Queries.

DUTCH TRANSLATION OF A TRACT BY ROBERT GREENE.

I was thinking of sending you a note or two on an early Dutch translation of a very celebrated English tract when your last number came to hand, by which I find that so much interest has been produced by "Notes and Queries" in Holland, that certain literati are about to establish a similar work in that country. If I mistake not, what I now transmit will be acceptable to your Batavian friends, and not unwelcome to those who approve of your undertaking on this side of the water.

A good deal has been advanced lately regarding the interest taken by the inhabitants of Holland, Belgium, and Germany, in our ancient drama; and in consistency with what was said by Thomas Heywood more than 200 years ago, some new information has been supplied respecting the encouragement given to English players abroad. The fact itself was well-known, and the author last cited (Shakspeare Society's reprint of the Apology for Actors, 1841, p. 58.) furnishes the name of the very play performed on one occasion at Amsterdam. The popularity of our drama there perhaps contributed to the popularity of our lighter literature, (especially of such as came from the pens of our most notorious playwrights,) in the same part of Europe, and may account for the circumstance I am about to mention.

At this time of day I need hardly allude to the reputation the celebrated Robert Greene obtained in England, both as a dramatist and a pamphleteer; and although we have no distinct evidence on the point, we need hardly doubt that some of his plays had been represented with applause in Holland. The Four Sons of Aymon, which Heywood tells us was acted with such strange effect at Amsterdam, must have been a piece of precisely the same kind as Greene's Orlando Furioso, which we know was extraordinarily popular in this kingdom, and may have been equally so abroad. We may thus suppose that Greene's fame had spread to the Netherlands, and that anything written by him would be well received by Batavian readers.

His Quip for an Upstart Courtier, or, a Quaint Dispute between Velvet-breeches and Cloth-breeches, was published in London in 1592, and went through two, if not three, impressions in its first year. It was often reprinted, and editions in 1606, 1615, 1620, 1625, and 1635, have come down to us, besides others that, no doubt, have entirely disappeared. That the fame of this production extended to Holland, I have the proof before me: it is a copy of the tract in Dutch, with the following imprint—"Tot Leyden. By Thomas Basson. M.D.CI." A friend of mine writes me from Rotterdam, that he has a copy, without date, but printed about twenty or five-and-twenty years after mine of 1601, which shows how long the popularity of the tract was maintained; and I have little doubt that mine is not by any means the earliest Dutch impression, if only because the wood-cut of the Courtier and the Countryman (copied with the greatest precision from the London impression of 1592) is much worn and blurred. The title-page runs as follows, and the name of Robert Greene is rendered obvious upon it for the sake of its attraction:—

"Een Seer vermakelick Proces tusschen Fluweele-Broeck ende Laken-Broeck. Waer in verhaldt werdt het misbruyck van de meeste deel der Menschen. Gheshreven int Engelsch door Robert Greene, ende nu int Neder-landtsch overgheset. Wederom oversien."

At the back of this title is printed a short address from the translator to the Edele ende welghesinde Leser, which states little more than that the original had been received from England, and concludes with the subsequent quatrain:—

The spelling and punctuation are the same as in the original, and the body of the tract follows immediately:

"Staende eens smorghens op van eene onrustige nacht rust, ende vindende mijn ghemoet noch wat onstelt, gingh ick wandelen nae de vermacklyche velden, om mijn Gheest wat te vermacken, dan wesende noch in een Melancholijcke humeur, seer eensaem sonder eenighe gheselschap, worde ick seer slaperich: alsoo dat ick droomde. Dat iek een Dal sach wel verceirt, &c."

As few of your readers will have the means of referring to the original English, I quote Greene's opening words from an edition of 1592:—

"It was just at that time when the Cuckoulds quirister began to bewray Aprill, Gentlemen, with his never-changed notes, that I, damped with a melancholy humor, went into the fields to cheere up my wits with the fresh aire: where solitarie seeking to solace my selfe, I fell in a dreame, and in that drowsie slumber I wandered into a vale, &c."

The Dutch version fills thirty-two closely printed pages, and ends with the succeeding literal translation of Greene's last sentence:—

"Tot dese Sententie (aldus by de Ridder ghepronuncieert) alle de omstaende Stemde daer toe, ende klapten in haere handen, ende maeckte een groot geluyde, waer door eck waeker worde, ende schoot uyt mynen Droom, soo stout ick op, ende met een vrolijck ghemoet, gingh ick schryven, al her gene, dat ghy hier ghehoort hebt."

The above is one of the few books I purchased when I was in Holland some thirty years ago; and as I have quoted enough for the purpose of identification, I may conclude with asking some of your Dutch correspondents, whether the tract, in this or in any other edition, is of considerable rarity with them? In England I never saw a copy of it but that in my possession. I may add that every paragraph is separately numbered from 1 to 110, as if the production were one of importance to which more particular reference might be made than even by the pagination.

