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NOTES
AUTHORSHIP OF HENRY VIII
In my last communication on the subject of Henry VIII., I referred to certain characteristic tricks of Fletcher's style of frequent occurrence in that play, and I now beg leave to furnish you with a few instances. I wish it, however, to be understood, that I advance these merely as illustrative specimens selected at random; as there is scarcely a line of the portions of the play I assume to be Fletcher's but would furnish some evidence to a diligent student of this writer's style: and that, although I think each separate instance as strongly characteristic of Fletcher as it is unlike Shakspeare, it is only in their aggregate number that I insist upon their importance.
The first instance to which I call attention is the use of the substantive "one" in a manner which, though not very uncommon, is used by no writer so frequently as Fletcher. Take the following:—
"So great ones."—Woman's Prize, II. 2.
"And yet his songs are sad ones."—Two Noble Kinsmen, II. 4.
and the title of the play, The False One.
Compare with these from Henry VIII.:—
"This night he make a supper, and a great one."—Act I. 3.
"Shrewd ones."—"Lame ones."—"so great ones."—Ibid.
"I had my trial,
And must needs say a noble one."—Act II. 1.
"A wife—a true one."—Act III. 1.
"They are a sweet society of fair ones."—Act I. 4.
Fletcher habitually uses "thousand" without the indefinite article, as in the following instances:
"Carried before 'em thousand desolations."—False One, II. 9.
"Offers herself in thousand safeties to you."—Rollo, II. 1.
"This sword shall cut thee into thousand pieces."—Knight of Malta, IV. 2.
In Henry VIII. we have in the prologue:
"Of thousand friends."
"Cast thousand beams upon me."—Act IV. 2.
The use of the word "else" is peculiar in its position in Fletcher:—
"'Twere fit I were hang'd else."—Rule a Wife, II.
"I were to blame else."—Ibid.
"I've lost me end else."—Act IV.
"I am wide else."—Pilgrim, IV. 1.
In Henry VIII., the word occurs in precisely the same position:—
"Pray God he do! He'll never know himself, else."—Act II. 2.
"I were malicious, else."—Act IV. 2.
The peculiarly idiomatic expression "I take it" is of frequent occurrence in Fletcher, as witness the following:—
"This is no lining for a trench, I take it."—Rule a Wife, III.
"And you have land i' th' Indies, as I take it."—Ibid. IV.
"A fault without forgiveness, as I take it."—Pilgrim, IV. 1.
"In noble emulation (so I take it)."—Ibid. IV. 2.
In one scene of Henry VIII., Act I. 3., the expression occurs twice: "One would take it;" "There, I take it."
Of a peculiar manner of introducing a negative condition, one instance from Fletcher, and one from Henry VIII. in reference to the same substantive, though used in different senses, will suffice:
"All noble battles,
Maintain'd in thirst of honour, not of blood."—Bonduca, V. 1.
"And those about her
From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,
And by those claim their greatness, not by blood."—Henry VIII., V. 4.
Of a kind of parenthetical asseveration, a single instance, also, from each will suffice:
"My innocent life (I dare maintain it, Sir)."—Wife for a Month, IV. 1.
"A woman (I dare say, without vain glory)
Never yet branded with suspicion."—Henry VIII., III. 1.
"A great patience," in Henry VIII., may be paralleled by "a brave patience," in The Two Noble Kinsmen: and the expression "aim at," occurring at the close of the verse (as, by the bye, almost all Fletcher's peculiarities do) as seen in Act III. 1.,
"Madam, you wander from the good we aim at,"
is so frequently to be met with in Fletcher, that, having noted four instances in the Pilgrim, three in the Custom of the Country, and four in the Elder Brother, I thought I had found more than enough.
Now, Sir, on reading Henry VIII., and meeting with each of these instances, I felt that I remembered "the trick of that voice;" and, without having at present by me any means for reference, I feel confident that of the commonest examples not so many can be found among all the rest of the reputed plays of Shakspeare, as in Henry VIII. alone, or rather in those parts of Henry VIII. which I reject as Shakspeare's; while of the more remarkable, I think I might challenge the production of a single instance.
My original intention in the present paper was merely to call attention to a few such expressions as the foregoing; but I cannot resist the impulse to quote one or two parallels of a different character:—
Henry VIII.:
"The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her!"—Act IV. 2.
Fletcher:
"The dew of sleep fall gently on you, sweet one!"—Elder Brother, IV. 3.
"Blessings from heaven in thousand showers fall on ye!"—Rollo, II. 3.
"And all the plagues they can inflict, I wish it,
Fall thick upon me!"—Knight of Malta, III. 2.
