Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850

Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850
Various

Various

Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc

NOTES

ADDRESS TO OUR FRIENDS

We this day publish our fifty-second Number. Every Saturday, for twelve months, have we presented to our subscribers our weekly budget of "Notes," "Queries," and "Replies;" and in so doing, we trust, we have accomplished some important ends. We have both amused and instructed the general reader; we have stored up much curious knowledge for the use of future writers; we have procured for scholars now engaged in works of learning and research, many valuable pieces of information which had evaded their own immediate pursuit; and, lastly, in doing all this, we have powerfully helped forward the great cause of literary truth.

In our Prospectus and opening address we made no great promise of what our paper should be. That, we knew, must depend upon how far the medium of intercommunication we had prepared should be approved and adopted by those for whose special use it had been projected. We laid down a literary railway: it remained to be seen whether the world of letters would travel by it. They have done so: we have been especially patronised by first-class passengers, and in such numbers that we were obliged last week to run an extra train.

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SHAKSPEARE'S USE OF THE WORDS "CAPTIOUS" AND "INTENIBLE."

In the following passage of All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. Sc. 3., where Helena is confessing to Bertram's mother, the Countess, her love for him, these two words occur in an unusual sense, if not in a sense peculiar to the great poet:—

"I love your son:—
My friends were poor, but honest, so's my love:
Be not offended, for it hurts not him,
That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit;
Nor would I have him till I do deserve him:
Yet never know how that desert may be.
I know I love in vain; strive against hope;
Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still."

Johnson was perplexed about the word captious; "which (says he) I never found in this sense, yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless carious for rotten!" Farmer supposed captious to be a contraction of capacious! Steevens believed that captious meant recipient, capable of receiving; which interpretation Malone adopts. Mr. Collier, in his recent edition of Shakspeare, after stating Johnson's and Farmer's suggestions, says, "where is the difficulty? It is true that this sense of captious may not have an exact parallel; but the intention of Shakspeare is very evident: captious means, as Malone says, capable of taking or receiving; and intenible (printed intemible in the first folio, and rightly in the second) incapable of retaining. Two more appropriate epithets could hardly be found, and a simile more happily expressive."

We no doubt all know, by intuition as it were, what Shakspeare meant; but "the great master of English," as Mr. Hickson very justly calls him, would never have used captious, as applied figuratively to a sieve, for capable of taking or receiving.

Intenible, notwithstanding the hypercriticism of Mr. Nares (that "it is incorrectly used by Shakspeare for unable to hold;" and that "it should properly mean not to be held, as we now use untenable") was undoubtedly used in the former sense, and it was most probably so accepted in the poet's time; for in the Glossagraphia Anglicana Nova, 1719, we have "Untenable, that will not or cannot hold or be holden long."

With regard to captious, it is not so much a matter of surprise that none of all these learned commentators should fail in their guesses at the meaning, as that none of them should have remarked that the sense of the Latin captiosus, and of its congeners in Italian and old French, is deceitful, fallacious; and Bacon uses the word for insidious, ensnaring. There can be no doubt that this is the sense in which Shakspeare used it. Helen speaks of her hopeless love for Bertram, and says:

"I know I love in vain, strive against hope; yet in this fallacious and unholding sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, and fail not to lose still."

When we speak of a captious person, do we mean one capable of taking or receiving? Then how much more absurd would it be to take it in that impossible sense, when figuratively applied in the passage before us! Bertram shows himself incapable of receiving Helena's love: he is truly captious in that respect.

In French the word captieux, according to the Academy, is only applied to language, though we may say un homme captieux to signify a man who has the art of deceiving or leading into error by captious language.

It is not impossible that the poet may have had in his mind the fruitless labour imposed upon the Danaïdes as a punishment, for it has been thus moralised:

"These virgins, who in the flower of their age pour water into pierced vessels which they can never fill, what is it but to be always bestowing over love and benefits upon the ungrateful."

    S. W. Singer.

Mickleham, Oct. 4. 1850.

ORATORIES OF THE NONJURORS

As the nooks and corners of London in olden times are now engaging the quiet musings of most of the topographical brotherhood, perhaps you can spare a nook or a corner of your valuable periodical for a few notes on the Oratories of those good men and true—the Nonjurors. "These were honourable men in their generation," and were made of most unbending materials.

