Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/93

 9 th S. III. FEB. 4, '99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

87

Life of Garrick,' p. 253, repeats Genest' statement that the dialogue was neve printed. There has, however, recently com into my possession a little volume containing two dramatic pieces bound up together. Thr title-page of the second is as follows : " The | Jubilee | in Honour of | Shakespeare. | 1

Theatre in Waterford, | with Additions | [fou verses] | Waterford | Printed by Esther Crawlej and Son, at | Euclid's head, in Peter's street j
 * Musical Entertainment | as performed at the |

M,DCC,LXXIII.'

Among the dramatis personce occur the following mentioned by Genest : Ralph

is laid at Stratford-upon-Avon. I can fine no trace of this either at the Bodleian or in the Museum Catalogue. H. A. EVANS. The Elms, Begbroke, near Oxford.

FATHOMETER : A NEW BARBARISM. This word occurs, I believe for the first time in " literature," in the Westminster Gazette oJ 16 January. It is easy to guess what a physician would understand it to mean ; not so easy, however, to imagine what it is in- tended to signify, viz., an instrument for recording the distance travelled by a vehicle, and also the various directions in which the journey has been pursued, and the altitudes ascended and descended in its course :

"The record of directions is obtained by means of a compass. The needle is suspended at the top of the pathometer, as the instrument has been named, directly above the tape on which the records are taken."

It is quite useless to bewail the invention of such monstrous terms as this. It is, perhaps, well to stick a pin through them, and label them in the eternal museum of ' N. & Q.' JULIAN MARSHALL.

TOM BROWN AND DR. FELL. The balder- dash exordium of an article entitled ' Oaths and the Law' in the Gentleman's Magazine for January commences as follows :

" The law is like a lady. It has, as she has, the right, without any assignment of reason, or with all sorts and fashions of wholly incompatible and contradictory assignments of reason, to determine. Those who are put in grievous plight by its de- terminations and caprices must find for themselves, as poor rebuffed Dr. Brown was compelled to, such consolation as they can :

I love thee not, I know not why, But this I know, I love thee not."

In his eagerness to thrust in " poor rebuffed Dr. Brown" the writer makes a sad hash. First, he transfers Dr. Fell's title to Tom Brown, who, as is well known, so far from

being "Doctor," had no degree of any kind, having quitted Oxford without graduating. Next, ignorant apparently of the occasion of Brown's impromptu rendering of Martial's epigram, he imagines him " rebuffed " in an affaire de coeur and dejected in consequence. Fancy a devil-may-care fellow like Brown pining for " consolation " in any casualty of life ! The verses quoted, too, are not those usually attributed to Brown, but may per- haps be accounted for, as I have read tha there is a variant in the collective edition of his works. It is not so well known that Mar- tial's lines had been previously parodied by Thomas Forde in 1661 :

I love thee not, Nel !

But why, I can't tell, &c.

See 'D.N.B.,' xviii. 295 b. F. ADAMS.

' HAMLET,' BY DAN HAYES. In the Cardiff Western Mail, No. 9251, for 17 January, p. 7, it is mentioned that New Ireland has dis- covered an old playbill of the "Kilkenny Theatre Koyal " for 14 May, 1793. This play- bill is reprinted in the Western Mail, and the following is an extract from it :

"The Tragedy of Hamlet, originally written and composed by the celebrated Dan Hayes, of Lime- rick, and inserted in Shakespere's Works."

The playbill concludes with the interesting notice that "no person whatsoever will be admitted into the boxes without shoes or stockings." It is probable that this Irish claimant to the honour of the authorship of ' Hamlet ' is not so well known as his astound- ing claim might warrant. D. J.

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest n order that the answers may be addressed to
 * o affix their names and addresses to their queries,
 * hem direct.

M. HOENE WRONSKI : JOHN POND, ASTRO- NOMER KOYAL. In August last I went to Condon for scientific researches concerning ny kinsman, the celebrated Polish philoso- pher Hoene Wronski, who had sojourned in

ngland between 1820 and 1823, as I am pre- paring a scientific work about his life and writings. Notwithstanding careful inquiries n all the libraries and institutions of jondon, Cambridge, and Oxford, it proves mpossible to find the following :

1. The True Briton (magazine or news- paper) from the years 1820 to 1823, containing nost important articles by and about Hoene rVronski. It is very strange ; I found files of his paper before the year 1820, and after