282
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. APRIL 12, im
light an inscription in very minute characters. The
words thus disclosed showed that the book had
once been the property of the great Isaac Casaubon,
'the most learned of all living men,' as Scaliger
styled him. Mr. Sugden gave a description of his
discovery in the Athenceum last year.
" Perhaps I may mention, in conclusion, a small find of my own, of which I gave an account at the last meeting of the Australian Library Association. Some years ago a bundle of second-hand theological works of little value somehow came to our college library, I forget whether by gift or purchase. Be- tween the pages of one of the volumes were some loose charred sheets. On examination they turned out to belong to the first edition of the famous sermon preached by Dr. Sacheverell before the Lord Mayor in St. Paul's Cathedral on 5 November, 1709, ' On the Perils of False Brethren in Church and State.' Readers of Macaulay will remember his summary description, 'A foolish parson preached a foolish sermon.' Sacheverell was impeached before the Lords, convicted, and inhibited from preaching for three years. According to the custom of the day, the punishment of the Court fell on not only the preacher, but the sermon, and it was con- demned to be burnt by the common hangman. The copy which came into my hands, and is now in Trinity College Library, had evidently been in the tire, but had escaped destruction by being some- where near the middle of the heap. Only the mar- gins were burnt. The letterpress was intact. The paper, however, was so scorched that it crumbled in the fingers. For a time I could not think how it could be preserved. Even handling it seemed to threaten fatal injury. An ingenious bookbinder, Mr. Cassidy, of Richmond, to whom I showed it, asked to be allowed to try his skill upon it, and I consented. He took the sheets away, soaked them, 1 believe, in alum water, and gave them tirmness enough to make binding possible. The letterpress can now be read comfortably, and the book handled without risk. There is no reason why it should not last as long as a work that never felt the hangman's tire."
Mr. Sugden's letter appeared in the Athenaum of 28 September, 1901, p. 416. j
SHAKESPEARE AND BEN JONSON :
DID THEY QUARREL?
THERE is a more or less vague tradition that Jonson was indebted to Shakespeare for the first opportunity to get a hearing for his plays, and that 'Every Man in his Humour, with Shakespeare in the cast, is the particular play which first drew attention to Kare Ben's work. It is certain, however, that Shakespeare took no part in Jonson's next play, 'Every Man out of his Humour.' Mr. Fleay, with probable reason, regards this play as the cause of the so-called Elizabethan poetomachia ; and Shakespeare's participa- tion in the quarrel has been regarded as somewhat doubtful, despite Kemp's emphatic declaration in the (Second) 'Keturn from Parnassus.' As a contribution to the litera- ture of the subject, the following notes are offered for what they may be worth, the italics
in every instance being those of the present
writer. In ' As You Like It ' (II. vii.) Jaques
rails partly as follows :
A fool, a fool ! I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool ; a miserable world !
As I do live by food, I met a fool,
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.
- Every Man out of his Humour ' gives us
glimpses of Jonson himself in the characters of Asper and Macilente, and in the following citations it is always Macilente who is speaking, his second speech at the beginning of Act I. being as follows :
Soft, who be these ? I'll lay me down awhile, till they be past.
[He. lies down.
He goes on throughout the play to rail on Fortune in these various terms. His speech which begins the play being over-long, the opening Latin line only is given : Viri est, fortunse coacitatem facile ferre. Who can endure to see blind fortune dote thus ? To be enamour'd on this dusty turf ? I. ii. See how the strumpet fortune tickles him And makes him swoon with laughter. I. iii. I see no reason why that dog (call'd Chance) Should fawn upon this fellow more than me. II. iv. Out on thee, dotard ! What star rul'd his birth ? That brought him such a star? Blind fortune still Bestows hergif ts on such as cannot use them. II. iv.
that there should be fortune To clothe these men so naked in desert ! IV. vi.
These extracts do not exhaust Macilente's allusions to fortune ; but Jaques, in this same scene of k As You Like It,' goes on to declare that
When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time, My lungs began to crow like chanticleer. That fools should be so deep contemplative ; And I did laugh, sans intermission, An hour by his dial. O noble fool ! A worthy fool ! Motley 's the only wear.
Asper (Jonson), in the Induction, thus morals on the time ; and in view of Jaques's words, it seems possible to determine defi- nitely at whom Jonson was girding : 0, how I hate the monstrousness of time, Where every servile imitating spirit (Plagu'd with an itching leprosy of wit), in a mere halting fury, strives to fling His ulc'rous body in the Thespian spring, And straight leaps forth a poet ! but as lame As Vulcan, or the founder of Cripplegate.
Earlier in the Induction Asper declares his intentions, in part as follows :
My soul
Was never ground into such oily colours, To flatter vice and daub iniquity : But (with an armed and resolved hand) I '11 strip the ragged follies of the time
