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CONTENTS.- N° 107. NOTES:-The Story of Lillo's "Fatal Curiosity," 21-English Roman Catholic Martyrs, 23-The "Catholicon Anglicum," 24-Philip Jones, 1588-Misprints-Longevity of Professional Men-" Return of Members of Parliament," &c., 25-Mnemonics of Ecumenical Councils-A Memorial Tablet-" Railway"-The Philological Society's New English Dictionary, 26.

QUERIES:- Dove-tail - Boswell's " Johnson," 26-Fry's
"Pantographia "-Ecclesiastical Plate-Sir A. Leslie-The
Irish Saints-Garrick and Junius-Old Scottish Ballad-
The Yardleys of England-"The Task" of a Parish, 27-
Heloe-Frank Pledge-Ritson's Letters to J. C. Walker
Col. Peter Beckford-"Racial"-Milton a Freethinker-The
Kings of Cornwall-"Straight as a loitch "—" Art”—
Authors Wanted, 28.
REPLIES:-Charles II.'s Hiding-Places, 28-Hare, Baron of
Coleraine, 29-Anstey Family, 30- Wray-Udall-john
Tupling, 31-Toads Poisonous ?-"Tin"-Money-Heine's

English Fragments"-Song of Solomon, 32-Nishan-iImtiaz-Dividing Copy-Whig and Tory-Henry VIII. and the Farmers-"Chaise Marine"-"Remillion"-"Heigham," 33-Antimony Effervescing Drinks-"Roarer " -West's Portrait of Byron-"Century" White, 34-"Medicus curat," &c.-Tallies-St. Luke xxiii. 15, 35-"Drowe "-Episcopal Wig-"Panis de Hastrinello"-Mary Queen of Scots-Portrait of W. Irving-Siege of Chepstow-Painting of the Flight into Egypt-"Too too," 36-"Sate"-Statue at Brasenose College-Privy Council-Boon-Days-Indigenous Trees of Britain, 37-Cordiner's "Antiquities," &c.-T. Daniell, R. A.-"Bosh"-"Manchet Loaf," 38" Diary of

an Irish Gentleman "-"Rock of Ages"-"John Dory "— Fencing Match-Authors Wanted, 39.

NOTES ON BOOKS:-Tuer's "Bartolozzi"-Smith's
Yorkshire"-Cotton's "Bromsgrove Church," &c.
Notices to Correspondents, &c.

Notes.

Old

THE STORY OF LILLO'S "FATAL CURIOSITY."* The Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, early in June, 1880, gave currency to the following narrative of crime :

"Fifteen years ago a young Viennese parted from his mother and two brothers to seek his fortune in America. No news ever came of him; he was supposed to be dead, and lamented as such. Last month, how ever, the two brothers received the visit of a stranger who was no other than the supposed defunct. The delight of the recognition may be imagined, and we may be sure that it was not diminished when the wanderer spread out on the table before his brothers' eyes the 300,000 florins which he had brought back with him from America. They would not, however, keep their recovered brother exclusively to themselves, and told him that their mother kept an inn in a neighbouring village. It was agreed that the long-lost son should not at once reveal himself to his mother, but should first go to the place incognito, and that then, after he had spent two days under his mother's roof, his brothers should rejoin him there to witness his revelation of himself to his mother, and celebrate the reunion of the family by an impromptu festival. But the fifteen years of absence

The chief sources of information consulted have been Biographia Dramatica, by David Erskine Baker, Isaac Reed, and Stephen Jones, London, 1812, 3 vols.; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, by George Clement Boase and William Prideaux Courtney, London, 1874, 2 vols.

had so changed the son that his mother did not recognize him, and when, before going to his room for the night, the young man begged his hostess to take charge of his 300,000 florins for him, she had no idea who it was that reposed in her such extraordinary trust. Never in her life had she seen such a mass of gold; she could not sleep for the demon of cupidity gnawing at her heart, and yielding at last to the temptation, she took a razor, crept up to the traveller's room, and severed his carotid artery with a single stroke. The body she concealed in a corner of the cellar. Two days afterwards the brothers arrived, and asked if a strange traveller had not come to the inn. The mother grew horribly pale, and, pressed by questions, ended by a full confession. When told who had been her victim, she ran to deliver herself to justice, crying out in the midst of her sobs, 'Kill me, miserable that I am; I have murdered my son !'"

It will strike those who are familiar with a once famous, but now almost forgotten, play, that this is the exact plot of George Lillo's Fatal Curiosity. Lillo's piece was first performed at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket in 1736, and in the following year it was printed as a true tragedy

of three acts." It was frequently acted, and in 1782 George Colman brought out an adaptation of it. In 1784 another adaptation was produced at Covent Garden. It was from the pen of Henry Mackenzie, who prefixed the title of The Shipwreck to that given by Lillo. The play was the subject of high praise by James Harris, who, in his Philological Inquiries, says, that in this tragedy we find the model of a perfect fable, of which he gives the following analysis :

"A long-lost son, returning home unexpectedly, finds his parents alive, but perishing with indigence. The young man, whom, from his long absence, his parents never expected, discovers himself first to an amiable friend, his long-loved Charlotte, and with her concerts the manner how to discover himself to his parents. It is agreed he should go to their house, and there remain unknown till Charlotte should arrive and make the having, by a letter of Charlotte's, been admitted, conHe goes thither accordingly; and happy discovery. verses, though unknown, both with father and mother, and beholds their misery with filial affection; complains at length he was fatigued (which, in fact, he really was), and begs he may be admitted for a while to repose. Retiring, he delivers a casket to his mother, and tells her it is a deposit she must guard till he wakes. Cu riosity tempts her to open the casket, where she is dazzled with the splendour of innumerable jewels. Objects so alluring suggest bad ideas, and poverty soon gives to those ideas a sanction. Black as they are, she communicates them to her husband, who, at first reluctant, stabs the stranger while he sleeps. The fatal murder is at length persuaded, and, for the sake of the jewels, is perpetrating, or at least but barely perpetrated, when Charlotte arrives, full of joy, to inform them that the stranger within their walls was their long-lost son." To this analysis Mr. Harris adds:

