Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/260

 Y if- 214 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9*S.VI.Snr1~.15,l9lD. a celebrated cook. Mollard had written a book on the culinary art, in the expoundin of which he was eminently distinguished and without a rival. This was at the beginning of the present century. The Conger Club.-An association whose membership was limited to five booksellers. It was a “combine” for the purpose of “diminishing their individual risk m pub- lications of an expensive character, and from which the returns were likely to be slow, by dividing the venture into shares.” They used to meet at the old “ Chapter Coffee-House and 'l`avern,” No. 50, Paternoster Row in 1715, and it was at a meeting of this club early in 1777 that the scheme was arranged of an edi- tion of the British poets, for which Johnson was to be invited to write short lives of those whose works were included. '1`he Crown and Anchor Association, famous as being formed at the instance of Pitt and Dundas by John Reeves, a solicitor, owed its name to the “Crown and Anchor” in the Strand, one of the most popular of the latter- day homes of the tavern-club, among other clubs, &c., meeting t-here being the Ana- creontic Society, the Society of Musicians, the Athenian and Whittington Clubs, &c. The Da5`y Club (vide ‘ Tav. Anecd.,’ p. 128). -“ Daffy ” was a cant term for geneva, pro- bably in allusion to the celebrated “Daii`y’s Elixir.” The Derbyshire Society held their anni- versary dinner at the “Crown and Anchor” in the Strand (1784-91). 'I‘he Dolphin Society met at the “White Lion ” in 1790 (Banks Coll. Ad mission Tickets). The East India Company’s oficers held their annual “feast” at the Long Room, Hampstead (7 the “ Flask Tavern’s” Long Room), on 24 Aug., 1782 (Banks Coll. Admission Tickets). J. HOLDEN LTACMICHAEL. “VIRIDICAL” (9°*‘ S. v. 416, 504; vi. 19).- The blunder in the Times leader noted by D. C. T. owes its being, perhaps, to a false analogy in word-construction. Clearly the leader-writer, as your correspondent observes, did not mean “truth-telling, veracious.” I suggest that he wanted a word that would combine the ideas of virility and utterance, and hit upon “viridical” to express his mean- ing, taking it to be a word in current use. F. A_DAMs. SHAKESPEARE AND Crcnso (9“‘ S. v. 288, 462 ; vi. 56, 154).-It is clear that Shaks eare, though he had some, had not much Batin. His want of Greek is more apparent still. No classical scholar who has studied care- fully Shakspeare's plays could come to the conclusion that he had any real knowledge of Greek. He evidently knew nothing, or next to nothingiof the Greek language,l1tera ture, or life. is Greeks are not Greeks at all. There is nothing in ‘Troilus and Cres- sida’ to show that he was acquainted with Homer’s ‘ Iliad.’ The mythological references in the play are drawn, not from the ‘Iliad,’ but from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosesf a work which Shakspeare certainly knew. Shak- speare never refers to the many tales which omer tells of the gods, or the heroes, or the families of the heroes. What is in Homer and is not in Ovid is not in Shakspeare. The character of Thersites may have been sug gested by a passage from Ovid :- Ausus erat reges incessere dictis Thersites. ' ‘Metamorphosesf bk. xiii. ll. 232-3. Dr. Johnson, in his remarks on this play, forgot that Ovid had mentioned Thersites ; for he said that the character of Thersites Eroved the play to be written after Chapman ad published is version of Homer. I cannot find IH the play any evidence that Shakspeare knew Homer even in a translation. Homer’s heroes enerally know one another, but when Agneas and Agamemnon meet in the pla they meet as strangers The language of /ilneas when he delivers Hector’s message is singularly unclassical. Aiitax is represented as a cousin of Hector. But e was not related to him at all. Teucer was the cousin. Ajax and Teucer were by different mothers. Shak- speare also did not know that there were two Ajaxes, the son of Telamon and the son of Oileus. Ajax _gives the wind the Latin name of Aquilon. hat Hector quotes Aristotle has been often noticed. Shakspeare makes Troilus survive Hector ; but so does Chaucer; and so, I suppose, do all the authors that have told the story of Troilus and Cressida. The want of classical knowledge in Shak- speare is evident all through the play. I know that Shakspeare when he wrote it was following mediaeval authors, but if he had known anytthing of Homer he would have shown his now ed e. Shakspeare’s Romans are more real than his Greeks. E. YARDLEY. House EQUIPMENT (9*“ S. v. 148, 213, 360 ; vi. 155).-The following quotation from ‘St. Ronan’s Well’ may prove interesting and amusing. It is a remark addressed by Mr. Pere rine Touchwood to Sir Bingo Binks at the feta at Shaws Castle :- “‘Why, you son of a fresh-water g'udgeon,’ re lied the traveller ‘that never in your ife sailed farlgther than the mé of Dogs, *do you pretend to play a sailor, and not know the bridle of the bow-