128
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. iv. MAY, MS.
" BEAUTY is THE LOVER'S GIFT." The
author of this phrase, asked for by P. C. G.
at 11 S. i. 368, has not been given by
' N. & Q.' It is Congreve, in ' The Way of
the World.' Mirabell says :
" ... .you are no longer handsome when you've lost your lover ; your beauty dies upon the instant ; for beauty is the lover's gift ; 'tis he bestows your charms your glass is all a cheat . . . ."
Millamant retorts :
" O the vanity of these men ! . . . .Beauty the lover's gift ! Lord, what is a lover, that it can give ? Why, one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases ; and then, if one pleases, one makes more." Act II. sc. ii. (=v.).
EDWARD BENSLY.
THE NATIONAL GALLERY'S FIRST HOME. The Gallery's first home at 100 Pall Mall was thus described by Robert Cole (The Examiner, Sept. 18, 1831) :
" The Gallery termed National consists of a parlour on the ground floor and two drawing- rooms on the first floor of a moderately sized old-fashioned house at 100 Pall Mall." After pointing out some infelicitous asso- ciations caused by the juxtaposition of certain pictures, he suggests that the whole collection should be rehung in the galleries at the British Museum. By this is meant the narrow gallery in the King's Library, not the upper floors. As an alternative a gallery was to be built near the collection of ancient sculpture. Cole was then in his 23rd year, and the suggestion bears the stamp of the enthusiasm for which he was notable in later years. His ridicule of the first home of the National Gallery was neatly emphasized by a lithograph printed by Hullmandel and published by J. Hogarth, New Road, opposite St. Pancras' Church. It provides a view of this home and the Louvre, " or the National Gallery of France," with the text, " Look here upon this picture and on this, the counterfeit presentment of two brothers." ALECK ABRAHAMS.
51 Rutland Park Mansions, N.W.2.
WALLER: SOME UNCOLLECTED VERSES- (See US. v. 305.) At this reference there is a note of certain verses which, upon the authority of Burnet and what I thought? and still think, very strong resemblance of style, I ascribed to Waller. I have recently discovered that hese verses, altered and reduced in number, were made to do duty for the opening of yet another Parliament, for in " Poems Written on Several Occasions, By N. Tate. The Second Edition enlarged
1684, they appear at p. 121 under the
heading ' On the Assembling of a New Parliament the 6th of March, 1682.'
In spite of this apparent claim to them by Tate, I am not at present disposed to give up Waller's authorship, particularly as ] understand that there is a copy of them in the Bodleian Library to which his name has been attached. G. THORN-DRURY
STEPNEY TAVERNS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Much interest attaches to the discovery (in the British Museum Library collection of Egerton MS. dramas) of the seventeenth-century play ' The Lanchinge of The Mary ; or, The Seamans Honest Wife,' which has riot hitherto been noticed in the histories of the English drama or stage. The play was written in 1632 by an unknown " W. M. gent." during his return voyage from the East Indies, and Dr. F. S. Boas, who has made a close examination of the manuscript, says the quotations and allusions that occur in the play show that the author had had a classical ^education at school or at the University ; that he was mainly interested in the broader questions of trade and finance, and had probably some official connexion with the East India Company ; and that, in any case, the play is a panegyric on the Company, and an enthusiastic defence of its activities. One of the bad characters of the play a sailor's wife gives the names of her principal haunts. She says:
" I never keepe one constant house : Sometymes at Whittingtons Venture by the Six Windmills , Sometymes at The Three Goates Heads in Rat- cliffe High Wave; Sometymes The Windmill beyond Mile End ; Sometymes at The White Lyon in Blackman Streete ; Sometymes at The Shippe in Wappinge; Sometymes at The Hoope at Lyme- house Corner ; Sometymes at The Man in the Moone at White Chappell ; Sometymes at The Queen es Head in Little Minor ies."
Students of local historical research will recognize that some of these inns or taverns of various repute were realities in the days of King Charles I. No doubt all were the real names of places of public resort and entertainment which would be recognized by the groundlings in the audience. The courtyard of many of the greater inns as at Aldgate Without the Wall was a not uncommon place of performance of little companies of " Rogues and Vagabonds " ; and, still earlier, moralities, interludes, rude comedies and tragedies, and elaborate pageants were produced or marshalled upon Mile End Green on heydays and holidays.
Me.
