"--_Spectator_ (No. 5, March 6, 1711).
The Rev. Samuel Pegge brought the subject of Whittington and his Cat
before a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in 1771, but he could
make nothing at all of the cat. There is no record of the inquiry in the
_Archaeologia_, but it is mentioned in a letter from Gough to Tyson, 27
Dec. 1771 (Nichols's _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. viii. p. 575). Horace
Walpole was annoyed at the Society for criticising his "Richard III."
and in his _Short Notes on his Life_ he wrote--"Foote having brought
them on the stage for sitting in council, as they had done on
Whittington and his Cat, I was not sorry to find them so ridiculous, or
to mark their being so, and upon that nonsense, and the laughter that
accompanied it, I struck my name out of their book."
Foote brought out his comedy of _The Nabob_ at the Haymarket Theatre in
1772. Sir Matthew Mite, the hero of the piece, is elected a member of
the Society of Antiquaries, and delivers an address on Whittington and
his Cat in which he gave the following solution of the difficulty:--"The
commerce this worthy merchant carried on was chiefly confined to our
coasts. For this purpose he constructed a vessel which for its agility
and lightness he aptly christened a cat.
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