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LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1863.

CONTENTS.-No. 80.

NOTES:- The "Faerie Queene" Unveiled, 21-Parish Registers: Askerswell, Dorset, 22- Earldom of Errol, 23The Rev. John Sampson, 24- Prices of Old Books, 25. MINOR NOTES: -Gazetteer -Milton: Schiller: Coleridge -Old English Criticism on Titian-Oliver Cromwell's Face Wale, 25.

QUERIES:-Milton Portrait, 26- Anonymous Books Baker-legged: Walsall Legged Bradmoor Church Bridport: its Local History-Richard Champion - The Epistle to the Hebrews Mr. Fitzgerald Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln - "The Hindu Priestess"- William Little, the Bristol Grammarian-London an Ecclesiastical Metropolis-Mossing a Barn-Death of the Czar Nicholas Numismatic Queries- Proverb_respecting Truth - Sir John Stradling's "Glamorgan"- Family of Bray- Handasyde Quartermaster, Carriagemaster, Sergeant-Major Regiments in America-Sundry Queries - Whitehall, 27. QUERIES WITH ANSWERS:- St. Brannock-Turkish Gun in St. James's Park - An American Poet - Twill, 29. REPLIES:-) Knights Hospitallers, &c., 30-Law of Lauriston, 31-The Rod, 32-Ralegh Arms, 33-Robert Anderson, 34-"The Council of Ten" Irish at Cressy · A singular General: Guerin de Montaigu - Attack on the Prince of Wales - The Grave of Anne Boleyn - Head Masters of Repton School - Meaning of Bouman- Right Worshipful the Mayor" Sinaitic Inscriptions: Rev. Thomas Brockman - Riding the Stang - Insecure Envelopes-Cosmogony of Joannes Zonaras: FirmamentProvincial Newspaper- Rev. John Ball Origin of the Word Bigot-Cloudberry- Epigram - John Gwynn, Architect, &c., 35.

Notes on Books, &c.

Notes.

THE "FAERIE QUEENE" UNVEILED.

LETTER I.

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The following pages may in some respects be regarded as a continuation of the Arcadia unveiled; for, although the Faerie Queene was commenced before the Arcadia, yet Spenser, dazzled by the splendour of that romance, and blinded by his love and admiration of Sidney, undoubtedly swerved from his course in the second book, and appears to have been greatly influenced thereby in the third and fourth.

nor can

On looking into the Faerie Queene, after reading the Arcadia, we are struck by the resemblance between the three brothers Anaxius and the three Sarazins-Sansfoy, Sansloy, and Sansioy; we doubt they also are three personations of the Earl of Oxford. Further, a suspicion readily arises, not easily resisted, that as the Earl of Leicester is represented in Prince Arthur, his great opponent, Lord Burghley, may be shadowed in Archimago, the great magician Hypocrisy. Several curious points confirm this suspicion; as the recognition of Archimago, the false St. George, by "the bloody bold Sansloy," but more especially by a singular circumstance in the second book, which will be duly noticed.

The principal adventures of the Redcrosse Knight [Sir Philip Sidney], on a closer inspection, appear to admit of a plausible solution. He

starts on St. George's Day, in 1579, and after long travels slays Sansfoy: then wanders on to the "sinful House of Pride," which he quits, having overthrown Sansioy, who is carried by Duessa to Pluto's realm. These two adventures may refer to the quarrel with Oxford, and to the discussion with Queen Elizabeth about nobles and commoners in the month of September. St. George is then conquered by the giant Argoglio, and thrown into a dungeon; but is released by Prince Arthur, after a confinement of nine (fairy) months. Pride was certainly one of Sidney's besetting sins, at least in his earlier years, as witness his Dudley blood and his ambassadorial journey' to Vienna; but his pride must have received a sudden fall on the birth of Leicester's son, and, "on the tilt-day next following, Sidney assumed an impress with the word Speravi dashed through, to show that his hope therein was dashed." The nine months' incarceration in the dungeon is an allusion to the interesting state' of the Countess of Leicester; and this ingenious supposition is confirmed by a similar piece of allegorical humour in the third book, when Merlin replies to Glaucé: :

"Beldame, by that ye tell
More need of leach-craft hath your Damozell,
Than of my skill: who help may have elsewhere,
In vain seeks wonders out of magick spell."
Book II. iii. 16, 17.

