CHEAP EDITION.

MIDDLE TEMPLE TABLE

TALK:

WITH SOME TALK ABOUT THE

TABLE ITSELF.

BY

W. G. THORPE, F.S.A.,

A BARRISTER OF THE SOCIETY,

AUTHOR OF "THE STILL LIFE OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE."

FOREWORD.

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READERS of my former book have invari

ably concluded their letters to me with "Give us some more." I hope they may find this practical reply equally amusing. But I trust no more of them will sit up all night to finish it: three tell me they did so in the case of the last volume-two of them married men,

too.

The greater part of this book is, of necessity, desultory and disconnected, but the first two chapters are framed differently.

The first records the survival of Templar Knights' ceremonies in our Middle Temple Hall, due to the incoming Law Students taking over the staff and establishment, as well as the house, of the dissolved Order.

The title of the second is misleading, inasmuch as it emphasizes one very contestable suggestion and leaves out of view two impor

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tant positions, now formulated, it would seem, for the first time, yet both so simple and easy that the wonder is why they have never before been pointed out.

Coming first to the epitaph, I know that Moseley prints it from Milton's papers; he may also have been the channel through which it reached the Editors of the 2nd Folio.

But my objections to this apparently plain

case are numerous.

1. Milton at twenty-two could not have written it, though he certainly could have done so thirty years later. It is the work of an older, graver man.

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2. The writer talks of " my Shakespeare," and our wonder and astonishment"; there is a flavour of personal knowledge about it. Milton was but four years old when Shakespeare withdrew from London, and eight when he died.

3. Milton was a Puritan, to whom a playactor was pollution: would he look upon the man who drank down the Bidford people as having "hallowed" bones? Would not some of the epithets in Prynne's "Histrio-Mastix" be more in his mouth?