Oct. 23.

Mr. URBAN, MY opinion having been asked respecting the Fragment of the Baccha of Euripides, printed in your last Number, I have just read it; and now sit down to write you a few hasty remarks which have occurred to me in its perusal. I must premise, however, that my observations can be of very little value, as, although I was formerly a diligent reader of Euripides, many years have elapsed since I bade farewell to such studies; nor have I at this time leisure to look into a single book which a person who pretends to criticize a Greek passage ought to inspect. It rests with you, therefore, to determine whether you will make any use of remarks written under such circumstances.

The inspection of almost every part of this production will, I think, be sufficient to satisfy your learned readers, that it is a lusus of your Correspondent; who having amused himself with an attempt to supply the lacuna in the last scene of the Bacchæ, chooses to try what reception it will meet with, when it appears in your pages pretending to come from the genuine hand of Euripides. I should be very sorry to insinuate that there is any intention of committing a fraud upon you or upon your readers: but as it is, I believe, certain that many persons were imposed upon by the pretended Shakspeare Manuscripts, and that the late Dr. Parr not only declared, but subscribed his full belief in them, your Grecian friend X. Y. may have thought it fair to try what degree of credulity may exist among your learned readers. Whoever may be the author of these iambics, I beg leave to pay my humble tribute to the scholarship and spirit of the composition, and the intimate acquaintance which it displays with the works of the Tragedians, at the same time, that it is free from servile imitation.

It is justly remarked in your Magazine, that this pretended fragment of the Bacchæ does not present such faults in prosody as those which mark the spurious addition to the Iphigenia in Aulis, and the Fragment of the Danaë: but had these verses been taken from an old Palimpsest manuscript, as hinted by X. Y. it is probable that they would have exhibited many metrical errors similar to those which are found in most manuscripts, arising from the ignorance of the suc

cessive copyists, respecting the true laws of the tragic metres.

The first line is from Euripides. In v. 10, there is either a false quantity, or an anapæst for the second foot; Μὴ δριμυτέραν τῷ συμφορὰν συσσκευάσῃ.

In v. 15. Εἰ νεκρὸν ὀρθοῖς σῶμ ̓ ὁρᾷν ὄσσοις φέροις. Euripides would rather have written, Εἰ νεκρὸν ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν λεύσσειν ἔχοις.

V. 22. I do not recollect the adverb

opops in the Tragedians.

V. 23. ἄπιστ ̓ ἄπιστα, καινὰ καινὰ δέρκομαι. This verse is borrowed from a play of Euripides; I think the Hecuba, but am not quite sure, and have no time to look for it. The line however is certainly taken from the melic parts of the Tragedy. Two such repetitions would not have been found in a line constituting part of the regular iambic dialogue.

V. 31. ' is here only inserted for the metre.

V. 32 and 33. I have met with these two lines elsewhere, unless my memory greatly deceives me.

V. 42. καθ', οἳ ἂν ἦν ἐλεινὰ Διονύσῳ ', exe. This seems an imitation of the Latin, miseranda vel hosti: but the Greek words do not accurately express their intended meaning.

V. 48. βλέπειν σέ γ' οὐ φέρω. Should it not rather have been οὐ σθένω ?

V. 49. τῶν χειλέων, Ὅτοις. The last word should rather have been οἷσπερ.

V. 56. οἴσομαι βλέπειν, and v. 62, pépovoa Вλénew. These translations of the English bear to see, by pépw Bλéπew, four times within a few lines, would have detected your new Euripides, even had his mask been better than it is.

There are many other remarks of a similar nature which I could make, (though I trust I have advanced sufficient to substantiate my opinion,) but have not time; and must conclude with begging you to excuse the haste with which these are written, and assuring you that I am, with much respect for yourself, and no disrespect for your Correspondent, your very humble serE. G.

vant,

Another learned correspondent observes, "The Greek Iambics, which are printed as a fragment of the Bacchæ, are written by some scholar of the present day, who is betrayed, amongst other signs, by some Anglicisms. The preliminary notice signed X. Y. is of itself sufficient to discredit the pretended Fragment."

Mr. URBAN,

Bath, Oct. 20. YOU will confer a favour on a constant reader and occasional correspondent, by allowing a place to the Letter which I now inclose. It is quite unnecessary for me to add one word in corroboration of what Mr. Bright has stated in it. Most true it is that many years ago he did me the favour to admit me an acquaintance with this long-concealed and most curious truth; and that I have from time to time taken the liberty of suggesting to him that it was due to his own literary reputation, and due to other inquirers in this department of literary history, not to withhold the public communication of the fact, and of the curious and most recondite researches by which he had first established and then illustrated it. I may add that not only the fact itself, but the evidence was submitted to me, and the many important conclusions also which follow on the establishment of the connection between Lord Pembroke and the Poet: the whole disquisition being an admirable specimen of inductive reasoning, from the comparison of facts which could be found only by deep research, equally creditable to the diligence and the power of combination of its author. JOSEPH HUNter. [Copy.]

MY DEAR SIR,The communication of J. B. respecting the person to whom Shakespeare addressed his Sonnets, which occurs in the Gentleman's Magazine of this month, and to which you have so kindly directed my attention, occasions, I am half ashamed to confess, some selfish regrets.

