figures, that stretched across the road, and is well Diss. heathen customs survived at holy welis and other places dedicated to religion, it is not impossible that some evil customs may have attached themBlessed Lady in Brittany. The subject is well selves to one of the many chapels dedicated to our JOHN OPIE, R.A. (8th S. ix. 47).—Opie has been fortunate in having a very careful biographer, and the title of Mr. Rogers's book answers MR. COL-Worthy of investigation. There is, we believe, an VILL'S query respecting the number of Opie's of Breton antiquities. Archæological Society devoted to the investigation It is probable that a letter pictures, which were mostly portraits-"Opie and to the secretary would draw forth an answer his Works: being a Catalogue of 760 Pictures by explaining this strange title. John Opie, R.A. Preceded by a Biographical Sketch by John Jope Rogers, M.A. London, Colnaghi & Co., 1878." H. B. WHEATLEY. A catalogue of the works of this artist was published in 1878, and is, I believe, still to be obtained. The 'D. N. B.' doubtless got the " 508 portraits" from this source. W. F. WALLER. EDWARD PEACOCK. Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey. May I refer MR. HOOPER to a note of mine, s. v. 'Paganism in Brittany,' in 8th S. i. 320 ? In a long passage, quoted from Émile Souvestre's 'Les Derniers Bretons' (first published in 1836), I have included a few of the lines quoted by MR. HOOPER at the above reference. The passage reproduced by MR. HOOPER from Mr. Elton's Origins of English History' is, as he intimates, not quite correct; but it is not very inaccurate. JONATHAN Bouchier. MR. FERET will smile at such a simple suggestion, SOWGELDER'S LANE (8th S. ix. 29).-I suppose SIR THOMAS SEWELL, MASTER OF THE ROLLS (8th S. viii. 507)-Can your correspondent tell me where Attershaw, the seat of Sir Thomas Sewell, is ? In the life and correspondence of M. G. Lewis, the author of The Monk,' p. 7, ed. 1839, it is stated that Sir Thomas had, besides Frances Maria, his younger daughter (she married Monk Lewis's father), another daughter. We believe that but I should say the place was so called merely at an early age an estrangement took place because several sowgelders happened to live there. C. F. S. WARREN, M.A. between herself and family, and her subsequent fate is a sealed book. Has the mystery ever been unravelled? M.A.Oxon. OUR LADY OF HATE (8th S. ix. 8).-A friend has handed to me the following notes regarding this subject, which I at once transmit as forming in some sort a reply to MR. HOOPER'S query : "The worship of Our Lady of Hate is allied to the use made of cursing-wells, as the following quotation from Laísnel de la Salle's Croyances et Légendes du centre de la France.' 1875. i. 332, makes plain: 'Then shall we say it? The saints carry their complaisance for us so far, that our desires, even the most criminal, find an assistant in the heavens! There exists in the neighbourhood of Argent, in the department of Cher, a spring consecrated to Saint Mauvais, near to which wretches come and pray who wish the death of an enemy, of a rival in love, a relation standing between them and an inheritance, &c. But by a fortunate compensation, not far from the spring of Saint Mauvais, stands the chapel of Saint Bon, from which honest folk never claim protection in vain. Saint Mauvais recalls the Saint Sequayre of the Basques, to whom people recommend their enemies in order to have them dried up; he recalls also the Notre Dame de la Haine of the Bretons, "a quaint and truly Celtic superstition," says Émile Souvestre. "an eloquent vestige of the savage energy of the old adorers of Teutates." In conclusion, Saint Mauvais, Saint Sequayre, and Our Lady of Hate make us naturally call to remembrance that the Hindoos, whose pantheon includes not less than three hundred and thirty-three million divinities, also find at need a god ready to assist them each time they have an evil passion to satisfy.' The notion that a shrine or chapel was thus dedicated by the ecclesiastical authorities is, of course, out of the question; but as we know that When I was last in South Dorset I saw "John Smith" or "Hodge" (or some such name), "Sowgelder," painted over the door of a roadside cottage between Axminster and Bridport. E. WALFORD. HENRY VIII. (8th S. ix. 108).-Astarte will find an account of this incident, with authorities, in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' under Sir Miles Partridge. A. F. P. COCK-FIGHTING (8th S. vii. 288, 338, 473; viii. 38, 96).