Sitting crosslegged to avert Evil (Vol. ii.,p. 407.).—Browne says:—
"To set crosselegg'd, or with our fingers pectinated or shut together, is accounted bad, and friends will perswade us from it. The same conceit religiously possessed the ancients, as is observable from Pliny: 'Poplites alternis genibus imponere nefas olim;' and also from Athenæus, that it was an old veneficious practice."—Vulg. Err., lib. v. cap. xxi. § 9.
Ache.
George Steevens (Vol. iii., p. 119.).—A. Z. wishes to know whether a memoir of George Steevens, the Shakspearian commentator, was ever published, and what has become of the manuscripts.
I believe the late Sir James Allen Park wrote his life, but whether for public or private circulation I cannot tell.
The late George Steevens had a relative, a Mrs. Collinson, and daughters who lived with him at Hampstead, and with him when he died, in Jan. 1800. Miss Collinson married a Mr. Pyecroft, whose death, I think, is in the Gentleman's Magazine for this month: perhaps the Pyecroft family may give information respecting the manuscripts.
"The house he lived in at Hampstead, called the Upper Flask, was formerly a place of public entertainment near the summit of Hampstead Hill. Here Richardson sends his Clarissa in one of her escapes from Lovelace. Here, too, the celebrated Kit-Cat Club used to meet in the summer months; and here, after it became a private abode, the no less celebrated George Steevens lived and died."—Vide Park's Hampstead, pp. 250. 352.
I just recollect Mr. Steevens, who was very kind to us, as children. My mother, who is an octogenarian, remembers him well, and says he always took a nosegay, tied to the top of his cane, every day to Sir Joseph Banks.
Julia R. Bockett.
Southcote Lodge, near Reading.