536
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. n. DEC. si, 190*.
12 August. It can be obtained from Messrs.
Eyre & Spottiswoode for 1(7., so it will be
needless for me to take up the space of
' N. & Q.' with an excerpt of its contents.
JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire.
EDMOND HOYLE (10 th S. ii. 409). Exhaustive inquiries were made by "Cavendish" and by ME. JULIAN MARSHALL, but they both failed to discover any portrait of Hoyle (see 7 th S. vii. 482). {Since then I have examined a large number of catalogues of portraits without any result. I possess, however, a bronze medalet, rather smaller than a six- pence, bearing, on the obverse, a bust to the left, with the inscription " Edmund Hoyle " ; on the reverse, the figure 4. It has been pierced, and was probably intended either tor a whist marker or for the badge of membership of a whist club. The bust is very clearly cut, and the features are of a strongly marked classical type. The medalet appears to be of eighteenth-century work- manship, and gives me the impression that it represents a likeness, not a fancy head.
F. JESSEL.
MANOR COURT or EDWINSTOWE, NOTTS (10 th S. ii. 226, 353, 437). Allow me to supple- ment MR. HONE'S information by saying that a Calendar of Wills proved in this Court was printed in the Northern Genealogist, vol. i. (1895) pp. 20-24, and that on p. 221 of the same volume it is stated that the documents are kept at Newark. E. A. FRY.
- HARDYKNUTE ' (10 th S. ii. 425). This
"fragment," which Kamsay gives more or less correctly, was printed by James Watson Edinburgh, in 1719, five years or so before Eamsay's 'Ever Green' saw light. We, however, have a second part, which John Pinkerton acknowledged to be his work This was written in 1776, although no published till 1781. Pinkerton was abou eighteen years of age when he wrote thi second part of ' Hardyknute,' and was for given for having considered the first part a ancient. The study of ancient Scottish poetry and riper experience led him to say he hac no doubt the poem was of the eighteen! century.
With respect to the title-page of the 'Eve Green,' " wrote by the Ingenious before 1600, all acquainted with the ' Ever Green ' and it compiler's work are, I presume, disposed t view the title more as an innocent literar " dress !; than anything else. In the prefac to the edition of 1761, now before me, th reader is informed that he will find "Satyre
c.
ears
, that were uppermost twoor three hundred"
irs ago." Two hundred years previous to the- rst edition would carry one back to 1524, rhile the alternative would be a hundred, ears previous to that date. If we take lamsay's title along with his preface, it night be fairly said that he was modest in ic former. But the 'Ever Green ' contains ne or more of Ramsay's own productions uch at least was held to be the case many ears ago, and still is maintained by students f Scottish poetry.
Lady Wardlaw's claim to the authorship- f 'Hardyknute' was threshed by Percy in is 'Keliques,' as appears in vol. ii. p. 265 London, 1823). Here, among other argu- ments produced by the doctor, is the state- nent of William Thomson, the Scottish musician (who published the ' Orpheus Cale- "onius,' 1733), that he "heard fragments of b ('Hardyknute') repeated in his infancy,. >efore Mrs. Wardlaw's copy (?) was heard of."
am not aware " that all along there have >een advocates for the authorship of Sir John Bruce of Kinross." So far back as 1719 there appeared extracts from a letter of the last lamed, from which I venture to think any reader could reasonably conclude that Sir Tohri was not, and did not intend it to be understood he was, the author. Lord Hailes n 1785 wrote to Pinkerton that the latter was mistaken if he understood Lord Hailes
- o say that Sir John Bruce was the author of
Hardyknute,' and added that "it was his sister-in-law, Lady Wardlaw, who is said to- be the author" (Italics are mine.)
With regard to the " definite conclusions ' r which Mr. Gosse has reached, I plead igno- rance of that gentleman's writing on the subject, but the "conclusions" quoted do not add one iota to what is already known by those familiar with the subject, except that he calls 'Hardyknute' "a poetical hoax." In the ' Ever Green ' there is not any name attached to ' Hardyknute ' as author, which is the case in many instances through the ' Ever Green.'
Addison, who, it will be admitted, was a strict moralist, says in the Spectator of Friday,
21 November, 1712 :
"These are they who say an author is guilty of a- falsehood when he talks to the public of manu- scripts which he never saw, or describes scenes of action or discourse in which he was never engaged. But these gentlemen would do well to consider there is not a fable or parable which ever was made use of that is not liable to this exception, since nothing, according to this notion, can be related innocently which was not once a matter of fact."
The so-called "poetical hoax" is a poem which Sir Walter Scott said was the first her
