Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/139

 NOTES BY THE WAY.

��of his great rival, Pope. Others referred to George Romney, Johnson, Mrs. Unwin, the Throgmortons, and his dog ' Beau ' ; while others dealt with the more prosaic subject of his publisher, the copyright question, and some projected reviews of his translation. A few of the lots fell to private purchasers, though many were bought by Messrs. Waller of Fleet Street, realizing prices in some cases as high as 4?. 4s. One of them, containing a sonnet written by Cowper on behalf of a printer at Leicester, who had got into prison for selling some of Tom Paine' s publications, fetched four guineas and a half. Together with the Cowper letters were sold a quantity of original correspondence of George Selwyn and his contemporaries, Fox, Pitt, Canning, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson, Horace Walpole, Lord Erskine, &c., and also an autograph letter of Drake, the great navigator, which was knocked down, after a keen competition, at five guineas."

' Yardley Oak ' forms a subject for correspondence in the numbers for December 6th and 13th, 1873. On January 10th, 1874, Mr. Edward Solly writes that the most complete account of the ' Yardley Oak ' is to be found in Loudon's ' Arboretum,' vol. iii. p. 1765, 1838, and that there is a large engraving of it in Hayley's ' Cowper,' vol. iii. 1806.

In response to a query by J. L. P. on May 13th, 1876, about the locality of the ' Yardley Oak,' Cuthbert Bede on the 3rd of June states that it is fixed by Cowper's own letters :

" It was at the Northamptonshire Yardley, near to the poet's ' beloved Weston.' In his letter to Mr. Samuel Rose, dated ' Weston, September 11, 1783,' he says: 'Since your departure I have twice visited the oak, and with an intention to push my inquiries a mile beyond it, where it seems I should have found another oak much larger and much more respectable than the former ; but once I was hindered by the rain, and once by the sultriness of the day. This latter oak has been known by the name of Judith many ages, and is said to have been an oak at the tune of the Conquest."

On the 1st of June, 1878, it is stated that at the recent sale of the Hayley collection of autographs, Mr. W. H. Collingridge (the owner of Cowper's house at Olney) became the purchaser of the ' Yardley Oak,' 10 pp. 4to, in the handwriting of Cowper. It fetched 111

On November 16th, 1878, over the signatures of Charles Johnson and C. A. Ward, references are made to Fuseli, of whom Cowper wrote : " The man is all fire, and an enthusiast in the highest degree on the subject of Homer, and has given me more than once a jog when I have been inclined to nap with the author."

The question as to the size of the first edition of ' John Gilpin ' is raised on March 15th, 1879, by A, who quotes from Lowndes (Bonn's ed.) : " ' John Gilpin,' a ballad, Lond. Johnson, 1783. First appeared in The Public Advertiser, 1782. Afterwards in 24mo."

" This leaves us somewhat in doubt as to the size of Johnson's edition. Is the 24mo meant or not meant to refer to this first separate

��' Yardley Oak.'

��Cuthbert

Bede on its

locality.

��W.H. Colling- ridge pur- chases the

MS. for 111.

��Size of first

edition of

' John Gilpin.'

�� �