In the seventh canto, stan. 44, Una tells Prince Arthur the Dragon "has them [her parents] now four years besieged to make them thrall:" from this remark, we may infer, Spenser dates the danger to the Protestant faith from Queen Elizabeth's refusal of the sovereignty of the Netherlands at the end of the year 1575.

In the ninth canto, Prince Arthur tells St. George about his quest of the Faerie Queene :"Nine months I seek in vain, yet ni'll that vow unbind." Hence it appears, the Prince commenced his wanderings the very day Simier told the Queen, in February, 1579, of Leicester's marriage with the Countess of Essex; and it must have been her majesty's angry countenance that so charmed Prince Arthur in his dream, - these are fairy transformations. (Book 1. ix. 15.) The knights then part –

"Arthur on his way to seek his love,

And th' other for to fight with Una's foe." St. George is then saved from Despair; and Una brings him to the "House of Holinesse," whence he goes to fight and overcome the Dragon; or, in other words, he delivers his famous letter against the marriage with Anjou to Queen Elizabeth about Christmas, 1579.

Although we are not in general justified in giving the same faith and credence to poetical representations as to historical statements; yet the coincidence between the Arcadia and the

Faerie Queene forces on our mind the conviction, that Lord Burghley did act insidiously and invidiously to Sir Philip Sidney on that occasion. Book II.-In the second book, at the end of the fourth canto, we are forcibly struck by the names of Pyrochles and Cymochles, two Paynim knights; and to our astonishment, we find the two follow ing cantos are a satire on the Arcadia, or at least on the two heroes, Pyrocles and Musidorus; and it may be surmised, we have here the gentle Spenser's dire revenge for Sidney's satirical playfulness in his first Arcadian eclogue, where he .represents Strephon [Spenser] in love with Urania. There is a sly humour, a hard hit, in the description of the fight between Pyrochles and Sir Guyon, who, "him spying all breathless, weary, faint,"

"Struck him so hugely, that through great constraint
He made him stoop perforce unto his knee,
And do unwilling worship to the Saint,
That on his shield depainted he did see;
Such homage till that instant never learned he."
Book II. v. xi.

The passage is too long for quotation, but it is impossible to mistake the humorous satire, when, Pyrochles, seized with Furor, rushes wildly into the Idle Lake, and is saved by Archimago:

"What flames," quoth he, "when I thee present see
In danger rather to be drent than brent?"
Book II. vi. 47-49.

This passage, we may presume, has reference more immediately to Sidney's application to Lord Burghley in January, 1583; that he might be joined with his uncle, the Earl of Warwick, in the Ordnance Office. The passionate ardour of Sir Philip for military fame and active employment, and his disgust and weariness of a courtier's idle life, sufficiently demonstrate how perfect is the allegory, and that Archimago in this instance is undoubtedly Lord Burghley.

Musidorus, the hardworking student, in love with philosophy, is represented under the name of Cymochles as "given to all lust and loose living," sojourning with the vile Acrasia in "vain delights and idle pleasures in her Bower of Bliss." Spenser, in this picture, appears to have drawn the Bower of Bliss and the loose loves of Acrasia, as a contrast to the sufferings of Pamela and Philoclea under the tyranny of Cecropia; nor can we doubt that Mary, Queen of Scots, is shadowed in Acrasia; whom Sir Guyon, after destroying the Bower of Bliss, sends with a strong guard to the fairy court. Nor can we doubt, that the satirizing of the Duke of Anjou and Simier as Braggadochio and Trompart, had its origin in the story of Antiphilus.

