September, 1970

NOTES AND QUERIES

University College of Wales,
Aberystwyth.

Readers* Queries
COURCE WANTED—The phrase "faults
^ innumerable, and thoughts inimitable ",
used to describe Shakespeare's works which
occurs in a letter in Italian from Francesco
Algarotti to Giulio Franchini-Taviani, prefacing several editions of Voltaire's La Mort
eC sar

d

^

-

D.J.FLETCHER.

Department of Romance Studies,
The University College of Wales,
Aberystwyth.
y E R S E S AT BRYN BRAS CASTLE.—
At Bryn Bras Castle near Caernarvon,
on the outside walls of the castle, are a
number of Victorian raised metal plaques
with quotations on them. Most of them
are obvious ones about beauty and gardens,

but there is one I cannot identify, and I
wonder if any readers can do so:
At Bryn Bras one finds a tradition
Has existed long years expired;
Perchance 'tis the " contract" perdition,
The Quartet with such thrill has inspired.

I would also like to know what the
" contract" is referred to, and who the
Quartet were.
PETER STOCKHAM.
57 Barham Avenue,
Elstree, Hertfordshire.
P H I L I P JACQUES DE LOUTHERBOURG (1740-1812).—In CollectorsCircular, n.s. iv, No. 35, 23 July 1904,
Warwick A. Draper reproduced maquettes
by him from the collection of Hilton Nash,
and facsimiles of letters from the collection
of A. M. Broadley. Can these (or any other
letters) be traced?
Ru DIOER JOPPIEN.
Plathnerstrasse 55,
3 Hannover,
Germany.

x

JACQUES DU MERDY, Comte de
** Catuelan, a translator of Shakespeare's
plays, 1776-1783, in collaboration with Le
Tourneur, is known to have come frequently
to England, between 1763 and 1778, and
after 1783, and is thought to have died in
London in 1797. Has a reader got any
documents about his stays in England and
his relations with the English literati?
There were over two hundred subscribers
to that translation: " Shakespeare traduit de
l'Anglais ", in twenty volumes. Is it possible
to know what happened to the many copies
that were sent to Britain? Are there any
in pub; lic or private libraries that were annotated by readers in the eighteenth century?
JACQUES GURY.

AgriSge" de 1'Uniyersit^,
Assistant de Literature Comparde,
Faculty des Lettres et Sciences
Humaines de Brest,
B.P. 660, 29N, Brest.
COURCE WANTED—The
following
quotation from an essay by C. S. Lewis:
Man's reason is in such deep insolvency to sense.
WALTER HOOPER.

Jesus College,
Oxford, OX1 3DW.

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" Oh who is that young sinner" (B. pp.
70-1: Additional Poems XVIII). It is
widely held that these lines were prompted
by the imprisonment of Wilde though even
poetic Hcence can hardly sustain the notion
of Oscar, overblown and nearing his fortieth
year, as a " young sinner ". It therefore does
little violence to probability to suppose that
Wilde's sentence and young Maclean's supposed sin dovetailed in Housman's mind.
As so often with this extraordinarily complex poet there remains altogether too much
room for unverifiable conjecture.
The one thing that emerges as more than
conjectural is Housman's recognition that
Harry .Maclean fitted admirably into the
Shropshire mythus imposed upon the inspiration, drawn at the outset, from the poet's
native Worcestershire. " I had ", he wrote
to Maurice Pollet, " a sentimental feeling for
Shropshire because its hills were our western
horizon ". But so, too, were the Malverns,
and Storridge, a score of miles south-west of
Bromsgrove and only just in Herefordshire,
was obviously eligible for admission to a
Shropshire that was flexible enough to
accommodate Bredon and Knighton and
only narrowly missed including Bewdley and
Stourbridge as well.
T_ M N o s w o R T H Y .

353