Antiquarian Correspondence.
Sin scire labores,
Quære, age: quærenti pagina nostra patet.
All communications must be accompanied by the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication.
A BISHOP ON ARCHÆOLOGY.
Sir,—At the reopening of a church in Northamptonshire recently, the Bishop of Peterborough is reported to have observed that churches were not architectural museums merely designed for the recreation and instruction of persons of an architectural turn of mind, but places designed for worship and the comfort of those who attended them, and that whatever interfered with such objects should be removed. I wonder what the members of the Archæological Institute and Association, to say nothing of fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, will think of such a remark.
W. E.
GUERIN, COUNT OF MONTGLAVE.
Sir,—In the preface of Mr. Charles Tomlin’s “Chess Manual,” particulars are given of a game of chess, said to have been played between Charlemagne and Guérin, a powerful noble of Aquitaine, the stakes to be Guérin’s possessions against the kingdom of France. The Emperor lost, but it was at last arranged that, in lieu of France, Guérin was to receive the Countship of Montglave, or Lyons, if he could wrest the place from the Saracens, who then held it. This, with the aid of his knights and followers, he is said to have done, taking prisoners Gasier, the Sultan, and his only daughter, Mabiletta, whom he afterwards married on her becoming a Christian. They had four sons. A romance recounting the adventures and victories of these four sons was printed by M. Michel le Noir, 1515, under the title of “L’Histoire de Guérin de Montglave,” since which date, and under the same title, the story has been reproduced in prose and verse by several authors, but in none are any details respecting their father, Guérin, given, although frequent mention of both Mabiletta and the Count are made, representing him as the great friend, as well as one of the chief captains of Charlemagne. Can any of your readers inform me where particulars respecting this Guérin, the game of chess, and his victory over the Saracens, &c., are to be found?—Yours faithfully,
Wm. C. Lukis de Guerin.
98, Sandgate-road, Folkestone.
EXTINCT MAGAZINES.
(See vol. v. p. 273.)
Sir,—In accordance with the promise appended to my query at the preceding reference, I send you, as a first instalment, a few hurriedly written particulars of a magazine which, if I am not misinformed, died at its initial number. Like many another publication, doomed to an ephemeral existence, it deserved other and better treatment.
The Border Miscellany, or, as it is printed on the illustrated cover, Thompson’s Border Miscellany, was published at Berwick-on-Tweed, March, 1852, price sixpence, and though consisting of only forty-eight pages, octavo, it contains several exceedingly interesting items, among which I would reckon an “Unpublished Letter of Sir Walter Scott,” “Atoms of Information,” and the article of rather more than eight pages, entitled “The Tweed and its Tributaries,” by a disciple of Isaak Walton. The extracts from the Books of Council and Session, under the heading, “Memoranda Scotica,” are also interesting, especially to those who may have the genealogy of the Oliphants and other Scottish families at heart.
The story with which the Miscellany opens, “Florrette; or, Henri Quatre’s First Love,” adapted from the German of Zschokke, by Bon Gualtier, is, in my humble estimation, a piece of dull, uninteresting reading. The poetry, literary notices, and some other odds and ends, do not call for special recognition.
Here is the motto of this short-lived magazine:—
“L’Envoy.
For us and our Miscellany,
Here, stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Shakespeare (New Edition).”
On the back cover the following note of warning appeared:—
“Publishers are warned that the articles in this Miscellany are copyright. When short extracts from any of the papers are quoted, it will be obliging if the name of the Miscellany be prefixed.”
Who the editor of this venture was I know not, though I am aware that it was published by W. Thompson, at the time and place already mentioned. Perhaps some of your readers can throw light on the matter.
P. J. Mullin.
Leith, N.B.
PORTREEVE.
Sir,—Should any of your readers feel further interest in this subject, I would beg to refer them to your September number for my defence against Mr. Round’s repeated attacks, and contrast my paper with the misrepresentations which are now made of it in his note for this month. I would fain assume that these misrepresentations are not intentional, and that they may rather be attributed to that “lamentable confusion—truly distressing confusion,” which another contributor to your pages has described as characteristic of a former paper by Mr. Round, and which, indeed, seems to pervade all his papers. That these misrepresentations, however, exist will not for a moment be doubted by anyone who may make the comparison above suggested, and their existence, from whatever cause arising, must for the future preclude my bestowing any further notice of anything emanating from Mr. Round.
It seems almost unnecessary to specify any of the misrepresentations in question, but as something of the kind may be expected, and for the satisfaction of those who may not have seen my paper, or have an opportunity of easily referring to it, I will just cite one or two examples out of the numerous ones with which Mr. Round’s note abounds.
First, then, as regards the term “port or gate.” In employing the term port or gate as I did in my first paper, it was in the full assurance that these words are here absolutely synonymous, and that I was strictly correct in thus using the word port where it occurs in the Laws of Athelstan. On this point, however, Mr. Round thought fit to assail me, asserting that my “rendering outside the port or gate” was a mere “gloss” of my own on the word “port.” In consequence of this strange and somewhat unintelligible charge I was led to look into the question more closely, and found, though previously unaware of the fact, that I was entirely supported in my view and use of the words both by Camden and by Sharon Turner. In my next paper I accordingly quoted from Camden that at “Portgate,” on the Roman Wall, there was formerly a gate, as “the word in both languages” (Roman and Saxon) “fairly evinces.” On this passage, which it will be seen completely establishes my case, Mr. Round “evinces” his sense of fairness by suppressing all allusion to it. Again, it was pointed out that Sharon Turner distinctly uses the words as synonymous where he speaks of “the port-gerefa or the gerefa of the gate.” Nothing can be clearer or stronger than this, yet all notice of this is also suppressed, and Mr. Round, even after this has been pointed out to him, does not scruple to misrepresent me by repeating his assertion, and still arguing that in thus rendering the words “port or gate,” the words “or gate” are a mere “gloss” of my own. What opprobrium he intends to convey by the word “gloss” it is difficult to say, but, whatever it may be, your readers will now see that it applies quite as strongly to such high authorities as Camden and Sharon Turner as it does to me.
Further on, Mr. Round states that he has proved by demonstration that the markets were not held at the gates. I remarked in my paper that he might have spared himself the pains of proving what no one ever doubted, “the well-known fact that the forum was situated in the centre of a Roman town or city”; but I also pointed out what Mr. Round appears still to be ignorant of, that large transactions were conducted at the gates, the levying of tolls and the sale and purchase of merchandise, and thus “the word port, originally restricted to the gates where such extensive transactions were carried on, would at no distant period become applied,” in the way described, “to the town itself” (p. 114).
This latter passage, and all allusion to it, Mr. Round also suppresses, satisfying his sense of fair and reasonable argument in this case by merely harping again on the statement that “I proved by demonstration that the markets were never held at the gate,” which, in fact, no one at all conversant with the subject ever thought they were.
Apart, then, from what has here been thus briefly exposed, the character of Mr. Round’s papers is otherwise such as would deter me from giving any further time to their discussion.
A profuse rush of words—“verba et voces prætereaque nihil”—which seem to shun all approach to logical sequence, will not in the present day be accepted in place of the legitimate rules of reasoning, neither will they justify a writer who indulges in them in dispensing with the ordinary rules of courtesy.
James Hurly Pring, M.D.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
The Editor declines to pledge himself for the safety or return of MSS. voluntarily tendered to him by strangers.
Mus Rusticus.—You will find a good description of a Lord Mayor’s Show in the reign of James I. in F. W. Fairholt’s “History of Lord Mayors’ Pageants,” privately printed by the Percy Society in 1843.
