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8 Craven Hill, Bayswater.—Thanks him for the interest he has shown in his son John, whom he has instructed to behave better. He has decided to restrict his allowance to £200 a year, and to remove him from Trinity if he exceeds it.

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Transcript

8 Craven Hill, Bayswater
Feby 10th 1827.

My dear Sir,

I was in hopes that the present week would have afforded me sufficient leisure to pay you a short visit at Cambridge, that I might personally express to you the very lively gratitude which I feel for the great interest you have shewn in my son’s {1} welfare; but I am disappointed, and must therefore entreat your acceptance of my written acknowledgment of it, untill an opportunity shall offer of fulfilling my intention which, believe me, I shall eagerly embrace. I have, in consequence of your last letter, said every thing my mind could suggest to convince John of his error and to induce him to adopt a line of conduct more conducive to his own reputation and the satisfaction of his parents and of yourself, my dear Sir; and if it were not exacting too much of you, it would be doing both my son and me a most essential service, if you would inform him that I, having made diligent enquiries upon the subject, and having that the sons of many distinguished and noble families have passed through the University with honor to themselves upon two hundred pounds a year, I have determined, henceforward, to limit his allowance to that sum; and that if he exceeds it, I shall feel it my duty to erase his name from the books of Trinity, and leave him to battle his way through the world with others who, like himself, may have been foolish and wicked enough to squander the talents and advantages with which it has pleased God to bless them—pray excuse me for the task which I now request you to perform it; it cannot, I am certain, be an agreeable {1} one, but from the uncommon interest which you have expressed towards my son I feel a conviction that you will confer this additional obligation upon him who must always consider himself already

My dear Sir, | Your most obliged & obedient Servant
C. Kemble.

[Direction:] George Peacock Esqre | &c &c &c | Trinity College | Cambridge

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Postmarked 12 February 1827.

{1} The writer’s son, John Mitchell Kemble, later a distinguished Anglo-Saxon scholar, was admitted at Trinity on 26 June 1824 and assigned Robert Wilson Evans as his tutor, but it is clear that Evans shared responsibility for him with Peacock, his partner in one of the two tutorial sides between 1823 to 1835 (see Admissions to Trinity College, Cambridge, vol. iv, 1801 to 1850, p. v).

{2} The second ‘e’ is blotted, perhaps deliberately.

6 Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square, W.C.—Discusses suggested emendations to the text of Shakespeare.

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Transcript

Selle, saddle, French—sella Latin & Italian.
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Quotations from Spenser’s Faerie Queene—
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“He left his loftie steed with golden selle,
And goodlie gorgeous barbe.”
Book ii. Canto ii. Stanza xi.

“what mightie warrior that mote be,
That rode in golden selle with single spear.”
B. ii. C. iii. St. xii.

“They met, and low in dust was Guardi laid,
’Twixt either army, from his selle down rest.”
N.B. I cannot find the whereabouts. G.R.F.

“Nathless the prince would not forsake his selle,
(For well of yore he learnèd had to ride).”
B. ii. C. viii. St. xxxi.

“So sore he sous’d him on the compass’d crest,
That forcèd him to leave his loftie selle.”
B. ix. C. iv. St. xxx.

No doubt more may be found—especially in the noble Edition by Tyrwhitt.* {1} My sight is not good enough for such researches.

“The tyrant frown’d from his loftie selle,
And with his lookes made all his monsters tremble.”
Fairfax—Godfrey of Boulogne. B2. S. 7.

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Extracts from Sir Walter Scott’s Poems

“Returned Lord Marmion,
Down hastily he sprang from selle.”
Canto iii. Stanza 31.

“Where many a yeoman, bold and free,
Revelled as merrily and well,
As those that sat in lordly selle.”
Canto vi. St. 8.

“Fair was his seat in knightly selle.”
Lord of the Isles, Canto vi. St. 14.

alluding to Edward the Second at Bannockburn.

“From gory selle and reeling steed”
Cadyon Castle.

with a note. “Selle, saddle, a word used by Spenser and other ancient authors.”—

There is an instance in Chaucer, but I cannot put my hand on it.

Will not the above quoted passages justify you in putting “selle” for “selfe” in Macbeth. The suggestion by Singleton of “sell” is evidently right so far as sound goes—but there is no such noun in good English, and therefore is inadmissable. The word proposed by Bailey “its seat” is not near so good as selle. The early printers might easily mistake selle for selfe—hence the con-tinued error. “its-selle”—“its-selfe” {2}—I believe that the change would be most welcome to all true Shakspeareans.

For the reading in Hamlet the change advocated by me is fully discussed in a Note in my Book. There can hardly be a doubt on the proposed substitution being correct—hern-shaw (a young heron) for the stupid word, hand-saw—printer’s error again.

I strongly recommend you to retain, as given in many Editions—“Enter a gentle Astringer,” in “Alls Well” &c. In his Glossary, Harvey defines “astringer” as a “Gentleman Falconer” {2}. This is near the meaning—but “gentle” has nothing to do with a man, but means a bird—the French phrase “faucon gentil,” stands for “a tercel-gentle,” and Juliet exclaims—

“O for a falconer’s voice,
To hire this tassel-gentle back again.” R. & J. ii. 2.

“The falcon as the tercel,” Troilus & Cressida. Act III. 2.

The French word “tiercelet,” means “a tassel, tiercel, or tercel, the male of a hawk.” Fr. Dict.

“Achès”—noun & verb. The elder Disraeli, in his admirable “Curiosities of Literature,” tells us that the word was always written by our early authors as one of two syllables. There are more instances than the famous passage in the Tempest, for pronouncing achès as two syll. for which John Kemble was so brutally treated by the ignorant “groundlings.”

Thus in Coriolanus the metre requires the word to be divided.

“It makes the consuls base, and my soul achès
To know when two authorities are up.” Act III. Sc. 1.

So also in Timon of Athens—Act V. Sc. 2.

“Their fears of hostile strokes, their achès, losses.”

In Romeo & Juliet the Nurse exclaims—

“Lord, how my head achès, what a head have I.” Act II. 5.

In Butler’s Hudibras we have the couplet—Book II. 2.

“As no man of his own self catches
The itch, or amorous French achès.” line 455* {3}.

Do you agree with me and many authorities, that Perkin Warbeck was an impostor; “that Flemish counterfeit” as Sir W. Scott calls him in Marmion. Some years ago I read a paper, never published, on the Young Princes, before the Lond. & Midx Archæological Society {4}, of which I am now a V.P. I shall be happy to send it to you if it could be of service.

I remain
Yours very sincerely,
G. R. French

6 Henrietta St Brunswick Sqre W.C.
Augt 14, 1880

Wm Aldis Wright Esqre
Trinity Coll. Cambridge

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{1} Footnote: ‘*of Chaucer’.

{2} Opening inverted commas supplied.

{3} Footnote (inserted after the next paragraph): ‘*add. “Or ling’ringly his lungs consume, | Or meets with achès in the bone”. | Knight of the Burning Pestle. Act ii. Sc.’ (The number of the scene is wanting.)

{4} French read a paper to the Society on 11 April 1864 ‘On the localities connected with Shakespeare’s Plays in general, but especially the places in London and Westminster recorded in the Histories from King Richard II. to Henry VIII. inclusive.’ A discussion of this paper at the next meeting (9 May) was concluded by another paper by French on the death of the two young Princes in the Tower. (Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaelogical Society, vol. iii, p. 99.)