The Hermit of Holyport.

THE BLACK ROOD OF SCOTLAND.

(Vol. ii., pp. 308. 409.)

I am not satisfied with what W. S. G. has written on this subject; and as I feel interested in it, perhaps I cannot bring out my doubts better than in the following Queries.

1. Instead of this famous cross being destined by St. Margaret for Dunfermline, was it not transmitted by her as an heir-loom to her sons? Fordun, lib. v. cap. lv. "Quasi munus hæreditarium transmisit ad filios." Hailes (Annals, sub anno 1093) distinguishes the cross which Margaret gifted to Dunfermline from the Black Rood of Scotland; and it is found in the possession of her son David I., in his last illness. He died at Carlisle, 24th May, 1153. (Fordun, ut supra.)

2. Is not W. S. G. mistaken when, in speaking of this cross being seized by Edward I. in the Castle of Edinburgh in 1292, he says it is in a list of muniments, &c., found "in quadam cista in dormitorio S. Crucis." instead of in a list following, "et in thesauria castri de Edinburgh inventa fuerunt ornamenta subscripta?" (Ayloffe's Calendars, p. 827.; Robertson's Index, Introd. xiii.)

3. When W. S. G. says that this cross was not held in the same superstitious reverence as the Black Stone of Scone, and that Miss Strickland is mistaken when she says that it was seized by King Edward, and restored at the peace of 1327, what does he make of the following authorities?—

(1.) Fordun, lib. v, cap. xvii:

"Illa sancta crux quam nigram vocant omni genti Scotorum non minus terribilem quam amabilem pro suæ reverentia sanctitatis."

(2.) Letters to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, occassioned by some Passages in his late Book of the Scotch Library, &c., ascribed to the historian Rymer: London, 1702. From a "notable piece of Church history," appended to the second Letter, it appears that the Black Rood accompanied King Edward in his progresses, along with a famous English cross—the Cross Nigth,—and that he received on these two crosses the homage of several of the Scottish magnates. (The same thing, I have no doubt, will appear from the Fœdera of the same historian, which I have it not in my power to refer to.)

(3.) Chronicon de Lanercost, printed by the Maitland Club, Edinburgh, 1839, p. 283. Alluding to the pacification of 1327:

"Reddidit etiam eis partem crucis Christi quam vocant Scotti Blakerode, et similiter unam instrumentum.... Ragman vocabatur. Lapidem tamen de Scone, in quo solent regis Scotiæ apud Scone in creatione sua collocari, Londonensis noluerunt a se demittere quoquomodo. Omnia autem hæc asportari fecerat de Scotia inclytus rex Edwardus filius Henrici, dum Scottos suæ subjiceret ditioni."

Fabian and Holinshed report the same thing.

4. Is not Fordun quoting from Turgot and Aelred (whom he names Baldredus) when he speaks of "illa sancta crux quam nigram vocant?" And how does the description of the Durham cross,—

"Which rood and pictures were all three very richly wrought in silver, and were all smoked black over, being large pictures of a yard or five quarters long," &c. &c.,—

agree with the description of the Black Rood of St. Margaret which, as Lord Hailes says, "was of gold, about the length of a palm; the figure of ebony, studded and inlaid with gold. A piece of the true cross was enclosed in it"?

5. As to the cross "miraculously received by David I., and in honour of which he founded Holyrood Abbey in 1128," and which some antiquaries (see A Brief Account of Durham Cathedral; Newcastle, 1833, p. 46.) gravely assert was to be seen "in the south aisle of the choir of Durham Cathedral at its eastern termination, in front of a wooden screen richly gilt and decorated with stars and other ornaments," are not all agreed that the story is a mere monkish legend, invented long after Holyrood was founded (although, perhaps, not so recent as Lord Hailes supposed)? and is it not, therefore, absurd to speak of such a cross being taken at the battle of Durham, or to identify it with the Black Rood of Scotland?

6. The quotation of W. S. G. from the MS. Dunelm is curious; but is there any contemporary authority for the Black Rood having been taken with King David at the battle of Durham? I can find none.

7. Is it not, however, probable that King David lost two crosses at Durham, one a military cross, carried with his army, and taken from the Abbey of Holyrood; and the other the famous Black Rood found on his person, and made an offering to the shrine of St. Cuthbert? This would reconcile some apparent discrepancies.

8. I find it noticed by Richardson in his Table Book (Newcastle, 1846, vol. i. p. 123.), that "there is a letter in the British Museum (Faustina, A 6. 47.) from the prior of Durham to the Bishop (then absent), giving an account of the battle of Neville's cross." Has this letter been printed, and where? If not so, will any of your correspondents have the kindness to examine it, and say if it gives any information as to a cross or crosses captured with the King of Scots?

J. D. N. N.