402
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL MAY 22, im
So indeed the phrase stands in the edition
of 1894 before me. I do not know if the
book has been reprinted since that date,
and the error removed.
Mr. Richards proceeds on p. 306 to refer to 'As You Like It,' I. iii. 11, and the doubt whether " my child's father " should not be " my father's child." Into this debatable question I do not propose to enter. I allow myself to add that Mr. Richards has many interesting references to English usage in his learned volume, but none of them is indexed, a fact which has cost me a lot of time in looking them up. I knew there was an index, and trusted to it in vain.
The point about these examples is that they have survived the scrutiny of eyes for many years. It would be only too easy to mention misprints in the average first or second edition of to-day, but to occupy the pages of ' N. & Q.' with such matters would be unjustifiable. Two instances of apparent misprints which have produced some odd logic may perhaps be mentioned.
In ' Letters and Recollections of Walter Scott ' (1904), by Mrs. Hughes, she notes of Scott's last days that
" I found a present of a black-cock, and knowing how capacious was the appetite of an invalid and how much the circumstance of the bird coming from Scotland would make it welcome,"
presented it to Sir Walter. Here " cap- ricious " is surely right.
In the first chapter of ' Pickwick ' an edition I have reads, with reference to Mr. Tupman : " Time and feeling had expanded that once romantic form." Though width and wisdom are connected in ' Pickwick,' the right text says " feeding." But the history of error, especially in modern times, is so wide and gloomy a subject that it is as well not to enter on it. NEL MEZZO.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES DIBDIN
THE ELDER.
MR. E. RIMBAULT DIBDIN has won the heartiest thanks of all interested in the preservation of records of our English national music by his elaborate and much- needed Bibliography. See the references given at the head of his last article (10 S. i. 502).
The Bibliography is without doubt the outcome of years of most careful observation and collecting, and it is evident that so complete and so accurate a chronicle of the works of his ancestor could have been compiled by no other person. The life of Charles Dibdin which MB. RIMBAULT DIBDIN
is engaged upon will be eagerly anticipated
by a great number of people who rightly
look upon Charles Dibdin not only as the
author of some of our most human lyrics,
but also as one of the most versatile and
remarkable men of his time.
MB. DIBDIN, with perhaps one early exception, does not appear to attempt the great task of cataloguing the songs of Charles Dibdin, which are scattered through English songbooks of early and late date ; he merely deals with the separate publications, some being single engraved music sheets, and others of more extended contents, as com- plete operas, &c. While it is doubtful' whether any really fresh material can be added to MB. DIED IN' s life, the following from my own library may be of interest as variations of editions.
A word or two as to Dibdin's music pub- lishers. The first of these were the brothers Thompson of St. Paul's Churchyard, who issued Dibdin's earliest ballads in 1760. In 1763, as we see from the list, Dibdin had published a work at his own risk ; but from 1768 to 1773 John Johnston printed most of his larger productions. Longman, Lukey & Co. and Longman & Broderip followed ; then John Preston came into the field, making a mint of money over the song ' Poor Jack.' Worried by publishers and pirates before his entertainment ' The Oddities,' 1789, Dibdin took the matter into his own hands, and down to 1805 published every one of his productions himself. During this period each of his song sheets (I have noted but a couple or so exceptions) was signed by his own hand, the " C. Dib " frequently exhaustedly ending in a stroke. The mere mechanical labour of signing so many thousands of these, added to his nightly work at the entertainment, the worry of business debts and difficulties, the giving of music lessons, all apart from his musical and literary composition, must have been a strain sufficient to wreck any ordinary man. Yet among all these Dibdin wrote ' Tom Bowling' and ' The Token ' !
In 1805 Dibdin, weary of the work, sold his stock and plates to Messrs. Bland & Weller ; and the plates and copyrights in 1818-19 fell at an auction sale into the hands of George Walker and J. Diether, who again issued from them, many reprinted by the latter bearing, long after Dibdin's death, the statement that the song is " sung by Mr. Dibdin in his new entertainment."
During Dibdin's life legalized pirates in Ireland (for copyright between the two-
