responsible for all the apparent deficiencies, redundancies, and rearrangement of scenes which occur in his version. Where, however, his rendering follows the accepted text, the verbal blunders that have been detected seem remarkably few, considering that the translation was accomplished in so short a space as six weeks; and such trifling defects do not seriously detract from the merit of a version which so admirably retains the spirit of the original.

J. DORMER.

"DAKMAKER." (See 9 th S. xi. 397.)-! have not been able to find this word in any dic- tionary, but no doubt the letter k in its first syllable is unusual. Thinking that k might be a misprint for g in Anderson's * Guide to the Abbey of Holyrood ' (p. 86), I visited the Chapel Royal a few weeks ago, and found that the word is spelt " dakmaker " on the slab referred to. The date on the slab is 1592, and it is plain from the carving on it of a hammer surmounted by a crown that