Garden, but because he was dead long Throughout the year 1648 he is known to before Dibdin left in 1781.

have lived in King's Street, Westminster, and there are entries in the records of the parish of St. Margaret which prove the fact. These records are very voluminous, and though the Town Clerk has very courteously permitted me to inspect them, I do not think they throw any light upon the exact site of the house. From the quotations I am about to cite, however, I suggest that it must be concluded that Walker and Cromwell lived in the same house.

It is also well known that Cromwell termed Vane "Brother Heron," and that Vane termed Cromwell " Brother Fountain.' From this it has been incorrectly concluded that these terms were personal nicknames. On the contrary, they were probably terms applied to the knots of politicians to which each respectively belonged; and, in Cromwell's case, I think that if his house was "The Fountain" in King's Street, he and others of his coterie would be known as 'brothers Fountain." That the term

Dibdin's novels were not written in the period following that date, when he was casting about for a means of livelihood, but long after, when his Table Entertainments had brought him prosperity. The origin of these is said to have been more or less accidental, which is not the case. In 1787 Dibdin prepared his initial entertainment, Readings and Music,' and toured the country with it in order to obtain funds for the contemplated voyage to India. When that scheme failed he repeated the entertainment under the same title at various towns in the South-West, and then attempted successfully to get a hearing in London with a new entertainment called 'The Whim of the Moment' (January, 1789), not The Oddities,' which was not produced until December, 1789. Mr. Holmes considers that Dibdin's knowledge of the sea "is as deep a mystery as that of the source of Shakespeare's knowledge of classical mythology," as he "had been on the sea only" Brother Fountain " was not a nickname three times in his life, and then only for a peculiar to Cromwell is shown by the few hours each time." Yet he refers to following quotation from a letter from Dibdin's attempted voyage to India, when William Rowe to Cromwell himself, to be he was at sea for a month, and mentions that found in John Nicholls's Original Letters he was born and reared in a seaport town, and Papers of State,' p. 17. The letter is where the fact that his eldest brother was dated 30 Aug., 1650, and concludes as captain of an Indiaman would ensure his follows:coming in contact with the marine element. From the knowledge of sea terms shown in the songs it is reasonable to infer that the writer was on intimate terms with his subject, just as the knowledge shown in extant orchestral scores by Dibdin, which met with acceptance in their day, is the best reply to the customary nonsense about his ignorance of the rudiments of music.

E. RIMBAULT DIBDIN. 64, Huskisson Street, Liverpool.

THE LITERARY FRAUDS OF HENRY
WALKER THE IRONMONGER.
(See 11 S. x. 441, 462, 483, 503; xi. 2, 22.)
12. A COLLECTION OF SEVERAL PASSAGES,
&c.-(continued.)

My additional corroboration consists in
(a) proofs of Walker's intimate connexion
with Cromwell, and (b) "Walkerisms" in
the tract itself.

(a) Cromwell and Walker.

Up to the time when he fled from London to the Army, in the middle of the year 1647, Cromwell's lodgings were in Drury Lane.

:

"Your brother Fountayne is drawing up a declaration in answere to the Scots King's, and I must be his amanuensis all day to-morrow.'

Now for my proof that Walker lived at "The Fountain," in King's Street. Cromwell was away on service with the Army at the end of 1648, and did not return to London until late in December. So Walker commenced to lecture on Hebrew at "The Fountain," announcing the fact as follows:

On Monday next begins a free lecture, to be read every night at 5 a clock, to teach the Schollers but those that understand neither Greek grounds of the Hebrew tongue. And not only nor Latine may be able to translate any part of the Hebrew bible in short time. The Professor doth it at his own charges for a generall good, and they that will may come, and it will cost them nothing, at the Fountain in King's streete at Westminster."-Perfect Occurrences, No. 94, 1320 Oct., 1648.

"This night was the Hebrew lecture begun, and is every night at five a clocke freely taught for nothing for half an houre in the Fountaine yard in Kings street at Westminster (not in the tavern, as some mistake, but at a private house next doore to it). There are divers Members, Ministers and Gentl. have been there, and some fellows of colledges. Waideson, of both the Universities and physician Upon conclusion of the college of London, was pleased to give me

Dr.

