Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/225

9»8.vLSBPT.8,i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 183 Then pass on gently, ye that mourn ; Touch not this mine hallowed urn. These ashes which do here remain A vital tincture still retain : A seminal form within the deeps Of this little chaos sleeps; The thread of life untwisted is Into its first consistencies ; Infant nature cradled here [Doth] in its principles appear ; This plant, though calcined into dust, In its ashes rest it must Until sweet Psyche shall inspire A softening and prolific fire, And in her fostering arms enfold This heavy and this earthy mould. Then, as I am, I'll be no more. But bloom and blossom [as belffore] When this cold numbness shall retreat By a more than chymic heat. If I remember rightly, the above lines were, as an alternative conjecture, attributed by some one to Andrew Marvel). Some, indeed, may think that the "conceits" of the language are nearer his manner than the lofty style of Milton, of whom, however, we seem to catch an echo in iii. 3, 4. See his ' Epitaph on Shakspeare,' lines 3, 4. The striking simile of the " bee in amber " is not original. The same thought is found in a poem by Orinda (Kath. Philips, 1631-64), 'To my Leucasia' :— Thus the poor bee unmarked doth hum and fly, And, droned with age, would unregarded die, Unless some lucky drop of precious gum Do bless the insect with an amber tomb ; Then, glorious in its funeral, the bee Gets eminence, and gets eternity. And, whoever the writer was, he probably had in his mind Martial's epigram (iv. 59) on a viper enclosed in amber, which also alludes by comparison to Cleopatra's tomb : Ne tibi regali placeas, Cleopatra, sepulcro, Vipera si tumulo nobiliore jacet, thus Englished by Webb ('Select Epigrams from Martial,' 1879) :— Then, Cleopatra, boast no more The pomp that marks thy burial floor; Since here a viper lies, thy doom, Interred within a nobler tomb. MR. HALL speaks of the writer as apostro- phizing " the ideal butterfly" to which he is comparing the remains of the deceased. This is not obvious from the text as above given, even admitting the connexion between Psyche and the butterfly. I may add that the couplet The thread of life untwisted is Into its first consistencies reads something like a reminiscence of a sentence in Florio's ' Montaigne,' book iii. ch. xiii. p. 569, of Henry Morley's edition; " So artificially doe the fates wntwist our lives-threade." The French is simply, " Tant lea Parques destordent artificiellement nostre vie.' The date affixed to the above poem is Oct., 1647. C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A. Bath. [We have the poem, with some variations—&tifif, for prolific, exiitenciett for corutisteiicieJi, kc.— inserted in a Baskerville Milton. It was published, we fancy, in the Athenceum. The only reason for not thinking it Milton's is that it imitates him a little slavishly.] NO. 4, TOTHILL STREET, WESTMINSTER. AMONG the few old and interesting build- ings left in this part of Westminster, perhaps this house, for those who love the old city at least, has many charms. It is not much to look at, as it was considerably modernized some quarter of a century ago, but still its memories are left—a small mercy, truly, but something to be thankful for. This old house was built in 1671, and was then or soon afterwards in the occupation of "Mr. Whyte, Oylman," and became also the resi- dence of Thomas Southerne, a well-known, if not absolutely great dramatist of that period, praised by Dryden for "his great purity." Southerne was born in 1660, and began to write plays in 1682, in which year his first tragedy, 'The Loyal Brother,' was produced, Dryden furnishing both prologue and epilogue. Wal- cott, the historian of Westminster, says " he had been a lawyer and a soldier." He really seems to have entered the army early in James II.'s reign, and he was undoubtedly what many of our latter-daj playwrights appear not to be, a good man of business. The late Prof. Morley records " that he setan example to other dramatists which raised considerably the trade value of a play, for it was he who established the claim of an author to the profits of three nights out of the first nine, instead of one." Another discovery made by him was that more could be obtained by the sale of the right of publication to a bookseller than had hitherto been the case, it being on record that he got 1501., whereas Dryden is known to have been " satisfied with 1001. for the whole profit of a piece," and once made 700J. by one of his plays, an amount considered prodigious in tnose days. He is reputed to have been wealthy, and Walcott adds that he was mean. A large amount of his money would appear to have come from the industrious traffic of his "author's night tickets," which he forced on his patrons and friends. He retired upon his earnings, and, again quoting Walcott, "lived for the last ten years of his life in TothUl Street, unjal