On the Feast of St. Matthias, Feb. 24, 1693, the consecrations of Dr. George Hickes and Thomas Wagstaffe were solemnly performed according to the rites of the Church of England, by Dr. William Lloyd, bishop of Norwich; Dr. Francis Turner, bishop of Ely; and Dr. Thomas White, bishop of Peterborough, at the Bishop of Peterborough's lodgings, at the Rev. William Giffard's house at Southgate in Middlesex: Dr. Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, giving his consent.

Henry Hall was consecrated bishop in the oratory of the Rev. Father in Christ, John B– [Blackburne?], in Gray's Inn, on the festival of St. Barnabas, June 11, 1725.

Hilkiah Bedford was consecrated in the oratory of the Rev. R– R– [Richard Rawlinson], in Gray's Inn, on the festival of St. Paul, Jan. 25, 1720. Ralph Taylor was also consecrated at the same time and place.

Henry Gandy was consecrated at his oratory in the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, on the festival of St. Paul, Jan. 25, 1716.

Grascome was interrupted by a messenger whilst he was ministering to his little congregation in Scroope's Court, near St. Andrew's Church.

Jeremy Collier officiated at Broad Street, London, assisted by the Rev. Samuel Carte, the father of the historian.

Mr. Hawkes officiated for some time at his own house opposite to St. James' Palace.

On Easter-day, April 13, 1718, at the oratory of his brother, Mr. William Lee, dyer, in Spitalfields, Dr. Francis Lee read a touching and beautiful declaration of his faith, betwixt the reading of the sentences at the offertory and the prayer for the state of Christ's church. It was addressed to the Rev. James Daillon, Count de Lude, then officiating.

Charles Wheatly, author of A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, in a letter to Dr. Rawlinson, the nonjuring titular bishop of London, says:

"I believe most of the books in Mr. Laurence's catalogue were really in his library. Most of his chapel furniture I had seen; but his pix, and his cruet, his box for unguent, and oil, I suppose you do not inquire after."

Roger Laurence was the learned author of Lay Baptism Invalid. Query, Where did he officiate?

The Rev. John Lindsay, the translator of Mason's Vindication of the Church of England, for many years officiated as minister of a nonjuring congregation in Trinity Chapel, Aldersgate Street, and is said to have been their last minister.

Thoresby, in his Diary, May 18, 1714, says, "I visited Mr. Nelson (author of the Fasts and Festivals), and the learned Dr. George Hickes, who not being at liberty for half an hour, I had the benefit of the prayers in the adjoining church, and when the Nonjuring Conventicle was over, I visited the said Dean Hickes, who is said to be bishop of –" [Thetford]. Both Nelson and Hickes resided at this time in Ormond Street; probably the conventicle was at one of their houses. It should be noted that Thoresby, having quitted the Conventicles of the Dissenters, had only recently joined what he calls the Church established by law. He appears to have known as much about the principles of the Nonjurors as he did of Chinese music.

Dr. Welton's chapel in Goodman's Fields being visited (1717) by Colonel Ellis and other justices of the peace, with proper assistants, about two hundred and fifty persons were found there assembled, of whom but forty would take the oaths. The doctor refusing them also, was ordered to be proceeded against according to law.

This reminds me of another Query. What has become of Dr. Welton's famous Whitechapel altar-piece, which Bishop Compton drove out of his church. Some doubts have been expressed whether that is the identical one in the Saint's Chapel of St. Alban's Abbey. A friend has assured the writer that he had seen it about twenty years ago, at a Roman Catholic meeting-house in an obscure court at Greenwich. It is not there now. The print of it in the library of the Society of Antiquaries is accompanied with these MS. lines by Mr. Mattaire:—

"To say the picture does to him belong,
Kennett does Judas and the painter wrong;
False is the image, the resemblance faint,
Judas, compared to Kennett, was a saint."

One word more. The episcopal seal of the nonjuring bishops was a shepherd with a sheep upon his shoulders. The crozier which had been used by them, was, in 1839, in the possession of John Crossley Esq., of Scaitcliffe, near Todmorden.

    J. Yeowell.