John Nichols's Notes in the Scholarly
Commentary of Others
by
Arthur Sherbo
The contributions of John Nichols to the scholarly literature of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are both invaluable and widely
known. As is almost inevitable in vast editorial enterprises like his, he often
drew on the help of others. One of the earliest of such contributors was
Isaac Reed, the retiring and modest conveyancer who was a close friend of
Nichols until Reed died in 1807. Already in 1775 he had assisted with
Nichols's editions of the works of William King and of the twenty-fourth
volume of Swift's works. Less recognized is how Nichols himself
contributed to the scholarly editorial projects of others, many of which also
involved Reed.
Although one will learn from the Dictionary of National
Biography that George Colman, the elder, was the editor of the
1778
ten-volume edition of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, that same
biographical compilation will not inform one that Reed helped Colman to
the extent of over two hundred notes. Reed, it is known, signed his notes
"R," but there are also fifteen notes signed "J.N." J.N. is John Nichols.
Alexander Dyce, editor of the still indispensable edition of Beaumont and
Fletcher because of the fullness of the commentary, so identifies him, i.e.
"J.N[ichols]" in a note on The Pilgrim (VIII.
29),
as does George B. Ferguson, editor of the critical edition of The
Woman's Prize (1966, p. 223). In addition to the fifteen notes in the
Beaumont and Fletcher edition, notes which exhibit him, early in his
editorial career, as a commentator on the drama, a rarity for him, Nichols
also aided in Reed's 1780 edition of Robert Dodsley's collection of
Old
Plays, as well as in the 1794 edition of Johnson's
Lives
of the English poets, a work to which Reed also contributed.
The Beaumont and Fletcher plays had been edited in 1750 by Lewis
Theobald, Joseph Sympson, and Thomas Seward, and seven of Nichols's
notes express disagreement with those of the editors of that edition. The
principal differences are over emendations.[1] Only twice does Nichols agree
with, in
these instances, Mr. Seward;[2] twice
he ventures upon emendations of his own, once to change "he" to "ye,"
explaining that "The corruption is very easy," and once to add a
comma.[3] The first of these
emendations is accepted in the Cambridge
Beaumont and Fletcher (1979, IV. 448); the second, silently,
by Alexander Dyce (VIII. 40). Twice Nichols explains "obscure"
expressions, explaining that "Great as your beauty scornful" means "As
remarkable for your
scorn and cruelty, as for your
beauty" (III.265) and that "seal it with my service" means
"put
a period to my service" (III. 409). In his one gloss, he defines "brave" as
"well-dress'd" (III. 457). His most interesting note is on the lines, "Let's
remove our places. / Swear it again" in V.iii of
The Woman's
Prize, for it recalled Shakespeare to him: "This is plainly a sneer at
the scene in Hamlet, where (on account of the Ghost calling under the
stage) the Prince and his friends two or three times remove their
situations.---Again, in this play, p. 317, Petruchio's saying,
'
Something I'll do; but what it is, I know not!' Seems to be
meant as a ridicule on Lear's passionate exclamation, '---
I will do
such things— / What they are, yet I
know not!'" Ferguson, editor of the critical edition of this play,
gives
Nichols credit for both parts of his note.
It remains only to complete the evaluation of these notes. Dyce quotes
Nichols's notes three more times, identifying him only as "J.N."[4] And while Dyce does not quote or
cite
Nichols's other notes, he has no notes where Nichols has one (V. 313; VII.
379) and, most curiously, disagrees with Nichols's note on The False
One (IV. 159), writing that "a correspondent whose signature is
I.N."
[sic] explained that passage; Dyce quotes Nichols's note and concludes that
I. N.'s interpretation was "forced and far-fetched" (VI. 299), evidently
forgetting or not yet making the identification with Nichols.
In the Preface to his 1780 edition of the collection of old plays
originally edited by Robert Dodsley in 1744 Isaac Reed acknowledged that
"those notes which have the letter N annexed to them, are such observations
as occurred to the printer of the first six volumes in reading the proof
sheets" (I. xxi). The volumes were "Printed by J. Nichols," Reed's friend.
I have found only seven notes by N. in the first six volumes. Nichols
invokes Dr. Johnson's Dictionary for the definition of "seat"
meaning "situation"; explains that a "come-you-seven" (not in
OED) is "a gambler, a dice-player"; and sees an allusion to
"the
sign called The Saxon's Head" in the words "the picture of
Hector" in The Hog hath Lost his Pearl.[5] Of greater interest are his notes on
"scotch boot" in The Malcontent, and on "Peter-man" and
"figent" in Eastward Hoe. "The
torturing-boots," he
wrote, "are mentioned by Swift, vol. xiii.