Henry VIII.:
"To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms."—Act III. 2.
Fletcher:
"My long-since-blasted hopes shoot out in blossoms."—Rollo, II. 3.
These instances, of course, prove nothing; yet they are worth the noting. If, however, I were called upon to produce two passages from the whole of Fletcher's writings most strikingly characteristic of his style, and not more in expression than in thought, I should fix upon the third scene of the first act of Henry VIII., and the soliloquy of Wolsey, Beginning—
"Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness!"
In conclusion, allow me to remark, that I am quite content to have been anticipated by MR. SPEDDING in this discovery (if discovery you and your readers will allow it to be), for the satisfaction I am thereby assured of in the concurrence of so acute a critic as himself, and of a poet so true as the poet-laureate.
SAMUEL HICKSON.
Dec. 10. 1850.
THE CAVALIER'S FAREWELL
The following song is extracted from the MS. Diary of the Rev. John Adamson (afterwards Rector of Burton Coggles, Lincolnshire) commencing in 1658. Can any of your readers point out who was the author?—
"THE CAVALIER'S FAREWELL TO HIS MISTRESS BEING CALLED TO THE WARRS."
1.
"Ffair Ffidelia tempt no more,
I may no more thy deity adore
Nor offer to thy shrine,
I serve one more divine
And farr more great y{^n} you:
I must goe,
Lest the foe
Gaine the cause and win the day.
Let's march bravely on
Charge ym in the Van
Our Cause God's is,
Though their odds is
Ten to one.
2.
"Tempt no more, I may not yeeld
Although thine eyes
A Kingdome may surprize:
Leave off thy wanton toiles
The high borne Prince of Wales
Is mounted in the field,
Where the Royall Gentry flocke.
Though alone
Nobly borne
Of a ne're decaying Stocke,
Cavaleers be bold
Bravely hold your hold,
He that loyters
Is by Traytors
Bought and sold.
3.
"One Kisse more and yn farewell
Oh no, no more,
I prethee giue me ore.
Why cloudest thou thy beames,
I see by these extreames,
A Woman's Heaven or Hell.
Pray the King may haue his owne,
And the Queen
May be seen
With her babes on England's Throne.
Rally up your Men,
One shall vanquish ten,
Victory we
Come to try thee
Once agen.
Query: Who was the author of the above?
F.H.
GRAY'S ELEGY
J.F.M. (Vol. i., p. 101.) remarks, "I would venture to throw out a hint, that an edition of this Elegy, exhibiting all the known translations, arranged in double columns, might be made a noble monument to the memory of Gray." It has been asserted that there is scarcely a thought in this Elegy that Gray has not borrowed from some writer, ancient or modern and if this be true, I would take the liberty of adding a hint to that of J.F.M., namely, that the proposed edition should contain a third column, exhibiting all the known plagiarisms in this famous Elegy. To begin with the first line—
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
Lord Byron, in his notes to the third canto of Don Juan, says that this was adopted from the following passage in Dante's Purgatory, canto viii.:
—– "si ode squilla di lontano
Che paja 'l giorno pianger che si muore."
And it is worthy of notice that this passage corresponds with the first line of Giannini's translation of the Elegy, as quoted by J.F.M.:—
"Piange la squilla 'l giorno, che si muore."
I must add, however, that long before Lord Byron thought of writing Don Juan, Mr. Cary, in his excellent translation of the Italian poet, had noticed this plagiarism in Gray; and what is more, had shown that the principal thought, the "giorno che si muore," was borrowed by Dante from Statius's
"Jam moriente die."
HENRY H. BREEN.
St. Lucia, West Indies, Nov. 1850.
[The preceding communication was accompanied by several others, and by the following gratifying letter, which we print as a fresh proof that our paper is fulfilling the object for which it was instituted, namely, that of promoting literary intercourse between men of letters throughout the world and that it is as favourably received by our fellow countrymen abroad, as it has been by those who are enabled to receive it wet from the press:—
"Owing to the difficulty of procuring the early numbers of 'NOTES AND QUERIES,' especially at this distance from Britain, I have been compelled to wait for its publication in a collected form. I am now in possession of the first volume, and beg leave to offer you a few Notes which have occurred to me on perusing its contents. I am fully sensible of the disadvantage of corresponding with you from so remote a corner of the globe, and am prepared to find some of my remarks anticipated by other correspondents nearer home; but having deeply suffered from the literary isolation consequent upon a residence of twenty-one years in this country, I shall gladly submit to any disadvantage which shall not involve a total exclusion from the means of inter-communication so opportunely afforded by your excellent periodical.
"HENRY H. BREEN."]