There is no historical evidence in what year this second book was written; but we know Spenser had commenced the first book before April, 1580; and in July he went as secretary

with Lord Grey to Ireland. On his return to England in August, 1582, we may imagine him reading the adventures of the Redcrosse Knight to his friend, and how highly Sir Philip was charmed therewith. Spenser afterwards, on reading the Arcadia, discovers that Sidney had been quizzing him as Strephon in love with Urania; and hence his retort-courteous in this second book, which must consequently have been composed in 1583, or at least a rough sketch of the first six cantos for circulation amongst private friends. C.

(To be continued.)

PARISH REGISTERS: ASKERSWELL, DORSET. This very small parish lies in a deep valley amongst the downs, a little south of the road between Bridport and Dorchester. The registers are well preserved. Vol. I. is a thin square 8vo, parchment, tolerably perfect and regular, containing baptisms, weddings, and burials from 1558 to 1721. Vol. II. is a long narrow folio, also of parchment, containing the usual entries from 1722 to 1812. The remaining volumes are modern and without interest. The parish is small, and the population can never have exceeded 300, the entries are therefore few. This circumstance has given the successive registrars time for careful writing and correctness; few registers could have been better kept.

Book I. is entirely in Latin, and must have been kept entirely by the clergyman, as most country registers were. In large town parishes, a professional scribe was more usually employed to copy the clerk or clergyman's rough book; this would be unnecessary of course in small places where the entries would be few. Though generally regular, there is a peculiarity about this register which I have never remarked elsewhere. Here and there you find a strange mixture of datesentries of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries being jumbled together on one page. In fact, the person who had charge of the book during the latter years of its use having come to the natural end of his parchment, made his entries from time to time wherever he could find a vacant space in the previous pages. This, I suppose, from motives of economy, or from the difficulty of getting a new book at so great a distance from London. The book contains some little memoranda besides the usual contents of a register. The date of each rector's induction is regularly entered; and on p. 8 is an abstract of the tenths due on the several tythings from the rector to the crown, being the copy of an ordinance made anno 1545, "descripta ex libro veteri chartarum."

Thomas Whynnell, rector 1594 to 1638 by whom

this abstract was entered, has inserted also a record of his own birth and baptism "at Haslebury Briant," squeezing it into its right place amongst the Askerswell baptisms of 1560. He has done a similar thing with regard to his marriage, which took place not in this parish, but "at Wareham 24° Julii, 1590." This is inserted in the midst of the burials for 1590!

Another of the rectors, Wm. Locke, 1705-1722, has inserted above the baptismal entries of his own children that curious astrological device, called "natuitas." Amongst the peculiarities of this register may be noticed the fact that for many years it served for the use of two parishes, Askerswell and Chilcombe. The latter is a very small parish, which, though a separate incumbency, and under separate patronage, has been frequently held with Askerswell. It contains a population of less than thirty souls, and had no register of its own till quite late in the last century.

It can hardly be expected that the registers of so small and secluded a parish should contain any names of note. Hutchins has copied into his invaluable History of Dorset (sub. "Bridport Division, Eggardon Hundred,") all the entries of any importance. These are chiefly those that relate to the family of Eggardon, or De Eggardon, who possessed an estate of the same name lying around the famous Eggardon Hill in the parish. They seem to have been wealthy yeomen, and were the principal parishioners during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Other families commemorated are Welsh, or Walsh (rector), Whynnell (rector), Lock, Hardy, Trenchard, Gundry, Waddon (armiger), Burge (clericus), Case (clericus), and Byshop.

Hutchins's remarks on the Dorset registers are usually judicious and correct; but he has made a mistake in describing the Askerswell register as "imperfect from 1571 to 1575." Those years are to be found correctly entered with the certification of the rector's signature. The record of marriages, however, is imperfect from 1572 to 1586. A memorandum, under date of 1595, will confirm MR. BURN's opinion that even the best-kept parchment register, being only a copy of the original, is not an infallible document.