-Interested in the history of the celebrated picture by Zoffany of the 'Cock Fight at Lucknow in 1786,' I solicit attention to the query contained in the concluding paragraph of the reply by MR. W. KILBRIDE, since I, too, should welcome any information regarding the Col. Mordaunt mentioned therein. A. M. Miscellaneous. NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. THE latest section of the New English Dictionary,' its first meaning, the interval of an octave, to signify a Their motions diapason with the time. The diapason closing fair in man (‘St. Cecilia's Day'), is perhaps the best known of all, A singularly interesting essay, for to this it amounts, is on the word dicker-half a score, the customary count in dealing with certain articles, especially hides or skins, This word is found in Domesday Book. Its early use is attributed to the tribute which the Germans had to pay to the Romans, and to the fact that, as in the more recent traffic of the red man with the white, "skins formed a leading item in the frontier trade between the Romans and the Northern barbarians." Dictionary is a word to which the reader will naturally turn. John Garland, an English name if such ever was, otherwise Joannes de Garlandia, a native of England, though a master in the University of Paris and afterwards at that of Toulouse, one of his pupils being Roger Bacon, and author of the well known line on the Dominicans Pravos extirpat et doctor et ignis et ensiswas. so far as present researches extend, the first, circa 1225, to use the word dictionarius (found in Ainsworth under "Dictionarium ") as "the title of a collection of Latin vocables, arranged according to their subjects, in sentences, for the use of learners." In the fourteenth century Peter Berchorius wrote a 'Dictionarium Morale Utriusque Testamenti,' and in 1538 Sir Thomas Elyot published his Latin-English Dictionary.' Into the earliest English dictionaries hard words only were adwitted. The English word dictionary was first used in 1531. In the verb "to De Witt" we have, from the names of the two Dutch statesmen John and Cornelius De Witt, who were murdered by a mob in 1672, an instance of a verb used in the same sense as "to lynch," similarly derived and of very much earlier date. In 1689, in A Modest Enquiry into Present Disasters,' is found the phrase "It's a wonder the English nation have not in their fury De Witted some of these men." The following year Archbishop Sancroft wrote: "Such a fury as may well end in Dewitting us (a bloody word, but too well understood)." combated. It is doubtful, however, whether the incentive to others to pursue further the occupation he has found pleasant and remunerative will be so strong as he imagines. Robert Paterson, whose pious services in repairing and restoring the legends on the tombs of the Covenanters Scott celebrates in Old Mortality,' found, so far as we know, neither imitator nor sucbe hoped, however, that he will himself continue labours that have already produced signal results, and that no other student is likely to prosecute to equal advantage. The object of Mr. Vincent in prosecuting researches which, though widely extended, find their richest reward in what may, from the point of view of London, be called the home counties, has been to preserve a record of the headstones- quaint, curious, grotesque, and sometimes scarcely decorous-which still linger in old and remote churchyards. Not too soon is the task begun. The living are beginning to grudge the space allotted the dead. Apart from the destruction man has himself effected, Time, the great destroyer, continues his ravages. From one cause or other these memorials of past piety are, to alter the words of Ruskin, being "ground to powder and mixt with our own ashes." In one or two centuries Mr. Vincent fears none of the records for which he cares will be preserved except in museums. This is a sanguine estimate. A much shorter period will, we fancy, witness their practical disappearance. Meantime, what one man may do to preserve the memory of them Mr. Vincent is doing. Indefatigable in pursuit of his object, he has wandered far and near, copying the designs-allegorical, figurative, and symbolical-on which he has lighted. The reproductions of these, with his own explanations of the place and conditions of discovery, constitute his book. The interest of them extends in some case beyond the point reached by the explorer and commentator, furnishing illustration of early forms of primitive beliefs and throwing light on passages of moral and didactic significance. cessor. Mr. Vincent will doubtless find both. It is to The designs most frequently encountered are those which in some altered forms are still familiar. Death with his dart, the skeleton, death's heads and crossbones, the naked body bursting from the tomb and dropping its cerement, the hour glass, the extinguished taper. Others are less familiar: the crossed sheaves with the scythe and sickle, the crossed spade and pickaxe, the burning heart transfixed with an arrowalmost as suggestive of missives of St. Valentine as of "dusty Death." Many of the well-known devices of the Concerning some words in dh, such as dhow and provider of emblems are given. In the case of some dhurrie, the editor says that they "have no claim to be of the ruder designs it is difficult to