Minor Notes.
The Banking Company in Aberdeen, and the Bank of England.
—The Banking Company in Aberdeen was established in the year 1767; and the following Note respecting it may be new to many of the readers of "N. & Q." This Company adopted the plan of using paper bearing in watermark a waved line, and the amount of the note expressed in words, along with the designation of the Company; but about the year 1805 a gentleman connected with Aberdeenshire brought this paper under the notice of the Bank of England, in consequence of which they adopted it, and procured an act of parliament to be passed prohibiting the use of paper so marked by any provincial bank.
PETRAPROMONTORIENSIS.
Which are the Shadows?
—In the notes to the beautiful poem Italy, by Samuel Rogers, published (I think) in 1830, the following occurs:—
"'You admire that picture,' said an old Dominican to me at Padua, as I stood contemplating a Last Supper in the refectory of his convent, the figures as large as life. 'I have sat at my meals before it for seven-and-forty years and such are the changes that have taken place among us; so many have come and gone in the time, that when I look upon the company there—upon those who are sitting at the table silent as they—I am sometimes inclined to think that we, and not they, are the shadows.'"
In the sixth volume of Lord Mahon's History of England, chap. lx. p. 498., we find this passage:
"Once as Sir David Wilkie (Mr. Washington Irving and myself being then his fellow-travellers in Spain) was gazing on one of Titian's master-pieces—the famous picture of the Last Supper in the refectory of the Escurial—an old monk of the order of St. Jerome came up, and said to him, 'I have sat daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three score years. During that time my companions have dropped off, one after another—all who were my seniors, all who were of mine own age, and many or most of those who were younger than myself; nothing has been unchanged around me except those figures, large as life, in yonder painting; and I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we the shadows.'"
The great resemblance between these two passages is very striking; the latter only amplifies the former by very few words.
D. F. M'L.
Cork.
Antiquity of County Boundaries.
—In the loop of Devonshire, on the western side of the Tamar, formed by the parishes of Werrington and North Petherwyn, none of the names of places are Cornish, but end in the Saxon termination of cot, whilst in all other parts the Cornish names are used up to the banks of the river. Modern Cornwall is a province so well defined by the language of its place-names, that it could be marked off without difficulty, if its artificial boundary-lines were omitted on a map. How does this limited extent of the language consist with some accounts of the former extent of the kingdom?
S. R. P.
Launceston.
Zachary Pearce not a Pupil of Busby.
—The birth[1] of Zachary (afterwards Bishop) Pearce was prior to the death[2] of the famous Master of Westminster, which took place at the short interval of five years: consequently, it was impossible that the relation of teacher and pupil should exist between them.
[1] 1690.
[2] 1695.
In the Memoir of this prelate, which goes before his Commentary on the Gospels, it is expressly stated that he was removed to Westminster School in Feb. 1704. At the same time, his biographer speaks of his being elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, after he had spent six years at Westminster, and "endured the constraint of a grammar school to the twentieth year of his age." Then follows the sentence, "Why his removal was so long delayed, no other reason can be given, than that Dr. Busby used to detain those boys longest under his discipline of whose future eminence he had most expectation; considering the fundamental knowledge which grammar schools inculcate, as that which is least likely to be supplied by future diligence, if the student be sent deficient to the university."
Bishop Pearce's biographer was the Rev. John Derby, his chaplain, who could not well be mistaken as to a plain and palpable matter of fact. It is perfectly conceivable, however, that the future prelate was long detained at Westminster School in consequence of a regulation first laid down by Busby, and regularly acted upon by that eminent man. This circumstance will sufficiently explain the apparent incongruity.
If I am right in this conjecture, Bishop Pearce must have entered under Knipe.[3]
[3] Noble's Continuation of Granger, Vol. iii. p. 119, &c.
N.
The Poet Gay and his Relatives.
—In a letter from the late Bishop Copleston to the Rev. E. Tyler, in Jan. 1839, on the death of his mother at the age of ninety-two (published in his Memoirs), he says, "Her father and poet Gay were brothers' sons."
H. T. E.
Queries.
THOMAS BASTARD, AND SONG AGAINST SHEEP-FARMING.
The twentieth epigram in the fourth book of Chrestoleros, by T. B. (poor Thomas Bastard), printed 1598, is to the following effect:
"Sheepe have eate up our medows and our downes,
Our corne, our wood, whole villages and townes.
Yea, they have eate up many wealthy men,
Besides widowes, and orphane childeren:
Besides our statutes and our iron lawes,
Which they have swallowed down into their maws.
Till now I thought the proverbe did but jest,
Which said a blacke sheepe was a biting beast."
Here the allusion is of course to the miseries entailed by the system of sheep-farming; a system which had been introduced and carried to excess by the monastic bodies. Some years ago I met with an old satirical song on this subject, of which the above "proverbe" formed a kind of burden, but where, or in what collection I met with it, I cannot for the life of me remember. Now, seeing that your periodical exemplifies very accurately the definition once given by a Surrey peasant of a highly accomplished man—"Sir! he knows everything, and what he don't know he axes,"—perhaps you will allow me to ask whether some one of your many able correspondents may not have the power and the will to give me this information. A worthless memory seems to suggest that the song was a Cambridge production, and interspersed with Latin phrases.
Now, one word about the author of the epigram above quoted. It is not, I hope, an abuse of the freedom of speech which ought to prevail in the republic of letters, if I express a strong opinion that your learned contributor, MR. PAYNE COLLIER, has rendered very scant justice to the memory of Bastard. The epigrams selected by that gentleman as favourable samples, are among the very worst of the author's efforts.
Probably not twenty copies of the Chrestoleros are in existence; but as, by the kindness of my esteemed friend E. V. Utterson, I possess one of the sixteen struck off at his own private press, I beg to supply a specimen or two, that will not only gratify your readers in general, but elicit an approving verdict from MR. COLLIER himself.
For example, is not the finished cadence, as well as the nervous force, of the following lines to Sir Ph. Sidney, greatly to be admired?
"When Nature wrought upon her mould so well,
That Nature wondred her own work to see,
When Arte so labourde Nature to excel,
And both had spent their excellence in thee;
Willing they gave thee into Fortune's hand,
Fearing they could not end what they beganne!"
In my poor judgment, those are truly noble lines. And what say you to the following, Mr. Editor, which form a sonnet rather than an epigram?
"The world's great peers and mighty conquerours,
Whose sword hath purchased them eternal fame,
If they survived in this age of ours
Might add more glory to their lasting name.
For him which Carthage sack'd and overthrewe,
We have found out another Africa;
Newe Gauls and Germaines Cæsar might subdue,
And Pompey Great another Asia.
But you, O Christian princes, do not so;
Seeke not to conquer nations by the sworde,
Whom you may better quell and overthrowe
By winning them to Christ and to his worde.
Give Him the new worlde for old Asia's losse,
And set not up your standard, but His crosse!"
I not only challenge MR. P. COLLIER'S hearty approval of those magnificent lines, but I would venture the expression of a doubt whether anything finer can be produced of the same date and character.
Now take a spice of Bastard's quality as a humorist; not failing to mark again the solemn flow and well-balanced cadence of the lines:
"You who have sorrow's hidden bottom sounded,
And felt the ground of teares and bitter moane,
You may conceive how Gilloes heart is wounded,
And judge of his deep feeling by your owne.
His toothlesse wife, when she was left for dead,
When grave and all was made—Recovered!"
I have other evidence as strongly favourable, but I shall not adduce it, lest after all it be wasted on unwilling ears. But if it be the verdict of your readers that Thomas Bastard has been unjustly forgotten, he shall live again in your pages.
R. C. C.