"1595. Note, that certain names were omitted partly by negligence, ptly in that the olde paper Registre was in some places torn; in other places so badly written, that it cd not well be proved."

The frequent recurrence in this very small register of the word illegitima amongst the baptisms, does not say much for the morality of country villages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

No alteration in the form and character of this register appears during the Commonwealth period. The rector managed to retain his living through all the troubles, from 1642 to 1662; and in com

mon with some others of the clergy, continued to keep his own register in the accustomed manner in spite of the various Acts of Parliament. This affords a confirmation of what E. V. contends for in 3rd S. iii. 296. No lay registrar appears to have been appointed for this small and isolated place; and probably even the ancient church discipline was observed without interruption.

Of burials, the average for two centuries in this salubrious parish was about three per annum; and in many years, "nemo sepultus," is all that is recorded. The following entry is peculiar, as recording the moment of decease:

"1683. Elizh Locke, uxor Guel. Locke, Rect., mortua fuit 16 Aug., paulo post crepusculum, sepulta 20 die ejusd. mensis."

Book II. contains less that is interesting than the older volume. It bears an inscription on the inside of the cover: "Bought by John Travers, C. W., in the year 1723, price twelve shillings."

It is written in English, and chiefly remarkable for the age of persons buried. The early entries omit the age, but from the final pages I copy the following almost at random :

"1783. R. Hansford, 91.

1788. Elizh Hansford, widow, 100. .1810. W. Whittle, 92.

Mary Hansford, 103.
Elizh Hansford, 93."

Figures like these, and the figure eighty is still more common, in a register of burials containing only some two or three names in each year, speak well for the salubrity of this part of the country. INTER PUTEOS OCTO.

EARLDOM OF ERROL.

In the speech of the late Lord Campbell, when moving the rejection of the claim of Lord Fitzhardinge to the barony of Berkeley by tenure, his lordship made some general remarks, without much reflection, as to the power of the crown to give a subject the power of nominating his successor to his peerage. He laid it down as an incontrovertible proposition, that in no civilized country could the Crown delegate such a privilege. Of course his lordship was the best judge of what English lawyers hold on the point; but we must be permitted to remark, that however incompetent this power might be in the South, it was perfectly competent and was frequently exercised in the North. The Rutherford case, for instance, where under such a delegation the peerage was carried by a last will and testament to persons of the same name, although not heirs male of the nominator. There are various similar instances; but we may just mention one, which is somewhat interesting from the narrow chance the noble lord had of keeping his peerage. The representation

successor.

of the old family of Hay of Errol had devolved on an heir female - a Boyd of the attainted race of Kilmarnock. In virtue of powers conferred by charter on one of the Earls of Errol, he was authorised by a deed under his hand to name a This he did, and the result was that the peerage devolved on a Boyd, who took the name of Hay. The second Earl of the Boyd family was elected one of the Scotish representative peers; but his election was challenged because the nomination was then supposed to be lost. It was not on record, neither had it been confirmed by the Crown. By a remarkable piece of good fortune, pending the discussion before the Committee of Privileges, it was picked up by a stranger who had been searching among the rubbish which had been left in the "laigh Parliament House, as it was termed, but which had, after removal of most of the records, which were in a very wretched condition, been used by the Faculty of Advocates as a sort of lumber-room. This anecdote was communicated by the late eminent genealogical lawyer John Riddell, Esq., and I think he also stated that the individual who found it was the late Mr. Archibald Constable; at all events that it came into the hands of that eminent bookseller, who forwarded it to Lord Errol's agents.

Thus a new patent, for such the nomination truly was, unrecorded and unconfirmed by the Crown, was held by the highest authority in the kingdom (19 May, 1797) to be legal in every respect, valid, and effectual. And his lordship never questioned for a moment the power of the Crown to delegate this privilege to a subject.

THE REV. JOHN SAMPSON.