conjecture whether 80 spelt except that it makes them look more barbaric portraiture or some effort at a grotesque reproduction of Mr. Vincent's task has been and outlandish," Of dever, an obsolete Middle English the skull is intended. form of devoir, no instance is advanced. Devil is, of zealously accomplished. His work, dedicated by percourse, an important word, occupying, with its com- mission to the Earl of Stanhope, will at once commend pounds, some eighteen or nineteen columns. What is itself to antiquaries and to the public, larger in this Faid concerning its origin is far too long for quotation. country than elsewhere, that is fond of elegiacal literaEarly forms include diabul, dioful, deoful, &c. "Be-ture and monumental inscriptions. It is naturally in tween the Devil and the deep sea" had also a variation the most out-of-the-way spots that the quaintest designs "the Dead Sea." "As the Devil looks over Lincoln " are captured. We are sanguine enough to hope, accordis said to be "popularly referred to a grotesque sculp-ingly, that Mr. Vincent's delightful and edifying volume. ture on the exterior of Lincoln Cathedral." it is first will be the first of a series. traced in John Heywood, 1562, This word must be studied in connexion with deuce. "Devil's books," as applied to cards, seems to be first used by Swift. Under the latest arrangement the 'Dictionary makes gratifying progress. In Search of Gravestones, Old and Curious. By W. T. THE claim of Mr. Vincent to have opened out a new The Poems of John Byrom. Edited by Adolphus Wm. Ward, Litt.D. 2 vols. 4 parts. (Chetham Society.) AMONG the manifold works which during its half century of existence the Chetham Society has issued to its subscribers two or three have been poetical. Among them is Corser's Collectanea Anglo-Poetica,' an interesting publication, in which occasional extracts accompanied a bibliographical and descriptive account of a collection of English poetry. This had been preceded by a selec tion from the poems of the Rev. Thomas Wilson, of Clitheroe. The present authoritative edition of the poems of Byron must, however, rank as the most important contribution it has yet made to poetical literature. That the works of Byrom do not constitute a portion of the "Remains Historical and Literary connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester," which it is the special function and aim of the Society to preserve, none will maintain. It is, however, a little disconcerting to see the works of Byrom issued under the able supervision of the Principal of Owen's College, with a wealth of illustration and comment reserved ordinarily for poems more plenarily inspired than those of "the last of the English nonjuring bishops," or for those with a stronger claim to antiquity. Societies are, however, not seldom thorough in their workmanship, and the fact that the deeply interesting and very valuable Private Journal of Byrom' has seen the light in the Chetham Society's series furnishes a justification, were any needed, for the appearance of a collected edition of his poems. To the general reader of poetry Byrom is almost, if not quite, forgotten. A few of his epigrams survive, and one or two of his poems, sacred and profane, find their place in anthologies. Not one in a hundred, however, who quotes the lines concerning Bononcini and Handel ending Strange all this difference should be 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but assigns them to Swift. A few more readers know, perhaps, that the staunch old Jacobite is responsible for the famous and often misquoted quatrain beginning "God bless the King-I mean the faith's defender," as well as for the clever Epigram on Two Monopolists' (Bone and Skin). We own to having ourselves forgotten that to Byrom are due phrases once current though now dropping into desuetude: "As plain as a pike-staff" and As clean as a whistle." Byrom has some points in common with George Wither, a poet with whom, of course, he is not able to sustain a comparison. Both, however, wrote poems sacred and profane; both dabbled a little, unhappily for themselves, in politics; both had a fatal facility in rhyming; and both, lastly, used freely the most easily canorous of metres. It is Wither's great reproach that, possessing a muse capable of soaring into the empyrean and worthy of all worship, he degraded her at times to the duties of a kitchen wench. Unfit for the highest choral service is the muse of Byrom, who, however, cannot be justly said to have employed her unworthily. She is a good-natured and humorous trollop, whose movements are, as a rule, ungracious so soon as she seeks after order or propriety of bearing. There is no call, however, upon us here to enter into a discussion of the merits of Byrom, a few of whose poems-notably his Three Black Crows,' his Colin to Phoebe,' and his 'Divine Pastoral'-one reads again with pleasure. Dr. Ward has written a discriminating and