1829.]

or according to the contemporary copy, "Of Warwick, the Count Guy, as in my rhyme the Guy'," i. e. “I attribute to Guy Earl of Warwick, who bore, &c. the same qualities as I attribute to Guy in my poem on that per

son.

The Clerk" is doubtless aware that the Guy Earl of Warwick who was at the siege of Carlaverock, is said to have been named after the hero of the Romance *; that there was a kind of hereditary respect entertained by the Beauchamps for that personage; and that Thomas Earl of Warwick, the grandson of the Guy who was at Carlaverock, bequeathed to his son and heir Richard, “a —— wrought with the arms and story of Guy of Warwick, and the sword and coat of mail which belonged to that worthy Knight.” These circumstances, it is true, prove nothing, but they may be deemed to render it probable that if a "Romance of Guy" was in existence when the "Siege of Carlaverock" was written, the author, and more particularly if he was also the author of that Romance, would in some way associate the Guy Earl of Warwick of whom he was speaking, with the hero from whom he is conjectured to have derived his name, and whose deeds and fame were subjects of emulation to him and his family.

ex

It is desirable, in the first place, to inquire whether at that moment a "Romance of Guy" existed. Fortunately for Bale, copies of that Romance are still preserved, or his veracity would doubtless be more strongly impeached; and the "Clerk" will, I think, concede that the copy in the Harleian MS. 3775, of which an tract is printed among the notes to "the Siege of Carlaverock," bears evidence of having been written in the thirteenth, or very early in the fourteenth century. Hence we have cause to believe that when the " Siege of Carlaverock" was composed, there was a romance celebrating the prowess of the celebrated Guy of Warwick. As it is manifest from the "Siege of Carlaverock," that the author could write a French poem, there is nothing improbable in supposing that it was not the only effort of his pen; and when we find that in an age not very prolific in authors, a "Romance of Guy" did

*Dugdale, I. 229.

27

The Clerk's opinion, that the words ma rime" were used in reference to the poem in which they occur, in the same manner as 66 mon serventois," when speaking of Elias de Aubigny, is doubtful, because it is not likely that he would speak of a man being the neighbour of another in a poem, though he would naturally, and might sensibly say, after describing many others, "I must also mention in my poem Elias de Aubigny," &c.

66

No one not possessed of the Clerk's" superior sagacity can deny that the passage is obscure, and that whilst the reading in Glover's copy in the College of Arms,

"De Warwick le Count Sup Coment ken ma rime de Sup," can admit of no other interpretation than that which has produced this correspondence, the reading in the contemporary copy in the Museum, "D' Warewik le conte Gup Coment ke en ma rime le guy," justifies my original translation, and the translation by the " Clerk ; "but even that copy may be read "as in my rhyme, the Guy."" Your correspondent lays much stress finding "Guy" written with a small letter instead of a capital in the Cottonian MS.; but it is not very indicative of acumen to attach any import. ance to that circumstance, for he cannot be ignorant that throughout that copy, in fifteen instances out of twenty, proper names are not commenced with

on

28

vavasours,

"

langcastre,"

odelstane," "claveringe,' "thomas de fourneval," " escoce, 'karlaverock," "carduel," "ingleterre," ""dureaume," 66 esmon deincourt," "fitz mermenduc," "bretaigne," &c. &c.

The following lines will tend still further to shew that no inference can be drawn from the use of capitals in the contemporary copy,

"Sis merlos et, &c.

"Le ot vermeile a faunes Mèrlos, "Le Engleterre au label de france." Having, I hope, said enough to prove that the suggestions that the passage refers to a poem on Guy of Warwick, and that there was cause to believe it was written by the author of the "Siege of Carlaverock," were neither made by my friend, nor adopted by me, to the extent to which I did adopt them, without sufficient reason, -it is necessary that I should say a few words as to each being the production of Walter of Exeter.

I am contented to take the "Clerk's" statement, that Bale is the authority on which all subsequent writers have said that Walter of Exeter wrote a Life of Guy of Warwick, a fact of which I was before aware; and, supposing Bale's assertion to be correct, I would ask whether the circumstance of there being but one work on the subject ever heard of 2, and that work having been indisputably written about the period when that person flourished, does not raise a fair presumption that the "Life" of Guy assigned to Walter of Exeter, was that of which copies are preserved? I did not require to be told that we have no positive evidence of the fact; but what are the "Clerk's" grounds for thinking they were not the same? that Bale

2 I believe there is an early MS. translation in English of the "Romance of Guy," but admitting that it was of the same age as the French Romance it is not impossible that Walter of Exeter wrote both. My remarks apply however to the French copy, and which it can scarcely be doubted was the original. It is suggested in the Preface to the "Siege of Carlaverock," that the laboured eulogium on the Bishop of Durham justifies the opinion that the author was a priest, and which agrees with the idea that it was written by Walter of Exeter, who was a monk.

