The name Ninian is still less easy to recognize when d is substituted for the initial n. That has occurred in such names as Chipperdingan in Wigtownshire, meaning the well (tiobar) of Ninian, and that is the form given by Geoffery Gaimar's 'Estorie des Engles' (twelfth century): :

A Witernen [Whithorn gist Saint Dinan,
Long tens vint devant Columban.

The adhesion of the final t in "Saint " to the name which follows is of frequent occurrence, as J. T. F. observes; but sometimes the reverse process takes effect. Passengers travelling to Glasgow by the Midland Railway from St. Pancras are landed at St. Enoch station. Most people who speculate on the subject at all connect the name with Enoch "seventh from Adam," the father of Methuselah; but none of the four Enochs who figure in the Old Testament was eligible for canonization, which postulates Christian baptism. A clue to the true name occurs in the city records of Glasgow in the sixteenth century, wherein mention is made of San Theneuke's Kirk," which appears later as St. Tennoch's, and ultimately as St. Enoch's. The dedication was to the mother of St. Kentigern, whose name is variously written in early MSS. as Thenew, Tenaw, Thaney, and Thennat.

66

Monreith.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great. By Henry Fielding. Edited by James T. Hillhouse. (Yale, University Press; London, Milford, 128. 6d.) THIS book in format is a companion volume to Mr. Jensen's edition of Fielding's Covent Garden Journal, which emanated from the Yale Press in 1915, and in literary execution displays a similar appreciation of the great master, and a like scholarly industry in elaborating his productions. Of Fielding's twenty-six comic plays the two cleverest, consonant with his satirical vein, were tragedies -The Covent Garden Tragedy and The Tragedy of Tragedies '-both, paradoxical though it sound, being burlesques. As Fielding's dramatic works (save his adaptations of Molière) seldom claim attention at the present day, and as he was only 23 when Tom Thumb was put forth, and consequently of an age when contemporary notices of him are rare, it was a courageous adventure on Dr. Hillhouse's part to present Fielding as a dramatist worthy of perusal, and to embark on a research that should revivify his rising popularity in the theatrical world of 1730. The result is a volume worthy of the labour bestowed upon it.

force of his literary powers may be debated, but Whether Fielding at this time realized the full he was more than subconscious that the ludicrous irresistibly appealed to him. Addressing his London lady-love from the village of Upton Gray in Hampshire in 1728, complaining of his isolation from the pleasures of the metropolis, he had observed :

COL. COLQUHOUN GRANT (12 S. iv. 326). – C. McG. will find useful information in vol. viii. of the 'Dict. Nat. Biog.,' p. 382 et seq. (1908). E. F. B.

RUTTER FAMILY NAME (12 S. v. 7).— The whole of chap. xvi. of Mr. Ernest Weekley's The Romance of Names' (published by John Murray in 1914) is taken up with this subject; see also 'Surnames (same author and publisher, 1916) at p. 240. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

Consequently when two years later, being already the author of three acted plays, he bethought him of soliciting the patronage of the town by composing a cento reflecting the absurdities of the heroic drama from Dryden to James Thomson, he brought to the task much natural aptitude therefor, and also, as results proved, a remarkable equipment of dramatic lore and learning.

It was at the Haymarket Theatre (which stood on the site of the present Pall Mall Restaurant) that Fielding produced Tom Thumb, a Tragedy,' in April, 1730. It appeared simultaneously in book-form, and the original text, with the interesting and little-known preface to the second edition, is reprinted in the present volume. in Buckingham's Rehearsal of 1671, "the

As

lofty unreality and inflated gradiloquence (to use Dr. Hillhouse's phrase) characteristic of the tragedy-writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were attacked in Tom Thumb.' So keenly was Fielding's vigorous humour appreciated that the piece was played "upwards of forty nights," a record that would before The Beggar's Opera' have been unprecedented.