eulogistic introduction, not too fervid in maintaining the claims of Byrom, and supplied notes and remarks which, beside being illustrative of the text, embody very much curious information. A fresh perusal of this quaint and neglected old poet shows one that among his many claims to recognition, if not to distinction, is the fact that he was a very tolerable satirist. THERE are two extremely noteworthy papers in the January number of the Edinburgh Review. Italian Influence on English Poetry' shows a knowledge of the bypaths of the literature of two great languages such as we but seldom meet with. We have long known how strong and lasting was the influence of Italian on our literature, but until this article appeared there were, we believe, but few Englishmen who had any accurate conception of its extent. We may feel the force of ideas expressed in tongues with which we are unacquainted; it must, therefore, not be taken as a matter of course that all the verse-makers quoted in the pages before us could read Italian. Many persons have been profoundly im pressed during the present century by the thoughts of Goethe who have never been able to read a line of German. The paper on Finland is especially excellent. It is at once a difficult and a fascinating subject. Few English people have visited Finland until quite recent days, and fewer still have taken the trouble to learn the language. The writer of the present article appears to have a thorough knowledge of the language, which presents great difficulties to the student. The Princes of the House of Condé' is one of those historical articles for which the Edinburgh has long been famous. It is not up to the higher level of these papers, but there are very few of us so deeply learned as not to acquire much new knowledge by its perusal. It perhaps does not belong to our department to mention the interesting paper on The Reign of the Queen.' Most of us know many of the facts which the writer has recorded, but the grouping is entirely his own. He gives a picture of the progress which has taken place since Her Majesty came to the throne which is strikingly original. He says that "in no other sixty years of the world's historywe might almost say in no six hundred years of the material progress as the people of this country have world's history has there been so much moral and experienced since the Queen came to the throne." On consideration this, which at first seemed an exaggeration, must be admitted as true. some darker tints might have been added to the picture. We think, however, ARCHIBALD BURDEN, an early Scotch book-plate designer, is dealt with by Mr. John Orr in the Journal of the Ex-Libris Society, some of his work being reproduced. Mr. Bethune- Baker, F.S.A., writes on The Baker Book-plate,' and Mr. Charles Dexter Allen on the late Rev. T. W. Carson, an early and a well-known collector. Among reproductions are the plates of the Folk-Lore Society and the Bournemouth Public Library. Notices to Correspondents. We must call special attention to the following notices: ON all communications must be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith, WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately. To secure insertion of communications correspondents must observe the following rule. Let each note, query, or reply be written on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear. Correspondents who repeat queries are requested to head the second communication "Duplicate." HENRY FORSTER.-We cannot answer legal questions. ERRATA.-P. 85, col. 1. 1. 17 from bottom, for " Herne" read Hearne, and for "Hernianæ " read Hearnianæ. THE LUCK OF THE LEVELS. By MARGARET MOULE, Author of 'Shadowed by Silence,' 'Scarlet Court,' The Thirteenth Brydain,' A SELECTION OF VALUABLE And at the Railway Bookstalls, to which places they will be forwarded earriage paid. ... ... ADAMS (W. H. D).-GOOD QUEEN ANNE. 2 vols. ... ... ... BEAUREGARD (Marquis de), RECOLLECTIONS of. By C. M. YONGE. 2 vols. ... DE LEON (E.).—THIRTY YEARS of MY LIFE on THREE CONTINENTS. 2 vols. DU NOYER (Madame), The CORRESPONDENCE of. Translated by F. L. LAYARD. 2 vols. FORSYTH (Sir DOUGLAS), AUTOBIOGRAPHY and REMINISCENCES. Edited by his DAUGHTER HARRISON (C.).—STRAY RECORDS; or, Personal and Professional Notes. 2 vols. ... MACKONOCHIE (Rev. A. H.): a Memoir. By E. A. T. MOTLEY (JOHN L.), LIFE and CORRESPONDENCE of. Edited by G. W. CURTIS. 2 vols. SEDGWICK (Rev. ADAM), The LIFE and LETTERS of. By J. W. CLARK and T. MCKENNY. 2 vols. W. H. SMITH & SON'S SUBSCRIPTION LIBRARY, 186, Strand, London, And at nearly 600 Railway Stations, to which places Subscribers can be transferred free of charge. Prospectus of Terms, &c., sent free upon application to 186, Strand, London. Printed by JOHN C. FRANCIS, Athenæum Press, Bream's-buildings, Chancery-lane, E.C.; and Published by the said JOHN C. FRANCIS, Bream's Buildings, Chancery-lane, E.C.-Saturday, February 15, 1896. |