Scribleriana Transferred, 2019 to January 2020

• • Having acquired it many years ago from an Irish collector, Sophie Dupre listed a onepage manuscript (5½ x 3½ inches) with two autograph receipts signed by Swift (c. $18,810). At the top, after the date "Oct^r 26^th 1734," the MS reads "Then Received from the Revd James Stopford Vis^r [for "Vicr"] of Finglas thirty Pounds ster^l on account of the Rectorial Tythes of the Parish of Finglas for the Year 1733 three due to the Revd Doctor Delany. I say, receivd by me Jonath: Swift." Then on the bottom half of the sheet, in the same hand with smaller characters, dated "Febr. 8^th. 1734," a similar receipt "from the Reverend M^r James Stopford Vica^r of Finglas, [for] thirty twenty two Pounds ster^l, on account of the Rectorial Tythes … for the Year 1733 three; due to the Rev^d Doct^r Delany. I say, receved by me Jonath Swift." Both dates are near the left margin, and the signatures are placed near the right. Swift had what Ehrenpreis calls "an avuncular intimacy and affection" for the youthful Stopford, thirty years Swift's junior. Stopford was comfortably genteel; his half-sister was married to Knightley Chetwode; and there is no record in recent Swift biographies or David Woolley's edition of Swift's Correspondence of Stopford's owing money to Patrick Delany, Chancellor of Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedrals, then flush from his marriage to a wealthy widow in 1732. It is curious that the two payments differ and that both are recorded on the same slip.

• • At Sotheby's New York's sale on December 5, 2015, a book collector in New England acquired a miniature portrait of Swift facing left by Rupert Barber, the poet Mary Barber's son, described as "a trompe l'oeil of a miniature resting upon a stack of books, in giltwood frame with label 'Earl of Charlemont #44,' signed, height 2¾ in.; 7 cm. circa 1745" (Lot 190, sold $6875). The portrait is illustrated at Sotheby's site (seen on p. 121 of Representations of Swift, ed. Brian Connery, 2002). Another portrait of Swift facing left by Barber, that in pastel, nearly two feet tall and sold in 2012, was reported here in spring 2013. Regarding the dating, note that Barber had studied art in the mid-1730s in Bath, while in his mother's company, and then, after marrying, returned by 1743 to Dublin.

• • The Bodleian bought from Christopher Edwards's List 75 (2019) the fifth known copy of The Constellation: Poems, on Several Occasions ("Printed, and Sold by S. Keimer," 1715), 8vo: 40 pp., ESTC N55536. Foxon reported that Richard Rawlinson's MS notes for a revision of Anthony a` Wood's Athenœ Oxonienses identify this as by "Mr. Bland" with a few more pieces by John Locker (I.66). Edwards cannot trace Bland, but Locker, he notes, attended Merton College, Oxford, and "became a barrister and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries," dying in 1760. Edwards surveys the topics in the poems, such as the celebration of Orinda's memory and Marlborough's victory at Ramillies.

• • Also from Edwards 75 Stanford bought one of three recorded copies of the sole edition of A Pastoral Elegy on the Death of Lady Hilaretta. In a Dialogue between Two Lords ("for A. More, near Temple-Bar" [1730?]), a six-page folio, ESTC N10957, Foxon C10, by Archibald Campbell, later an ally of Walpole, distinguished bibliophile, and third duke of Argyll. This copy, formerly owned by John Brett-Smith, contains the MS identification of the poem as "by Ld Isla" [i.e. Ilay] that Foxon used for its attribution (illustrated by Edwards). The dialogue stresses how "Hilaret" was admired by all for her beauty until "one slip": "lying down" after failing to "shut the Door." Edwards offers a good discussion of the subject, not "a courtesan" as the ESTC noted, but Lady Abergavenny, wife to the fifteenth baron (1724) and a year later to his brother the sixteenth, prior to dying in December 1729 with three children and the shame of an adultery...