4

Having thus secured the public ear, Fielding improved the occasion by reconstructing the play, enlarging it from two acts to three, renaming it The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great,' and staging it in 1731. The rearranged edition, embellished with an illustration by Hogarth, was also printed, and in addition Fielding conceived the idea of tacking to it a mock-critical preface and footnotes. The preface-replete, as Dr. Hillhouse remarks, with "solemn drollery "-satirized the pedantries of critics and commentators generally, and of John Dennis in particular. The Tragedy of Tragedies' is one continuous parody of the extravagant sentiments and the unrestrained bombast uttered by the stage-tyrants who peopled the plays of John Banks, Dennis, Dryden, Nathaniel Lee, Elijah Fenton, Charles Johnson, Nahum Tate, Theobald, Thomson, Young, and others. In the preface Fielding presupposes the Tragedy' to be an Elizabethan production, while the foot-notes teem with "parallel passages out of the best of our English writers" who had, as he alleges, borrowed their flamboyant heroics from it. Fielding's make-belief is so compelling, and the quotations are so apt and so numerous, that the task, though laborious, was evidently a most congenial one. That was perhaps the best earnest of success, for, as the learned President of Magdalen wrote but recently, that work of art will not please twice which has not pleased once." But Fielding, knowing that his audiences and readers needed no assistance in catching the allusions to contemporary playwrights, limited his references mainly to the less-known classical plays. What Dr. Hillhouse has done is to put us in the position of Fielding's audiences and readers, and point out to us, in his own notes, many hits" at then better-known productions which for Fielding to have noted would have been a work of supererogation. The extent to which the present-day reader is thus assisted to the many good things provided by Fielding's satire is indicated by the fact that while Fielding's text and foot-notes occupy sixty-five pages, the editor's annotations run to forty-one pages of small print.

It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that Fielding's ridicule of some phases of the dramatic work of Dryden and of Young (fair enough when limited to selected passages) does not represent his final opinion of their merits. In his True Greatness of 1741 he wrote concerning the

former :

Young; if an inferior actor should, in his opinion, exceed Quin or Garrick; or a signpost painter set himself above the inimitable Hogarth: we become ridiculous by our vanity."

There are also two Appendixes, both valuable. In Appendix A some details are given of The Battle of the Poets,' a satire on the choice of a new laureate to succeed Eusden (who had died in September, 1730), which was interpolated in Tom Thumb' in December. Dr. Hillhouse concedes that from its "mean and spiteful tone" it is improbable that Fielding was responsible for it, but he omits to mention a more cogent reason for dissociating his name from its authorship, namely, an announcement in The Daily Journal of Nov. 30, 1730: "Whereas it hath been advertised that an entire new act, called the Battle of the Poets, is introduced into the Tragedy of Tom Thumb; This is to assure the Town, that I have never seen this additional act, nor am any ways concerned therein. Henry Fielding." It is curious that this public repudiation should have been overlooked, as there is much evidence that the editor and his collaborators have sifted the contemporary news-sheets somewhat thoroughly. It should be borne in mind that Fielding did not become manager of the Haymarket Theatre until 1736.

In Appendix B ten pages are devoted to an account of the adaptations (including the musical) through which Tom Thumb has passed, and the appreciation of their merits by such competent judges as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Walter Scott. Dr. Hillhouse might have cited further testimony of their popularity. For instance, Mrs. Piozzi, writing to the Rev. Daniel Lysons in 1797, complains: "No matter! my half-crown for Flo shall be willingly contributed, though I do think seriously that Dent's Dog Tax will have an exceeding bad effect on the country. ...Both Ministry and Opposition have at last agreed on one point: they join against the lapdogs :

So when two dogs are fighting in the streets With a third dog one of these two dogs meets; With angry teeth he bites him to the bone, And this dog smarts for what that dog had done. These verses are somewhat too soft and mellifluous for the occasion, being Fielding's; but I half long to address a doggrell epistle to Mr. Dent."

An incident, too, in Byron's life might have been recalled. His indignation was somewhat acutely roused, on his first entering the House of Lords in 1809, by certain difficulties attending the proof of his birth. These overcome, Lord Eldon welcomed him cordially, but Lord Byron himself says:

66

The Chancellor apologized to me for the delay, observing that these forms were part of his duty. I begged him to make no apology, and added, as he had certainly shown no violent hurry, Your Lordship is exactly like Tom Thumb' (which was then being acted); you did your duty, and you did no more."

Thirdly, many readers would naturally lean Charles Dickens so much a towards a play which had been a favourite of favourite that O'Hara's musical version was played in amateur theatricals at his house, Dickens taking the part of the ghost of Gaffer Thumb, and Mark Lemon playing the giantess Glumdalca. Nay, more, Dickens in Pickwick' quotes two lines from Lord Grizzle's song.

Lastly, nothing brings the eighteenth-century zest for Fielding's tragedy more vividly before us than the delightfully playful account in Fanny Burney's Diary' of its private representation at Worcester in 1777. She herself impersonated Huncamunca, while her little niece Anna Maria, of less than seven years, under her tuition, won all hearts by her rendering of Tom Thumb.

As Sir Walter Besant in his essay on Rabelais remarks, "Life is too serious to make good burlesque writing possible except within very narrow limits, and directly the puppets touch on human interests, they become themselves human"; and those who take up Fielding's Tragedy' will enjoy much diversion, but, from the very nature of the subject, they must not look for the intense humanity and fidelity to nature characteristic of the works written by him when he had travelled two decades further towards the Shade.