"It is no small praise to this affecting fable that it so much resembles the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles. In both tragedies, that which apparently leads to joy, leads in its completion to misery; both tragedies concur in the horror of their discoveries; and both in those great outlines of a truly tragic revolutien, where (according to

The highest happiness and deepest woe,
With all the sharp and bitter aggravations
Of such a vast transition."

It was this eulogy which led both Colman and Mackenzie to avail themselves of the beauties of the piece whilst endeavouring to remove its blemishes. Lillo, it will be seen, calls it a true tragedy. In fact his play was founded upon a pamphlet called,

"Newes from Perin in Cornwall, of a most bloody and unexampled Murther, very lately committed by a Father on his owne Sonne (who was lately returned from the Indyes), at the Instigation of a merciless Stepmother, Together with their several most wretched Endes; being all performed in the Month of September last, Anno 1618." 4to. B. L.

The only copy known of this tract is in the Bodleian Library. The event is recorded also in William Sanderson's Compleat History of the Lives and Reigns of Mary, Queen of Scotland, and of her Son James (London, 1656), and in Thomas Frankland's Annals of James I. and Charles I. (London, 1681). From the last named Baker, in his Biographia Dramatica, gives the following quotation:

"The father had been blessed with ample possessions and fruitful issue, unhappy only in a younger son; who, taking liberty from his father's bounty, and with a crew of like condition, that were wearied on land, they went roving to sea; and, in a small vessel, southward, took booty from all whom they could master, and so increasing force and wealth, ventured on a Turkoman in the Straits; but by mischance their own powder fired themselves; and our gallant, trusting to his skilful swimming, got ashore upon Rhodes, with the best of his jewels about him, where offering some to sale to a Jew, who knew them to be the governor's of Algier, he was appre: hended, and as a pirate sentenced to the gallies amongst other Christians, whose miserable slavery made them all studious of freedom; and with wit and valour took opportunity and means to murder some officers, got aboard of an English ship, and came safe to London, where His Majesty and some skill made him servant to a surgeon, and sudden preferment to the East Indies, there by this means he got money, with which returning back, he designed himself for his native county, Cornwall; and in a small ship from London, sailing to the west, was cast away upon the coast; but his excellent skill in swimming, and former fate to boot, brought safe to shore; where, since his fifteen years absence, his father's former fortunes much decayed, now retired him not far off to a country habitation, in debt and danger.

"His sister he finds married to a mercer, a meaner

match than her birth promised; to her at first appears a poor stranger, but in private reveals himself, and withal what jewels and gold he had concealed in a bowcase about him; and concluded, that the next day he intended to appear to his parents, and to keep his disguise till she and her husband should meet, and make their common joy complete.

vessel, she wept, and so did he; but compassionate of her tears, he comforted her with a piece of gold, which gave assurance that he deserved a lodging, to which she brought him; and being in bed, shewed her his girdled wealth, which he said was sufficient to relieve her husband's wants, to spare himself; and being very weary, fell fast asleep. The wife, tempted with the golden bait of what she had, and eager of enjoying all, awaked her husband with this news, and her contrivance what to do; and, though with horrid apprehensions he oft refused, yet her puling fondness (Eve's enchantments) moved him to consent, and rise to be master of all, and both of them to murder the man; which instantly they did, covering the corpse under the clothes till opportunity to convey it out of the way. The early morning hastens the sister to her father's house, where she, with signs of joy, inquires for a sailor that should lodge there the last night: the parents slightly denied to have seen any such, until she told them it was her lost brother; by that assured scar upon his arm, cut with a sword in his youth, she knew him, and were all resolved this morning to meet there and be merry.

"The father hastily runs up, finds the mark, and, with horrid regret of this monstrous murder of his own son, with the same knife cut his own throat. most strange manner beholding them both in blood, wild and aghast, with the instrument at hand, readily rips up her own belly till the guts tumbled out. The daughter, doubting the delay of their absence, searches for them all, whom she found out too soon, with the sad sight of this scene; and being overcome with horror and amaze of the deluge of destruction, she sank down and died; the fatal end of that family.

"The wife went up to consult with him, where, in a

"The truth of which was frequently known, and flew to court in this guise; but the imprinted relation conceals their names, in favour to some neighbours of repute, and akin to that family.

"The same sense makes me silent also."

Vincenzo Rota in one of the late novelle, written Dunlop mentions the same story as told by early in the last century but not printed until 1794. Here the murder is located at Brescia. Dunlop mentions another version, where the tragedy is said to have happened at a Norman inn. He also states that Werner's Twenty-fourth of February is founded on a similar incident.

and translated into German in the last century. Lillo's play has been both printed in Germany These circumstances seem to warrant us in supposing that the Viennese horror is due to the ingenuity of some purveyor of news, who, for motives best known to himself, but still not difficult to guess at, has passed off an old tragedy as police news.

How accurately he had gauged the public taste may be judged from the fact that his story was copied in a great number of newspapers in Europe and America. London, Philadelphia, Manchester, and Constantinople were alike interested.

but all rest their case upon the pamphlet, which has all the air of one of those imaginative news