“------but through his lips do throng
Weak words, so thick come, in his poor heart’s aid,
That no man could distinguish what he said.”
Rape of Lucreece, Stanza 255.

After I had kept this among other flim-flams for more than a year in my note-book, I submitted it in a letter to the examination of a friend; his answer was as follows:—­“Your canon is ingenious, especially in the line taken from the sonnet.  I doubt it however, much, and rather believe that sound is often sympathetically, and as it were unconsciously, adapted to sense.  Moreover, monosyllables are redundant in our tongue, as you will see in the scene you quote.  In King John, Act III.  Sc. 3., where the King is pausing in his wish to incense Hubert to Arthur’s murder, he says:—­

   ’Good friend, though hast no cause to say so yet: 
    But thou shall have; and creep time ne’er so slow,
    Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good. 
    I had a thing to say,—­But let it go:’—­

forty monosyllables.”

   “Credimus? an qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt.”

The very passage he quoted seemed, to my eyes, rather a corroboration of the theory, than an argument against it!  I might, I think, have quoted the remainder of Lear’s speech ending with the words “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,” and, with the exception of three words, consisting entirely of monosyllables, and one or two other passages.  But I have written enough to express my meaning.

C. FORBES.

Temple.

* * * * *

NOTES UPON CUNNINGHAM’S HAND-BOOK FOR LONDON.

_ Wild House, Drury Lane._—­Mr. Cunningham says, “Why so called, I am not aware.” Wild is a corruption of Weld.  It was the town mansion of the family of the Welds, of Lutworth Castle.

Compton Street, Soho.—­Built in the reign of Charles the First by Sir Francis Compton. New Compton Street, when first formed, was denominated Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, the owner of the land.  It afterwards changed its name, from a demise of the whole adjoining marsh land, made by Charles the Second to Sir Francis Compton.  All this, and the intermediate streets, formed part of the site of the Hospital of St. Giles.

Tottenham Court Road.—­The old manor-house, sometimes called in ancient records “Totham Hall,” was, in Henry the Third’s reign, the residence of William de Tottenhall.  Part of the old buildings were remaining in 1818.

{229}_Short’s Gardens, Drury Lane_.—­Dudley Short, Esq., had a mansion here, with fine garden attached, in the reign of Charles the Second.

Parker Street, Drury Lane.—­Phillip Parker, Esq., had a mansion on this site in 1623.

Bainbridge and Buckridge Streets, St. Giles’s.—­The two streets, now no more, but once celebrated in the “annals of low life,” were built prior to 1672, and derived their names from their owners, eminent parishioners in the reign of Charles the Second.