It is now more than 13 years ago, in 1819, I think, since I detailed to you the progress of the discovery I had then made, that William Herbert the third Earl of Pembroke was undoubtedly the person to whom Shakepeare addressed the first 126 Sonnets. Another friend, Dr. Holme of Manchester, had been informed of my secret a year earlier; and from both, as ever since from time to time I have spoken or corresponded on the subject, I have received warnings, that by delaying to give the result of my researches to the public, I was putting to hazard an honourable opportunity of securing to myself some literary reputation. The truth is, I have in the long interval been much and actively engaged in matters more immediately

Under these circumstances, and before J. B. actually announces his discovery, I thus put in my claim. I readily acknowledge that he who unnecessarily hoards information of any kind, rightly loses the privilege of first communicating it; and I anticipate with my best philosophy the interesting conclusion of J. B.'s very excellent and original paper.

When I can again apply myself to the subject, I will come before the public as a fellow-labourer, and it shall be in the spirit of one who, whilst he feels-for human naturesomewhat jealously of his own longtreasured discovery, recollects that the claim he is now preferring may be the cause of similar feelings in another, who has much more justly appreciated what is due to himself, and what the interests of literature demand from all its worshippers.

I am, my dear Sir, your obliged friend, B. HEYWOOD BRIGHT. Stone-buildings, Lincoln's Inn, Oct. 16, 1832.

Rev. Joseph Hunter.

YOUR description of the old Hungerford Market, and the former connexion of the estate with the Hungerford family, has reminded me of an old mansion in Wiltshire, once the seat of some of that ancient name.

Behind the church of White Parish, situated on the road between Romsey and Salisbury, was a house of no mean size, appearing to have been erected at different periods. On a narrow projecting part of this building, composed of flint, and said to have been erected by Edward St. Barbe, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and who died in 1616, are three windows of the fashion of that day, one above the other; between the uppermost and middle one, on a square stone tablet, a rose surmounted by a crown and encircled with the garter, and usual motto of "Honi soit qui mal y pense."

Between the middle and lower window, two other tablets; on one the arms of the original builder impaled with Beswick, on the other the arms of St. Barbe impaled with Little. The rest of the building, from thence towards the church, is of brick and of some extent, containing in its length six square windows. Over the entrance door are the arms of Anthony Hungerford impaling those of Mason, widow of a St. Barbe; and this Mr. Hungerford is said to have repaired, if not wholly rebuilt, this part. Beneath the arms last mentioned a smaller tablet bearing the arms of St. Barbe singly. Some years since the estate, of which the above house was a part, passed into other hands, and it was wholly pulled down, and there is no trace of the remains, further than by a drawing of the house as it ap

ST. DUNSTAN'S

WE regard with painful feelings the removal of an object to which we have been familiarized from our earliest years; the associations connected with it, and the reminiscences to which it often gives rise, create an interest in its existence which we cannot see destroyed without regret. An object of this kind, at least to all who, like ourselves, have found their natal place within the sound of Bow Bell, was the old Church of St. Dunstan, with its singular clock and colossal hour strikers or 66 quarter jacks," as less imposing effigies of this description are usually styled-pigmies in comparison with the ex-giants of St. Dunstan. The date of these statues is more recent than some other striking apparatus of the same description, and we must therefore allow to the novelist the license of the poet, in giving to them an existence at a period above half a century earlier than their construction; for we find Sir Walter Scott first introducing Richie Moniplies into Fleet-street when "the twa iron carles yonder, at the kirk beside the port, were just banging out sax o' the clock."

The fact seems to be, that the clock and figures were only set up in the year 1671, by Mr. Thomas Harrys, then living at the end of Water-lane, Fleet-street, and there is no evidence

Denham's Historical Account of the Church, p. 8.

GENT. MAG. October, 1832.

peared at the time of its being in Mr. Hungerford's possession.

I trouble you with the above, by way of further illustrating the family of the Hungerfords, and to ascertain how far the one of that name abovementioned was allied to the one to whom Hungerford Market owes its origin.* I remain your humble servant, J. L.

There are some notices of the Black Bourton branch in Hoare's Hungerfordiana, pp. 64-68, 131; but we do not find the names of Beswick or Mason. From p. 149, it also appears that there is at White Parish an epitaph to Mary, who died 1692, the wife of Anthony Hungerford, of Black Bourton, and relict of Anthony St. Barbe, of White Parish; but which appears to have been accidentally omitted from the volume. Its communication is requested.-Edit.

IN THE WEST.

that any effigies of the same description were in existence at an earlier period.

Our present object is to describe the new Church, which forms the subject of our engraving (Plate I.); we shall not, therefore, go into a description of the previous structure further than to notice it briefly, with the improvements which have occasioned its destruction. It was one of the few Churches which escaped the fire of London, the conflagration having ended three houses to the eastward. The house recently occupied by Mr. Cobbett (No. 183, Fleet-street), was that at which the fire was arrested. At the baker's shop next door, some of the remains of the burned rafters of the house at which the fire of 1666 stopped, were discovered in the old walls, which are now standing, and were exposed to view at Mr. Cobbett's late house, on some repairs being made. In the extensive vaults at the back of Mr. Cobbett's house, various materials have been discovered, leading to the belief that an extensive private still had been worked many years ago.

་

An Act of Parliament was obtained in June 1829,† for the purpose of taking down the old Church, and building a new one, and for raising the necessary supplies. Trustees were appointed for carrying the Act into execution, consisting of the Rector for † 10 Geo. IV. c. xcvi. (local.)