J. M.

I have often wished to see some pains taken to collect accounts of the rough hard-headed scholars and mathematicians of the north of England, of whom Emerson is so marked a type. A common form of education, increased facilities of intercourse between the different parts of England, and other things, have stopped the growth of this class. I have not the means of procuring any information about them; but I think it might be possible to engage others in the undertaking. The amusing Life of Emerson, prefixed to his Works, would be a model for the biographies I should like to see, in everything but length.

I have before me a collection of the remains (in Latin verse) of the Rev. John Sampson, Master of the Free Grammar School, Kendal (born there 1766; died, 1843). Without going to the University, he was, at nineteen, Master of the Free School at Old Hutton. He obtained ordination in 1789; and held various curacies and teacher

ships until 1804, when he was chosen master of the school in which he had received his education. He used to say that he had walked several circumferences of the globe in going to take Sunday duty; but this must have been guess without calculation. He married his predecessor's widow, who seems to have thought that her power over a boy educated at the school could not cease. It was not enough to lock himself into a room: he had sometimes to escape by the window, and, on one occasion, he got down by a ladder into the neighbouring grounds. In an epitaph which he wrote on himself he made no secret of this misfortune; we may presume his wife could not read it :

66

Ecquis honestior in terris hoc vixit honesto?
Qui fuit et vitiis firmus et officiis.

Ecquis et hunc miserum potuit miser æquiparare?
Perstitit at patiens quod decuit faciens?
Ultima pars vitæ dedit huic solatia parva;

Si causam quærat qui legit, uxor erat.
Tempore sed dubio mundum miser ille parabat
Linquere nec gemitu, vivere nec fremitu.
Nam functus fato non desperabat habere
Postea delicias, postea divitias."

He was a stern master, and wrote the following about the old symbol of his office:

"Pigros castigo, doctrinæ tristis origo, Verbera ne paveas, desidiam caveas." A boy, under examination for admission into the school, was given a Latin adage to read: one of his pronunciations was "cernitur." thou can scan that, I dare say," said the master. The boy at once gave the following hexameter:—

"Now

"Amicus cer tus in | re in certa cernitur." "Aye! I thought thou could scan it," said Mr. Sampson. The story ends here: no doubt, because the young Theban was not yet in the school.

The book of remains is Lusus Seniles; opusculum quo scriptor otia tranquillius contereret. Inchoatum A.D. 1809. Kendal, J. Hudson; London, Whittaker & Co., 1844 (12mo, pp. 60). Some of the shortest specimens will bear extracting :

66 Etymon adverbii extemplo.

Ex templo scelerata solet cito currere turba, Hinc venit extemplo significare cito.

"Quisnam igitur sapiens?

Virgilii libris hominum sator atque Deorum,' Supremi titulus dicitur esse Jovis;

Si Flacco sapiens uno minor est Jove' credas,
Quod sapiens hominum sit sator unde patet.
"Maro.

Libertatis amor te visere, Roma, Maronem
Fecit, sed Romam (nec mora) linquit item;
Ornatus lauri ramo, vel durius armo,
Oram Parthenopes optat adire Maro.
"Sinon.

:

Troja maneret adhuc, jam starent Pergama, si non Omnia vertisset perfidus arte Sinon."

Mr. Sampson is said to have raised many good

scholars. He is described as a diligent and pains-
taking teacher; always eccentric, and often severe.
Nothing here given contradicts any part of the
character.
A. DE MORGAN.

PRICES OF OLD BOOKS.

People are continually moralising on the rapid fluctuation of taste and fashion, in the matters of dress, manners, food, hours, amusements, &c. Have not the same variations occurred very markedly within the last half century, in the literary taste of the public, and the value set upon particular classes of books?