66

66

a

66

1799. The Old Clothes Man.'
Covent Garden. Never printed.

an

Presented at

HolThis play was produced 13 Feb., 1798. tion, in prose, from the German.” Genest says (7: 360-61): "Though at- croft's play is derived from the Diego und tributed to Holcroft in his 'Memoirs,' the Leonor of Johann Christoph Unzer, but authorship of it has been ascribed to Fen-traces back through vol. v. of the familiar wick." To me this Fenwick ascription 'Nouveau Théâtre Allemand,' 1783 (pp. 4 seems rather flat-before the evidence of 191). Cf. discussion under The German the Memoirs' (pp. 159, 162-3, 190). The Hotel,' 1790. In addition, the evidence of 'Thespian Dictionary' and the Biographia the Memoirs' (p. 163) is not likely to be Dramatica' both give it to Holcroft, and fallacious, especially when there is both were published prior to the date of the extended record of his sending the piece to 'Memoirs.' A copy of this first edition in the press (p. 172 ff.). the New York Society Library is replete with manuscript notes, and bears on its .cover the words Prompt-Book. Wm. This comedy ran but a few nights, and Dunlap." I have seen what appear to be respectively a second edition,' the only printed record is that the second third edition," and a "fourth edition all dated performance was on 3 April, 1799 (Bio1798, and all paged and printed the same. graphia Dramatica '). From the Covent The play was included in 'The London Garden ledger accounts now in the British Stage,' 1824; 'The Acting Drama,' 1834; Museum (Eg. MS. 2297, ff 101-2) we learn The British Drama, Illustrated,' 1864; that it was first played on Tuesday, 2 April, 'Five Thousand a Year' and and Dicks's 'Standard Plays,' No. 215, 1883. 1799, with Miss Mary Russell Mitford (Recollections Tobacco,' the receipts amounting to of a Literary Life,' ed. 1852; 1: 136) has 230l. 19s. The next night the programme worried me considerably with the follow-was Five Thousand a Year,' Old Cloathsmen,' and 'The Mouth of the Nile,' and the The Bioreceipts dwindled to 151l. 3s. "It was ascribed graphia Dramatica' says: to Mr. Holcroft, but not acknowledged by him." Cf. Oulton (ed. 1818, 2: 46). The Memoirs' contain many indisputable allusions to it (pp. 163, 170): one telling of the reading and how the players liked it (p. 222); one concerning financial arrangements (p. 193); and others speaking of the songs Old Clothes to Sell' (p. 177), 'Dan Cupid' (p. 190), Bitter Pangs' (p. 190), When Sharp is the Frost' (p. 195), and 'Joys of Eating,' written 6 Feb., 1799 (p. 225). ELBRIDGE COLBY. Columbia University, New York City. (To be continued.)

:

ing
"It is not many years ago that I and another
lover of the drama were disputing as to the author
of He's Much to Blame. Both possessed the
play, and both were certain as to the name
printed in the title-page. Neither were [sic]
wrong. It was the story of the two knights and
the shield. My friend's copy was the first edition
with the feigned name; mine the seventh, when
the ordeal [of party hatred] was past, and the
true author was restored to his rightful place."
Miss Mitford might have been spared the
ardent supplication which follows,

"May Heaven avert from us the renewal of -such prejudice and such injustice!"

had her memory only been more trust worthy. So far as I have searched-and I have turned many a dusty book-there was no Seventh Edition distinctly so, as she implies, nor was there any "feigned name on the first edition.

66

EARLY LONDON GYMNASIA.

IN 1826 the London Gymnastic Society established in Pentonville, at the top of Wharton Street, their first open-air gymnasium, and its immediate success led to the provision of branch gymnasia in the New Road, Marylebone; at Goldsmith's Place, Hackney Road; and near "The Green Man," Kent Road (Cromwell's Clerkenwell,' p. 326; Pinks's 'Clerkenwell,' p. 572). The inaugural ceremony, on 1 May, is recorded in the unpublished diary of Thomas Reynolds (1792-1868) of Arlington House Academy, one of its founders :—

"I was the third man on the ground-assisted to dig holes to insert a high scaffold pole on which

used to walk frequently from Brook Green to the
Professor's house near the Bridge, and I spent
memorable evenings with him, discussing the
latest science problems, and listening to words
of wisdom addressed by a man of his supreme
eminence to a mere youth of twenty. I owe much,
very much, to these interviews and discussions
with Sir Charles Wheatstone. Some one says we
cannot be too particular in the choice of our
parents! I was blessed in my selection. To
speak of my father reminds me of a link with the
past which it may interest, you to hear. My
father died in 1884, aged 92, after forty years'
residence in this parish. He often told me that
when a boy he heard from his great-grandmother,
then over 100, incidents connected with the great
Plague of London, 1665-incidents related to her
by her grandfather, who himself was smitten by
the plague.
He was one of the three survivors at
Staveley in Derbyshire, where the plague was
conveyed by refugees from London. He died in
1729, aged 90; his life overlapped that of my
great-great-grandmother by nineteen years.
Her
life overlapped my father's by twenty-two years,
so that this is a case of a bridge of only two arches
carrying me back to the great Plague of 1665."