[Jan.

does not specify in what form and language Walter of Exeter's work was composed; that Warton was evidently ignorant on the subject; and that Carew throws no light on it. All this amounts to nothing; and though it may very convincing to him, I confess it has not that effect on me.

be

The "CLERK seems, however, to doubt that Walter of Exeter ever did write the work attributed to him by Bale, simply because the Bishop cites no other authority for his assertion than "Ex Bibliothecis,"-Collections from libraries. If libraries, by which Bale manifestly meant manuscripts in libraries, be not the source whence such information is to be derived, I must beg the "Clerk" to instruct me where it is to be found. I feel no difficulty in believing that Bale had seen a copy of the "Romance of Guy," in which the name of the person to whom he assigns it occurred; because I cannot persuade myself that a learned prelate or any other man would invent such an assertion, without any possible motive. It seems infinitely more probable, even from the state of some libraries, at "Oxenforde," at the present hour, that numerous MSS. have perished since Bale wrote; and that, unless some improvement takes place, the "Clerk " may himself, within less than fifty years, be exposed to a similar suspicion of having imagined what had no foundation, if he alludes in any work to MSS. which

are at this moment in one or two Colleges I could name.

I am therefore satisfied with oppos ing the positive assertion of a writer two hundred and seventy years since, for whose labours, whatever may be their imperfections, I have the bad taste to feel great respect, to the mere conjecture, a conjecture uusupported by a shadow of evidence, of, I might say, an anonymous writer. I will not, however, avail myself of such an advantage, and will readily observe, that I know that anonymous writer to be intimately acquainted with early manuscripts, and well informed on the subject on which he writes, and that he is consequently highly deserving of the official situation which he holds but conceding this, I cannot attribute more weight to his unsupported hypothesis, than to the ipse dixit of a person who, it is but fair to conclude, had evidence for his statement which no

1899.]

longer exists; or which may still be hid in the unexplored recesses of some library, but to which the worms and spiders may have acquired a prescriptive right.

Before the subject is concluded, it is just to observe, that on reference to the manner in which I have suggested that Walter of Exeter wrote the Romance of Guy, it will be seen that I have done so hypothetically, leaving it to the reader who is put in possession of the whole data, to form his own opinion; and if, under all the circumstances, I had not said what I have done, I should not, have fulfilled the duty of an editor. Agreeing as I do with the "Clerk," that since the publication of "Roquefort's Glossaire de la Langue Romaine," the knowledge of early French is much facilitated, I might appeal to him whether I overrated the difficulties of translating the poem in my observations in the Preface; and I might ask him too, whether he himself was not on one occasion, at least, unable, though then fully disposed, to assist me?

The charge of having mistaken the word "Emlam," a closer inspection of the MS. has proved to be just; and, though unwilling to extenuate an error, I may be permitted to observe, that the mistake, owing to the peculiar manner in which the interlineation is made, is one which even a person whose exclusive metier it may have been to collate MSS. might have committed, especially when he found the word so spelt in another copy. It is a subject for regret, and perhaps of surprise, that the trustees of the British Museum do not cause even one of the numerous librarians of the establishment to attend in the reading-room, to whom reference might be made on doubtful points, and from whom, even if they were not better judges generally than the applicant, information might be obtained, because the direction of a mind and sight undisturbed by previous attention to a particular MS. would in many instances remove the difficulties and prevent errors. Had this been the case, the Clerk himself would possibly have prevented Guylam from being printed Emlum; but whilst I agree with him in thinking that William Touchet was the Sir William Touchet mentioned in the Roll of Arms which lately published from the Cottonian MS.

29

Caligula, A. xvii. there is great difficulty in distinguishing him from the William Touchet who was summoned to Parliament from the 28th to the 34th Edw. I. whose arms were very different.3

Your readers Mr. Urban, will, I trust, pardon so long a letter on a subject in which not many of them will feel interested; and I sincerely lament that neither my genius nor my taste allow of my imitating your learned correspondent by enlivening the discussion with a series of puns.