Many of us remember the high prices formerly charged by Lunn, Payne, and other London booksellers, particularly for good editions of the Greek and Latin classics: when a Wesseling's Herodotus was marked eight guineas; Duker's Thucydides, seven; Kuster's Aristophanes, and the Elzevir Scapula's Lexicon, the same price; and I saw, in Bliss's shop at Oxford, a large paper Stephens's Greek Thesaurus priced seventy pounds! We remember, too, the famous Roxburghe sale; and the high-flown language in which Dibdin trumpeted forth "the valour of the noble combatants," and "the furious onslaughts" made by

them on each others' purses.

Alas! what would that grandiloquent little man have felt and said, if he had attended a booksale which took place last week in this county? A friend, who was present, writes to me as follows:

"I went to the auction at yesterday. The auctioneer said he had an offer of fifteen pounds for the old books which were named in his advertisement. I think they were very dear at the money. I made him an offer of one halfpenny per lb. for all the rest of the books, and they were knocked down to me at that price! I have got about six hundred weight of books. There are about forty folios, as many quartos, and about two hundred octavos: many of them old divinity, between the years 1600 and 1700. Among them I found a Book of Common Prayer, printed by Bill and Newcomb, with fortyfive well executed steel plates, 1704. Among the folios are the works of Jackson, Hammond; Bacon's Sylva; Heylin's Cosmography; Ussher's Antiquitates; Tillotson's Works, &c."

Now we have heard stories of suddenly-enriched tradesmen purchasing libraries by the yard. Here is a new fashion, a library bought like coals-by the ton. Hammond, and Ussher, and Bacon, found abundant readers and purchasers in their day. But it appears that in this year of grace, 1863, their popularity wanes before the more attractive names of Dickens, Trollope, and Colenso. Perhaps you may think this notice worth preservation in the pages of "N. & Q."

Thurles, co. Tipperary.

H. COTTON.

Minar Notes.

GAZETTEER. I have sometimes been puzzled to know how a geographical dictionary came to be called a Gazetteer, and now I think I have solved the problem. Laurence Echard compiled a work of this kind, and called it The Gazetteer's or Newsman's Interpreter; being a Geographical Index, &c. The author seems to have thought the title a lucky hit: for he says, in his Preface, that it was given him by a very eminent person whom I do not know the date of he forbears to name. the first edition. The fifteenth appeared in 1741.* It still remains to ascertain when a geographical dictionary, instead of being The Gazetteer's Interpreter, became for the first time itself The Gazetteer? In Johnson's Dictionary, the word Gazetteer has no such meaning assigned to it.

P. S. CAREY.

MILTON SCHILLER: Coleridge.

--

Schiller's

German-Latin presentment of the Ovidian couplet
in the form and sound of a fountain —
"Im Hexameter steigt des Springquells flüssige Saule;
Im Pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch herab,"-

(more generally known among us Islanders in
our own Coleridge's Anglo-Latin translation
"In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;
In the Pentameter aye falling in melody back,")—

recalls the vocal architecture of Satan's palace, as
it opened on the mental eye and ear of an earlier
poet-whom, by-the-bye, a wooden-headed critic
opined to have derived the idea from Inigo Jones's
carpentry:

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"Anon out of the earth a fabric huge

Rose, like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet;
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars."

Paradise Lost, lib. i. 710. Successfully, however, as the Teutonic and the Anglican poets may have naturalised the Latin rhythm, they ignored its prosody as utterly as ever did and ever must their most diligent followers. Yet surely, the Aqua Fontana of Schiller and of Coleridge rises and falls too gracefully, in its foreign machinery, not to be set playing in its native Hippocrene. The expectation of other, and better endeavours at this service, induces the subjoined translation:

Hexametro surgens, fontis nitet alta columna;
Pentametro refluens, fracta, canora, subit.

EDMUND LENTHAL SWIFTE.

OLD ENGLISH CRITICISM ON TITIAN.-I believe

that, in early English books, it is not at all usual to meet with notices or opinions relative to the fine arts either in this or other countries. Old authors, when they wanted illustrations of the

[* The first edition, 1703-4, 2 vols. 18mo; the tenth, 1709, 12mo; the eleventh, 1716, 12mo.-ED.]

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