234
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. SEPT. 20, 1902.
Street is chiefly remembered as the place
wherein Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Newman
delivered those well-known 'Lectures on
Anglican Difficulties.' The hall which took
its place was structurally bad, most incon-
venient, and positively dangerous, and how
Mr. W. S. Woodin was able to give his
popular monologue entertainments, drawing
crowded audiences, for so long as he did is
a mystery. It would seem that the dates
assumed by your correspondent (1845 to 1850)
cannot be right, as the 'Era Almanack'
for 1868 records, under the head of 'First
Appearances in London of Living Actors
and Actresses ': "W. S Woodin, Marionette,
October 23rd, 1852, Soiree Comique, Carpet-
bag, and Sketch - book"; and in the
' Almanack ' for 1878 we are informed ,
"Woodin's Third Entertainment produced
at Polygraphic Hall, 21st March, 1864," but
there is no note of the two preceding
ones. With reference to the dangers, &c.,
of the hall, they came under ray personal
knowledge, as in 1867 I was the manager for
Mr. and Mrs. Gourlay, who gave there for
a season an entertainment entitled ' Mrs.
M'Gregor's Levee ; or, a Collection of Scottish
Curiosities,' and considerable difficulty was
often experienced in getting the audiences
out safely. As a theatre it was very little
better, although the stage door and another
outlet were made in Cnandos Street ; but
it was ultimately condemned as unsafe,
closed, and, although only quite recently,
demolished for the enlargement of Charing
Cross Hospital. As Toole's Theatre it ap-
peared for the last time in the ' List of
Theatres in the United Kingdom' in the
' Era Almanack ' for 1895, although it was
still open early in the following year.
W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY. C2, The Almshouses, Rochester Row, S.W.
If I do not mistake, Mr. W. S. Woodin did not perform here so early as 1845-50, but I think it was the scene of his 'Olio of Oddities' in 1856, and for a few years sub- sequently remained in his hands.
ST. SWITHIN.
W. S. Woodin was a son of a picture dealer in Bond Street or that district. He was a "quick change artist." His advertisement was a large carpet bag. The hall was hired for private theatricals. A. C. H.
Lit may be permissible to recall the joke of H. J. Byron, who said once, " I wish, Woodin, you 'd go under the table and come up some one else and remain so."]
OPTIC OR OPTICAL GLASS (9 th S. ix. 466). Do the following two passages throw any
light on the opticke-glasse of DR. MURRAY'S
first quotation ?
" Or Gyges' invisible ring, or some rare perspec- tive glass, or Otcucou-fticon, which would so multiply species, that a man might hear and see all at once (as Martiamis CapellcCs Jupiter did in a spear which he held in his hand, which did present unto him all that was daily done upon the face of the earth)." Burton, 'Anatomy pi Melancholy,' vol. i. of Mr. A. R. Shilleto's edition, p. 74 ('Democritus to the Reader ').
Mr. Shilleto ought to have expanded Burton's marginal reference to lib. i. of Martianus Capella by adding the number of the paragraph in Kopp's edition, p. 68 ('Irotius,' p. 18). It might also not nave been amiss to add that Jupiter's spear, like that of the lady in Artemus Ward, was a sphere.
" This brief Bohemian Kingship had not yet not exploded [Nov. 8, 1620] on the W eissenberg of Prag, when old Sir Henry Wotton being sent as Ambas- sador ' to lie abroad ' (as he wittily called it, to his cost) in that Business, saw, in the City of Lintz, in the picturesque green country by the shores of the Donau there, an ingenious person, who is now re- cognisable as one of the remarkablest of mankind, Mr. John Kepler, namely : Keplar as Wotton writes him ; addressing the great Lord Bacon [sic] (un- happily without strict date of any kind) on that
among other subjects 'He hath a little black
Tent (of what stuff is not much importing),' says the Ambassador, 'which he can suddenly set up where he will in a Field ; and it is convertible (like a windmill) to all quarters at pleasure ; capable of not much more than one man. as I conceive, and perhaps at no great ease ; exactly close and dark, save at one hole, about an inch and a half in the diameter, to which he applies a long perspective Trunk, with the con vex glass fitted to the said hole, and the concave taken out at the other end, which extendeth to about the middle of this erected Tent: through which the visible radiations of all the Objects without are intromitted, falling upon a Paper, which is accommodated to receive them ; and so he traceth them with his pen in their natural appearance ; turning his little Tent round by de- grees, till he hath designed the whole Aspect of the Field.' In fact he hath a Camera Obscura, and is exhibiting the same for the delectation of Imperial gentlemen lounging that way." Carlyle, 'History of Friedrich II. of Prussia,' book iii. chap. xiv.
Carlyle refers in a foot-note to Kepler's having taken the essential hint for the Camera Obscura from Baptista Porta, of Naples, and gives ' Reliquiae Wottonianse ' (London, 1672), p. 300, as the reference for Wotton's letter. EDWARD BENSLY.
The University, Adelaide.
" NONESOPRETTIES " : " SPINNEL " (9 th S. X.
87). On 2 January, 1692, a patent (No. 286) was granted to Ralph Marshall and John Englebert Teshmaker for "the makeing of spinnall yarn." The inventors set forth in