NICHOLAS HARRIS NICOLAS,

"Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

Mr. URBAN, Cadogan-pl. Jan. 2.

mandment to the serious study of your Correspondent who calls himself " A CLERK OF OXENFORDE." If his object was to injure whatever literary reputation I may have acquired, he should have availed himself of some of the many errors I doubtless commit, instead of fabricating a false charge in order to show that Mr. Nicolas paid too great a deference to my opinion. As often as that gentleman was pleased to adopt any remark of mine, he very respectfully acknowledged it by printing against it my name. When the "CLERK of Oxenforde" says, that from "the misconception of a passage in the poem, Dr. Meyrick has founded a conjecture," he asserts a falsehood. If, therefore, "in a reprint of this curious document in the present day, we have reason to look for greater accuracy, particularly since the Dictionary of Roquefort," "the CLERK" must settle the question with Mr. Nicolas, who, though accused of too hastily admitting this conjecture on my authority, has probably the means and certainly the ability for repelling such a censure. All that I have to do is, to request this "CLERK," whom I pre- 、 sume to be a divine, to read the quotation prefixed to this letter more attentively than he has done "the Preface to the Siege of Carlaverock," and not again to use my name in the unwarrantable manner he has done.

RECOMMEND the above Com

Yours, &c. S. R. MEYRICK.

3 See Siege of Carlaverock, p. 209.

80

I

Mr. URBAN, Bath, Jan. 12. HAVE read with much interest the several accounts inserted in your Magazine of the death and the disinterment of Hampden. Of the former I cannot yet satisfy myself that the particulars stated can be exactly depended upon. Of the latter I cannot allow myself to think, without some degree of disgust. Your Correspondent ALTA RIPA has clearly exposed some inconsistency in the narrative, and I must confess that the several accounts delivered by Lord Clarendon, and so many other historians, of the death's wound said to have been inflicted by the enemy, having remained uncontroverted during so many years, makes me still incredulous in regard to the revived story of Sir Robert Pye's pistols. As TRUTH, however, is or should be the great object of all literary researches, may I take the liberty of asking, whether it is this same narrative of Sir Robert Pye, the Walpoles and Foleys, to which allusion is made in Almon's Preface to Wilkes's Correspondence, in which amongst the literary productions of that celebrated man, an account of Hampden's death is mentioned, in which he (Mr. W.)" differs from Lord Clarendon and all the other historians, in describing his wound as not coming from the enemy."

If the affair had rested upon the authority of Mr. Wilkes only, perhaps there might have been less difficulty about it. It will, however, be a great satisfaction, if some ingenious Correspondent of Mr. Urban can supply the particulars of the narrative alluded to, so as to ascertain how much or how little of it is to be ascribed to Mr. Wilkes; and upon what authority that gentleman made his statement?

I think that it is extraordinary a fact so important as that of the manner of Mr. Hampden's death should have been handed down from generation to generation with an implicit confidence in the correctness of the history; without any attempt at contradiction from the time of Lord Clarendon to that of Mr. Britton, in his Delineations of the several Counties: in which last, by the bye, the agreeable and ingenious author, without any suspicion, as is evident, of being incorrect in his statement, mentions "the shot entering the shoulder, and breaking the bone :

[Jan.

and Mr. Hampden's suffering great pain for six days," p. 355. Strange, very strange it is, that one of the most correct and attentive readers of history, himself also a patriot, and a true friend of liberty and of his country, should have been induced to perpetuate as a fact that which it seems is now positively contradicted as a falsehood: I mean the inscription set up by Richard Earl Temple in Stowe Gardens, in which John Hampden is expressly recorded to have "supported the liberties of his country in Parliament, and died for them in the field." Now, Mr. Urban, if Hampden's wound were the cause of his death, and that wound occasioned by the accidentally bursting of his pistol, with what propriety could this sonorous expression have been adopted, as a record of his patriotism. The immortal Nelson fell gloriously in the moment of victory. The gallant Captain Grenville, fatally wounded by a fragment of his shattered ship, afforded an illustrious example of calm and dignified submission to his fate: but if the one or the other had died from a cause similar to that which is asserted to have destroyed Hampden, the just tribute of applause which has been paid to them both, would have been mere bombast. I would ask whether Sir Robert Pye concealed the knowledge of the true cause of his son-inlaw's death in order to enhance the value of his services in the cause in which he was engaged? Where then was his honour? I would ask to what principle of human feeling can it be attributed that the Royalists should have been permitted, without contradiction, to allow to Hampden all the credit of his having been actually engaged with the enemy, if he were known to have been disabled without having fired a shot? And why the Royalists themselves should have been permitted to enjoy the credit of killing the most heroic of their opponents, if his death were purely accidental? The fatalists on both sides were numerous. It has not escaped remark that Chalgrave-field, where Hampden mustered his rebellious followers, was the scene of his mortal wound, and figuratively of his death. If, indeed, his wound were what is called accidental, how much might have been added to the pathos of the narrative!

Yours, &c.

J. W.