Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/310

 368 iv. NOV. 4, -m. NOTES AND QUERIES. associations which I have thus enjoyed for nearly a quarter of a century, without deep pain and emotion, must be made of sterner materials than I can boast. " That pain would be yet greater, that emotion yet more deep, did I not feel assured that in re- signing my 'plumed' sceptre into the hands of Dr. Dpran, I entrust it to one who not only desires to maintain unchanged the general character of this Journal, but will, by his intelligence, courtesy, and good feeling, secure for dear old Notes anil Queries the continued allegiance of those kind and intelli- gent friends who have made it what it is. "To those friends, one and all, 1 now with the deepest gratitude, and most earnest wishes for their welfare and happiness, tender a hearty and affec- tionate FAREWELL. WILLIAM J. THOMS. "In publicly acknowledging how great are my obligations to my accomplished friend Mr. James Yeowoll, for his valued and long-continued assist- ance, I am doing a simple act of justice which it affords me the highest gratification to perform." The editorship of Dr. Doran commenced on the 5th of October, and Notes and Queries having been purchased by Sir Charles W. Dilke, its publication was removed to 20, Wellington Street, the office of The Al/tenceum, and my father became its publisher. For the first fourteen years it was published by Mr. George Bell, of Bell &, Daldy, now the well- known firm of George Bell <fc Sons. Mr. Bell took great interest in its progress, and re- gretted much having to sever his connexion with it; but with the increase of his own business, and the fact that Notes and Queries now required an office of its own, it was not possible to combine the two. When Mr. Thorns decided upon the change he consulted with my father, who took in hand all the business details until Notes and Queries was safe in its new home. On the 3rd of January, 1874, Dr. Doran, in introducing the first number of the Fifth Series, states that Mr. Thorns, when com- mencing the Third Series, quoted the lines addressed by Ben Jonson to Selden " as lines the applicability of which to this journal had been pointed out by one of the first and most valued of our contributors. They are lines which will bear repeating here, for their application, it is hoped, is as well founded now as in 1862 :— What fables have you vexed, what truth redeemed, Antiquities searched, opinions disesteemed, Impostures branded, and authorities urged ! What blots and errors have you watched and purged, Records and authors of, how rectified, Times, manners, customs, innovations spied ! Sought out the fountains' sources, creeks, paths, ways, And noted the beginnings and decays ! What is that nominal mark, or real rite, Form, act, or ensign that hath escaped your sight? How are traditions there examined ! how Conjectures retrieved ! and a story, now And then, of times (besides the bare conduct Of what it tells us) weaved in to instruct!" Dr. Doran mentions as a matter for con- gratulation that "'N. & Q." has lost no valuable contributor (except by death or infirmity) since Mr. Thorns retired, and that new and well-endowed correspondents have supplied the places of the departed. To all these the tribute of thanks and good wishes is heartily rendered." Mr. Thorns, in his preface to the fourth General Index, written by him at the request of Dr. Doran, points to the success of Notes and Queries as furnishing an unanswerable proof "that the literary jealousy of each other, so per- sistently charged against literary men, is without real foundation; and that the noble eulogy, in which Chaucer summed up his character, on the Clerk of Oxford, And gladly wolde he learne and gladly teche, is as justly applicable to all real lovers of literature at the present day as it was when the great Father of Knglish poetry sketched, with his matchless pencil, the motley group which started from the Tabard on their never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimage." Mr. James Yeowcll, who had been the active sub-editor for more than twenty years, died on Friday, the 10th of December, 1876, and the number for the 18th opens with a beautiful tribute to his memory by Mr. Thorns, who said of him that he was "one who had many friends, but never an enemy." The Athernrum, in its obituary notice of the same date, states 01 this "simple-minded worshipper of strict accu- racy " that " no man was ever more fortunate in finding in his daily occupation the labour in which he delighted," and suggests that his large collection of cuttings, jottings, and notes illustrative of the biography of the " illustrious obscure " of our literature should be secured by the British Museum. The Atherutum of the following week men- tions that " amongst other minor matters in- volving research to which Mr. James Yeowell devoted much attention may be named his efforts to prove the authorship of the well- known lines He that fights and runs away May live to fight another day. In Notes and Queries for July 25th, 1863. Mr. Yeowell thought that he had discovered the author to be Oliver Goldsmith, inasmuch as the couplet, slightly varying from the way we give it, occurs in ' The Art of Poetry on a New Plan,' compiled by Newbery* (the chief publisher of juvenile literature more than a • For notices of John Newbery see 3rd S. iv. 61 : 5th S. xi. 434, by Mr. Yeowell, Mr. W. G. B. Page, Mr. Ch. Klkin Mathews, and the Rev. Edward Marshall.