1768, p. 314, to have been hung out in terrorem to Captain
Creichton in 1689" (IV. 57). A "Peter-man" was "the common appellation
of those who formerly used unlawful engines and arts in catching fish in the
river Thames" (IV. 227), a much more informative note than the definition
of the OED, "A fisherman; formerly app. one who practised
a
particular kind of fishing." The third note reads, "Figentia (in chemistry)
are things which serve to fix volatile substances. Figent,
therefore, as applied to memory ["figent memory"], may be synonymous
with retentive" (IV. 246). OED, quoting the same passage
from
Eastward Hoe, defines "figent" as "Fidgety, reckless," but
has
no entry for
"figentia." One note remains. Reference is made in
The Roaring
Girl to the "six wet towns" between the "
Lambith
workes" and "
Windsor-bridge," and Nichols, native Londoner
who lived all his life in that city, was ready with the identification, naming
Fulham, Richmond, Kingston, Hampton, Chertsey, and Staines, and adding,
for good measure, "The other intermediate towns are Chelsea, Battersea,
Kew, Isleworth, Twickenham, and Walton" (VI, 116).
[6]
There was also an appendix of "Additional Notes" in volume twelve;
it contained eight more notes by Nichols. In the first of these he gave a
biographical sketch of the heroine of The Roaring Girl: "Mrs.
Mary Frith, alias Moll Cutpurse, born in Barbican, the daughter of a
shoemaker, died at her house in Fleet-street, next the Globe Tavern, July
26, 1659, and was buried in the church of St. Bridget's. She left twenty
pounds by her will, for the conduit to run wine when King Charles the 2d
returned, which happened in a short time after. From a MS. in the
British Museum (p. 398)."
He called upon two works he had recently edited for two notes, the
first of which was on the words "he that farms the monuments" in James
Shirley's The Bird in a Cage: "In a poem describing the
tombs
in Westminster Abbey in the last century (preserved in Nichols's
Select Collection of Poems, vol. 4. p. 169) mention is made of the
master of the shew. It there also appears, that the price of
admission was one penny; it was afterwards raised to
three
pence; and, in 1779 (since the Earl of Chatham's effigies have been
placed there) still further advanced to six pence. As a large
sum
must annually arise from the curiosity of individuals, it is to be lamented
that the tombs in general are suffered to remain in so disgracefully dirty a
condition (p. 417)." The second impressed into service was the works of
William King, in an edition of which he had been helped by Reed. Here he
quoted King on the "cittern" which he, Nichols, stated "began to be
disused at the beginning of this century" (p. 432), a statement corroborated
by the OED. His note on "love-locks" is much more detailed
than that of the OED, which simply notes that a lovelock was
"a curl of a particular form worn by courtiers in the time of Elizabeth and
James I; later, any curl or tress of hair of a peculiar or striking character."
Nichols wrote, "The love-lock was worn on the left side, and
was considerably longer than the rest of the hair. King Charles and many
of his courtiers wore them. The king cut his off in 1646. See
Granger, vol. 2. p. 411" (p. 416), Granger
being
James Granger, whose Biographical History of England, from Egbert
the Great to the Revolution, to give it its short title, was notable
chiefly for its engravings.
The second definition of "sollar" in the OED is "A
place
exposed to the sun. Obs." In Marlowe's Jew of
Malta Barabas speaks of "Cellars of wine, and sollers full of
wheat,"
and Steevens had correctly glossed a soller as "a loft or garret." Nichols
volunteered that a "solarium, among the old Romans, was a
level place at the top of their houses. . . . At Rome there was a
solarium in some part of almost every public edifice; it being
esteemed an essential requisite for health as well as pleasure" (pp.
417-418). The first example of "solarium" in the
OED is
dated
1891. The last of the eight notes, three in number, are on the same page
(424). Thomas Warton, in a note on
Othello, cited by Reed
for
the words "Batchelor whifflers" in Jasper Mayne's
The City
Match, had defined a "whiffler" as "a light, trivial character, a
fellow
hired to pipe at processions," to which Nichols objected. Batchelor
whifflers were "
young men free of the company" and were
considered, "by the company they belong to, pretty nearly in the same point
of view as a gentleman considers the upper servants he keeps
out of
livery." According to the
OED, both definitions are
acceptable, although "the sense of 'piper, fifer' found in Dicts. from
Hersey's ed. of Phillips (1706)
on is baseless." In the context of Mayne's lines, however, Nichols was
right. He was able to state, in the second of those notes, that the
"Topographical MSS." of William Habington, author of
The Queen
of Arragon, "are now in the hands of Dr. Nash, and will be made
use of in his History of Worcestershire, two volumes, 1781 and 1782,
"Printed by John Nichols," who knew whereof he wrote in his statement
about the Habington MSS.