MESSRS. RIMELL & SON devote the first part of their Catalogue 248 to books on the fine arts and literature, and the second part to engravings. Among the former may be noted The Ingoldsby Legends,' with 42 duplicate proof impressions of the engravings, 1864, 15l. 158.; Michel's La Reliure Française,' with 22 plates of bindings, 151. 158.; a set of first editions of Dickens's Christmas Books, 5 vols., with additional proofs of the illustrations, formerly the property of Swain, the wood engraver, 651.; an extraillustrated copy of The Vicar of Wakefield,' 1843, 201. ; a complete set of the 120 plates issued by the Society for photographing Relics of Old London, 101. ; a collection of 1,046 plates of the Saints, mounted in 4 portfolios, 107. 108. ; and an extra-illustrated copy of Thomson's Seasons,” 2 vols, 232 plates, 701. An item of a different kind is a manuscript collection of extracts from Kent wills recorded at Canterbury, 1444-1730, 7 vols., 81.

BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES.

MESSRS. MAGGS rightly entitle their Catalogue 374 Rare and Beautiful Books and Manuscripts,' for it is full of literary and artistic treasures, such as the English version of Christine de Pisan's 'Book of Fayttes of Armes,' translated, printed, and bound by Caxton, 1489. in its original oak boards (6507.); the illuminated manuscript on vellum of Wyclif's translation of the New Testament, 232 leaves, with elaborate initials (3501.); or the original manuscript of Lucy Hutchinson's celebrated Life of her husband Col. Hutchinson, 477 closely written pages, containing a good deal of unpublished matter (1507.). Shakespeare is represented by the Second Folio (2251.) and the rarer Third Folio (3851.), and Spenser by the first edition of 'Colin Clouts Come Home Again,' 1595 (951.). Mr. Cobden Sanderson contributes two fine specimens of the workmanship of the Doves Press -Keats's Poems and Sonnets' and Shelley's 'Poems' (851. each). There are also two presentation copies from Dickens,Pickwick' (1957.) and Martin Chuzzlewit' (1857.). Davies's Life of Garrick has been extended by Queen Charlotte to 4 folio volumes by the insertion of over 300 portraits and historical scenes (1757.). Among some choice MSS. is a fifteenth-century collection of prayers, originally belonging to an unknown cardinal (5251.).

HEER NIJHOFF sends from the Hague his Catalogues 441 and 442. The former includes under Bibliographie Cockle's Bibliography of English Military Books up to 1642,' 1900 (10fl.), and Gordon Duff's Fifteenth-Century English Books,' Bibliographical Society, 1917 (30fl.). There is also a French translation (1fl.50), but published in 1846 at Berlin, of 'The Diary of Lady Willoughby,' an additional testimony to the success achieved by Mrs. Hannah Mary Rathbone's semi-historical fiction (see 11 S. x. 241, 297).

The January issue contains two important entries: a manuscript of the 'Speculum Humanæ Salvationis,' 97 leaves, with 190 coloured illustrations (1400f.), and an elaborate history, in 13 vols., of the Dutch horse artillery (1200fl.). The section Héraldique includes a French manuscript armorial with 1,100 coats of arms (250f.) and a Dutch seventeenth century armorial with 18 coats of English peers (36fl.).

Notices to Correspondents.

WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately, but we will forward advance proofs of answers received if a shilling is sent with the query; nor can we advise correspondents as to the value of old books and other objects or as to the means of disposing of them.

BARRULE.-See ante, p. 48.

MR. J. B. WAINEWRIGHT and DR. J. L. WHITEHEAD.-Forwarded.

J. B. W. ('An Adieu to the Turf ').—Anticipated at 12 S. iv. 55.

J. B. McGoVERN (F. F. Montresor). — The Literary Year-Book' and Dr. E. A. Baker's 'Guide to the Best Fiction' both give Miss F. F, Mon

tresor.

·

J. R. H. ("Killed through drinking the Cheltenham waters ").-Mr. E. R. Suffling includes these lines in his Epitaphia' (p. 299), placing them at Droitwich with the date 1701; but he adds: "Some doubt has been expressed as to whether this epitaph exists, and I am sorry to say I cannot vouch for it."

H. STONE ("Sad-iron ").-The New Eng. Dict.' says: 'From sad, a. or v. A smoothing iron, properly a solid flat-iron, in contradistinction to a box-iron.'" And under the adjective, in various physical senses, the Dict. has: "7. Of material objects. Solid, dense, compact; mas'sive, heavy. Obs."