WILLIAM BULL.

6

WILLIAM CAXTON AND BISHOP DOUGLAS.— Caxton translated the Eneid from the See the D.N.B.,' 388/2, French in 1490.

item 68. Douglas, in his 'Proloug of the
Fyft Buik,' comments severely on this
performance :-

Now harkis sportis, mirthis, and mery playis,
Full gudlie pastance on mony syndry wayis,
Endite by Virgile, and heir by me translait,
Quhilk William Caxtoun knew neuir all his dayis ;
His febill prois [prose] been mank and mutilait;
For, as I said tofoir, that man forvayis [blunders];
Bot my propyne [outpouring] coym fra the pres
Vnforlatit [fresh], not jawyn [emptied] fra tun to
fut hait,
In fresche sapour new fro the berrie run.
tun,

(1513, ed. Small, 1874, pp. 221-2.)

"The pres
is here the wine-press, not the
printing-press, for the Bishop's vigorous
translation was not printed until 1553, and
then incorrectly.

:

Put by this Caxtoun, that, bot [unless] he had bene mad,

The fluid of Touyr for Tibir he had nocht write; All men ma knaw thair he forvait [blundered] quite.

'As I said tofoir," quoth Douglas. He had fallen foul of Caxton in his first Prologue SPONGE. (See 1 S. iii. 390; 10 S. xii. 30.) The namis of peple or citeis bene so bad (id., pp. 10-11):"When was the sponge of commerce first known in England ? was asked at the above references, in almost the same words, with an interval of fifty-eight years, in each case without result. Accidentally, I have seen a probable answer in De Compositione Medicamentorum,' by Scribonius Largus, who was military surgeon in Britain in the campaign of 43 A.D. Within the next five years he wrote his book, which has many references to the use of sponges, with hot, cold, and salt water, with

.

For sickerlie, les than [unless] wyse autouris lene
[lie],
Enee saw neuir Touyr with his ene,
For Touyr devides Grece from Hungarie,
And Tibir is chief fluide of Italie:
Touyr is kend ane grane [fork] of that rever

In Latyne hecht Danubium or Hester.

.

na mair

This note is sent for the sake of those many readers of N. & Q.' who have not access to the Douglas translation.

vinegar, &c. (see recipes XX., XLIII., XLVI., He goes on to say that Caxton is " &c.). Let one quotation, as to nose-lyke Virgill, [than] the owle resemblis the bleeding, suffice : "Erumpit e naribus papyngay.' sanguis. .Proderit ergo aqua frigida vel posca subinde aspergere totam faciem, vel spongia refrigerare." This collection is full of good and interesting things, such as the therapeutic use of electricity (in the only form then available, so far as we know) for headache and for gout. ROCKINGHAM. Boston, Mass.

RICHARD H. THORNTON.

XANTHUS, EXANTHE, EXHANTUS.-Long ago I noted this curious passage in Otes's Sermons on St. Jude,' printed 1633, but preached thirty years earlier :—

As the sweet river Hippanus is made bitter when it passeth the pole Exanthe; like the bitter are men made worse by bad company." water spoken of in the booke of Numbers.

So

"A SCARBOROUGH WARNING."-By this time every one must know the significance of this expression, which is that of no warning at all. Let me instance a present-day example of its fitness in the unexpected shelling by Germans of the The pole Exanthe " was something of a Queen of Watering-puzzle. But now I find "Exhantus," which should be Exanthus, in Bishop Douglas's Eneados,' fo. xx b (1553), and "the flude Exhantus is the Xanthus. The river

places on Wednesday, 16 Dec., 1914. In
his History of Scarbrough,' Joseph Brog-
den Baker notes that the sudden surprise of
the castle in 1554 " gave rise to the proverb
known as Scarbrough warning " (p. 69).
ST. SWITHIN.

Hippanus I have not been able to trace.

RICHARD H. THORNTON. 8, Mornington Crescent, N.W.