C. H. F.
Paradise Lost.—In A Treatise on the Dramatic Literature of the Greeks, by the Rev. J. R. Darley, I read the following remark:
"In our own literature also, the efforts of our early dramatists were directed to subjects derived from religion; even the Paradise Lost is composed of a series of minor pieces, originally cast in dramatic form, of which the creation and fall of man, and the several episodes which were introduced subordinately to these grand events, were the subject-matter."
This statement being at variance with the received opinion, that Milton, from his early youth, had meditated the composition of an epic poem, I would inquire whether there is any evidence to support Mr. Darley's view? Milton has been charged with having borrowed the design of Paradise Lost from some Italian author; and this allegation, coupled with that made by Mr. Darley, would, if founded, reduce our great national epic to what Hazlitt has described as "patchwork and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness of borrowed wealth."
Henry H. Breen.
St. Lucia.
Colonel Hyde Seymour.—Who was "Colonel Hyde Seymour?" I find his name written in a book, The Life of William the Third, 1703.
H. T. Ellacombe.
Vault at Richmond, Yorkshire.—In Speed's plan of Richmond, in Yorkshire, is represented the mouth of a "vault that goeth under the river, and ascendeth up into the Castell." Was there ever such a vault, and how came it to be destroyed or lost sight of? One who knows Richmond well tells me that he never heard of it.
O. L. R. G.