[1]. With respect to the Letters and Extracts from Letters to myself and to Miss Elliot, from the late Master of Balliol,—(to be found Vol. I., pp. 316, 317, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, and 354),—I beg to record that I have received the very kind permission of Mr. Jowett’s Executors for their publication.
[2]. It is always amusing to me to read the complacent arguments of despisers of women when they think to prove the inevitable mental inferiority of my sex by specifying the smaller circumference of our heads. On this line of logic an elephant should be twice as wise as a man. But in my case, as it happens, their argument leans the wrong way, for my head is larger than those of most of my countrymen,—Doctors included. As measured carefully with proper instruments by a skilled phrenologist (the late Major Noel) the dimensions are as follows:—Circumference, twenty-three and a quarter inches; greatest height from external orifice of ear to summit of crown, 6²⁄₈ inches. On the other hand dear Mrs. Somerville’s little head, which held three times as much as mine has ever done, was below the average of that of women. So much for that argument!
[3]. The aphorism so often applied to little girls, that “it is better to be good than pretty,” may, with greater hope of success, be applied to family names; but I fear mine is neither imposing nor sonorous. I may say of it (as I remarked to the charming Teresa Doria when she ridiculed the Swiss for their mesquin names, all ending in “in”), “Everybody cannot have the luck to be able to sign themselves Doria nata Durazzo!” Nevertheless “Cobbe” is a very old name (Leuricus Cobbe held lands in Suffolk, vide Domesday), and it is curiously wide-spread as a word in most Aryan languages, signifying either the head (literal or metaphorical), or a head-shaped object. I am no philologist, and I dare say my examples offend against some “law,” and therefore cannot be admitted; but it is at least odd that we should find Latin, “Caput;” Italian, Capo; Spanish, Cabo; Saxon, Cop; German, Kopf. Then we have, as derivates from the physical head, Cape, Capstan, Cap, Cope, Copse or Coppice, Coping Stone, Copped, Cup, Cupola, Cub, Cubicle, Kobbold, Gobbo; and from the metaphorical Head or Chief, Captain, Capital, Capitation, Capitulate, &c. And again, we have a multitude of names for objects obviously signifying head-shaped, e.g., Cob-horse, Cob-nut, Cob-gull, Cob-herring, Cob-swan, Cob-coal, Cob-iron, Cob-wall; a Cock (of hay), according to Johnson, properly a “Cop” of hay; the Cobb (or Headland) at Lyme Regis, &c., &c.; the Kobbé fiord in Norway, &c.
[4]. As such things as mythical pedigrees are not altogether unknown in the world, I beg to say that I have myself noted the above from Harleian MS. in British Museum 1473 and 1139. Also in the College of Arms, G. 16, p. 74, and C. 19, p. 104.
[5]. Wife of Thomas Cobbe’s half-brother.
[6]. Lady Huntingdon was doubly connected with Thomas Cobbe. She was his first cousin, daughter of his maternal aunt Selina Countess of Ferrers, and mother of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Countess of Moira. The pictures of Dorothy Levinge, and of her father; of Lady Ferrers; and of Lord Moira and his wife, all of which hang in the halls at Newbridge, made me as a child, think of them as familiar people. Unfortunately the portrait of chief interest, that of Lady Huntingdon, is missing in the series.
[7]. Pronounced “Lock Nay.”
[8]. Part of the following description of my own and my mother’s school appeared some years ago in a periodical, now, I believe, extinct.
[9]. “It is a fact of Consciousness to which all experience bears witness and which it is the duty of the philosopher to admit and account for, instead of disguising or mutilating it to suit the demands of a system, that there are certain truths which when once acquired, no matter how, it is impossible by any effort of thought to conceive as reversed or reversible.”—Mansel’s Metaphysics, p. 248.