Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/134

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th B. vm, AUG. 10, 1901.

sixty-seventh time, and for the last time that season. It was acted on 4 and 5 April, also on the nights of 19, 22, 24, and 26 April. The probable date of Lamb's letter Ixiv. is 5 April, 1800 though it may belong to one of the four later days in April above named

See how this clears up the confusion about the Burton imitations. On 17 March, 1800, Lamb is preparing a prose imitation of Burton which no doubt was finished and submitted to Coleridge before his departure for Grasmere on 1 April. This we may assume was Extract I. of the 'Curious Fragments from the Common-place Book of Robert Burton,' printed in the John Woodvil volume of 1802. On or about 5 April two imitations (Extracts I. and II. of 1802) have been struck off and submitted to Stuart, the editor of the Morning Post, who has not yet finally accepted them. At the same time " a few lines in the name of Burton, being ' A Conceipt of Diabolic Possession ' " (Extract III, 1802), have also been hit off. Lastly, on 6 August, 1800, Lamb writes to Coleridge that he has "hit off" a ballad somewhat resembling the ' Old arid Young Courtier,' viz., the "crude, incomposite, hirsute verses, noting the difference of rich and poor," &c., which stand at the close of Extract IV., 1802. This ballad, adds Lamb to S. T. C., "was to follow an imitation of Burton in prose [Extract IV. aforesaid] which you have not seen. But fate and ' wisest Stuart ' say No." Thus by simply recalling to its proper place the letter commonly but erroneously dated "October 5, 1800," we gain a coherent account both of the circum- stances and of the order in which the Burton imitations were penned.

Lamb's first engagement on "the Morning Post undoubtedly closed in February, 1802. In an unpublished portion of a letter to Coleridge, dated 8 September, 1802 (Ixxxix., ed. 1888), Lamb writes that he does not want to see Stuart ; their parting had been rather ambiguous, and he is not sure that Stuart is not displeased. He adds that he dislikes meeting Stuart's impudent office - clerk. MR. LUCAS says that with the letter of 23 October, 1802, Lamb's references to his connexion with the Post come to an end Not so see letter of 28 September, 1605. In March, 1804 Mary Lamb writes to Sarah btoddart : Charles has lost the newspaper

it is not well to be very poor, which we

certainly are at this present writing." And again, in June, 1804, referring to a recent misunderstanding about postage between Charles and Mrs. Stoddart, she writes to the same ; " The fact was, just at that time we

were very poor, having lost the Morning Post." At what date the engagement began, of which the close in the early spring of 1804 is here recorded by Mary, we have no means of knowing, save such as the files of the Morning Post may afford.

A word as to the editing of the letters in the recent edition de luxe (Macmillan, 1900). Meagre, perfunctory, and obsolete as in great part are the editor's notes, they may be said to shine beside his chronology and arrangement of the letters. In his new preface the editor pays a graceful tribute to the late James Dykes Campbell. It had been more to the purpose to have embodied in these costly volumes the many corrections and improvements in the order of the letters effected in the course of his labours on Coleridge by that honest and painstaking worker. But this has not been done; nor is there anything in these four volumes to indicate that the internal evi- dence in which Lamb's letters abound has been turned to adequate account for the rectification of the old faulty arrangement and dating. In a subsequent note some of the graver editorial shortcomings in this and other respects will, with the kind permission of the Editor of * N. & Q.,' be pointed out.

MYOPS.

THE 'MARSEILLAISE' (9 th S. viii. 61). If MR. JULIAN MARSHALL had read the exten- sive letter 1 wrote to the Daily News of 13 July, he would, perhaps, have seen fit to moderate his language.

There are a number of French writers who have shown that Rouget de 1'Isle can scarcely be called the composer of the tune of the ' Marseillaise ' such as we know it, and that not all the words are from him either. As to the latter point, Gudbrand Vigfusson, the late Icelandic scholar, pointed out corre- sponding words between the oratorio 'Esther,' which Grisons, the musical director of the church at Samt-Omer, composed before the French Revolution, Racine's 'Athalie,' and the ' Marseillaise.' Barbet, Seinguerlet, and other French writers have proved similar coincidences from other sources.

It is to Grisons's early composition that the tune of the ' Marseillaise ' has been ascribed by various French writers. When Fetis, sen., the Director of the Conservatoire at Brussels, who had written against Rouge t's authorship, was threatened with a lawsuit by Amedee Rouget de 1'Isle, who said he was a nephew of the author of the ' Marseillaise,' he (Fetis, sen.), then a man of eighty, and living as a foreigner at Paris, made a re- tractation, so as to avoid unpleasantness at his.