Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/42

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. JAN. 13, 1900.

unable to see this book, I shall be pleased to send him all the information relating to the family he is interested in on receipt of a postcard. I may add that when the parish of St. Mildred, Poultry, was united with that of St. Olave, Old Jewry, the bodies con- tained in the church and churchyard were re- interred in the City of London Cemetery, Ilford. CHARLES H. CHOUGH.

Nightingale Lane, Waristead.

ALDGATE AND WHITECHAPEL (9 th S. iv. 168, 269, 385, 441). The passage from Hermann that COL. PRIDE A ux asks me to print is somewhat too long for these columns. It is an account of the wanderings of ^Egelwine, a monk of Bury, with the relics of St. Edmund, in consequence of the raid of Thurkill into East Anglia in the time of King ^Ethelred (c. 1010). After a stay in Essex the monk comes to London, where he proceeds "a via, quse Anglice dicitur Ealsegate," to St. Gregory's Church (near St. Paul's). Although there is no clear evidence as to the identity of this with Aldgate, the probabilities are very strongly in favour of such identification, since Aldgate was the natural entrance into London from Essex, whereas Aldersgate is an unlikely one.

With regard to the form Algata in 1125, I do not think much weight can be laid upon it. The later forms show clearly that there was a vowel between the I and the #, and it is impossible to set aside their evidence. Fortunately there is contemporary evidence that at the time of the grant referred to by COL. PRIDEAUX the form was Alegata, not Algata. The former is the spelling in the confirmation by Henry I. of this very grant. It is printed, with a facsimile of the original charter, in the new * Fcedera,' i. 12. Mr. Coote, I presume, must have quoted this Algata from a later copy, not from the original grant. W. H. STEVENSON.

AN UNCLAIMED POEM OF BEN JONSON (9 th S. iv. 491). This claim is not new ; it was made by W. R. Chetwood in * Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ben. Jonson, Esq.,' Dublin, 1756. The poem is there quoted on pp. 40, 41, with the prefatory comment : "There were innumerable Poems on the Death of this much lamented Prince; but we shall only give the Reader the following one by our Author, not printed in his Works." Gifford, in his edition of Jonson, rejected this ascription, and did not even quote the poem ; in a note on ' Underwoods,' xxxiii., he says :

" Chetwood has an Epitaph on prince Henry, which he ascribes to Jonson, and which the reader may perhaps expect to find in a collection of his

works. I have little confidence in this writer, who seldom mentions his authorities ; and, to say the truth, can discover nothing of our author's manner in the composition itself, which appears to be patched up from different poerns, and is therefore omitted ; though 1 have thought it right to mention the circumstance."

On the question of authorship MR. CURRY thinks there "cannot be the least doubt." There is considerable doubt. The two points in favour of its being the work of Jonson are that Camden quotes it and that it recalls some of the poet's epitaphs. I do not think that these considerations outweigh the silence of the 1616 folio, and I utterly fail to grasp MR. CURRY'S argument that Jonson may have omitted it because Camden printed it. it is certainly strange that amid the flood of poetic tears showered on Prince Henry's grave we have no tribute from Jonson ; but it is far stranger that, if he did write such a poem, he suppressed it, considering the prince's rank and character and his patronage of the poet, and considering the compliment paid by Camden. Jonson was not apt to hide his light under a bushel ; I can imagine him saying, as Browning did to his would-be reviser F. T. Palgrave, " Leave out anything ! Certainly not : quod scripsi, scripsi "

It is news to me as a serious student of Jonson to read that his fame is not founded on his comedies. Milton thought otherwise, as he took care to indicate in a graceful tribute to "Jonson's learned sock"; Cole- ridge ranked * The Alchemist,' for perfection of plot, with the * Oedipus Tyrannus '; Dickens admired ' Every Man in his Humour,' and even got it acted. And it sadly over- shoots the mark to give even to a selection of Jonson's lyrics the sounding epithets "un- approached and almost unapproachable." That might be said of " Full fathom five thy father lies," or "Take, oh take those lips away," but the bird-like melody of the per- fect lyric was beyond Jonson's reach, how- ever exquisite detached passages and a few briqf pieces may be.

As a purely minor point, I may note that MR. CURRY is not well advised in supporting a theory of Jonsonian authorship by an appeal to the epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke. There are reasons not perhaps convincing, but serious reasons for ascrib- ing that poem to William Browne ; and it is uncritical, in solving a question of authorship, to lay any stress upon a disputed poem.

PERCY SIMPSON.

"NEWSPAPER" (8 th S. vi. 508; vii. 112, 237, 432 ; ix. 294). In my continued search for the earliest use of this word, which at the