[7]
Nichols's last note is keyed to the headnote to Shakerley Marmion's play
The Antiquary: "Mr. Samuel Gale told Dr. Ducarel, that this
comedy was acted two nights in 1718, immediately after the revival of the
Society of Antiquaries; and that therein had been introduced a ticket of a
turnpike (then new) which was called a
Tessera." If Samuel
Gale, the antiquary, whose MSS. passed through the hands of Dr. Ducarel
and then were bought by Richard Gough, and many of which were printed
by Nichols in
Reliquiae
Galeanea, was right, the editors of the multi-volume
London
Stage have not recorded two rare performances.
The 1794 edition of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the poets
contains notes by R, N, and H, i.e. Reed, Nichols, and Sir John Hawkins,
the notes of the last having first appeared in his edition of Johnson's works.
One of Nichols's notes, the last of the thirteen he contributed, is actually
signed "J.N." (IV. 324). He is right in all his suggestions, being cited twice
and quoted once in G. B. Hill's edition of the Lives. He
noted,
of Cowley, that he was unsuccessful in 1636 as candidate for election to
Trinity College, Cambridge, and that his satire Puritan and
Papist was added to Cowley's works "by the particular direction of
Dr. Johnson," a practice, he also noted, that obtained with Edward Young's
works in the edition of the English poets to which the Lives
were prefatory.[8] He knew when
Richard Duke entered Westminster school and then Trinity College,
Cambridge (II. 250) and that Nicholas Rowe was not elected a King's
scholar
until 1688 (II. 293), in the first instance offering information not in
Johnson's account and in the second correcting him. Johnson had written
of Thomas Yalden that he had "been chosen, in 1698, preacher of Bridewell
Hospital, upon the resignation of Dr. Atterbury";
Nichols pointed out that Atterbury became Bishop of Rochester in 1713, at
which time Yalden succeeded him as preacher at Bridewell (III. 141). Of
a partial quotation from one of Richard Savage's letters he remarked, "See
this continued,
Gent. Mag. vol. LVII, 1140 [read 1040]," a
contribution to the
Gentleman's Magazine which has a
number
of footnotes by "N," Nichols himself, of course (III. 319). Twice more he
invoked the
Gentleman's Magazine, of which he was editor,
once for an attempt to ascertain the identity of Pope's "Unfortunate lady,"
by "J.N." (IV. 2), once to fix the date of the death of Major Bernardi,
mentioned in the life of Pope. This second contribution, in the periodical
for March, 1780, p. 125, was by "Crito," i.e. the Reverend Mr. John
Duncombe, a regular contributor and one of Nichols's friends.
Nichols, with Bishop Percy and Dr. John Calder, was involved in the
six-volume edition of The Tatler, published in 1786, and he
went to it for two notes, giving precise references both times. In his
account of Addison and The Spectator Johnson had stated that
"when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to some sermons a preface overflowing with
whiggish opinions, that it might be read by the Queen, it was reprinted in
The Spectator." Nichols wrote, "This particular number of
the
Spectator, it is said, was not published until twelve o'clock,
that
it might come out precisely at the hour of her Majesty's breakfast, and that
no time might be left for deliberating about serving it up with that meal, as
usual. See edit. of the Tatler with notes, vol. VI. N 271,
note, p. 452, etc." (II. 327). The Tatler, "ed.
1786,
vol. VI. p. 452," was also invoked for the daily number of essays sold (II.
335). Matthew Prior's uncle was "a vintner near Charing-cross,"
wrote Dr. Johnson, to which Nichols added, "Samuel Prior kept the
Rummer Tavern near Charing-cross in 1685. The annual feast of the
nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, was held
at his house, Oct. 14, that year."[9]
Nichols produced an immense quantity of scholarly work, and the
canon of his work will not be much increased by the thirty-five notes he
contributed to the works of other scholars, but they deserve to be known,
and they are further evidence of the close intimacy between him and Isaac
Reed.
Notes
