A PRECISIAN.
Queries.
ALGERNON SYDNEY.
In no way, perhaps, has "N. & Q." been so useful to the literary public as in making itself the ready means of concentrating on any given point the various readings of many persons; unless, indeed, it should be considered more useful to have proved how courteous, how willing to oblige—even at some personal sacrifices—men of reading are in this day and generation. The information recently sent from so many quarters in relation to General Wolfe is a good example of what may be done in other cases; that about Sterne in Paris is another. The latter instance suggests to me a way in which some of your correspondents, whose private communications I have had to acknowledge in reference to other inquiries, might do me a real service at no great inconvenience perhaps to themselves.
I am collecting materials for a volume on Algernon Sydney. A great part of this illustrious patriot's life was spent abroad; in many parts of the continent, France, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Germany, &c. This part of his history has been so far veiled in considerable obscurity, and incidents of it misrepresented. Some better knowledge of it than we now possess, must be, I think, recoverable. A man of Sydney's birth, active temperament, and distinguished abilities, must have been spoken of in many letters and memoirs of that time. No doubt anecdotes and traits of character may be found in cotemporary French, Italian, German, and Scandinavian literature.
But with a library so vast to examine, no single man could ever feel sure that nothing was overlooked. Other explorers, working for themselves, may have hit upon statements or anecdotes of the greatest value to me. May I ask any such to oblige me by references to any works in which the information that I seek is to be found; sent either to "N. & Q.," or to my address as under?
HEPWORTH DIXON.
84. St. John's Wood Terrace.
OLD IRISH TALES.
A black-letter duodecimo, printed in London in 1584, under the anomalous title of Beware the Cat, was advertised for sale in one of Thorpe's Catalogues a few years back, at a price of seven guineas. The copy was believed to be unique; it had been in the libraries of several book collectors, and among others of Mr. Heber, who considered it the most curious volume illustrative of the times, in all his vast collection. It appears, by the short abstract of contents, that the book contains some curious notices of Ireland and Irishmen; an "account" is given "of the civil wars in Ireland, by Mackmorro, and all the rest of the wild Irish lords." This hero was probably Art Kavanagh, "the Mac-Morrogh" (the hereditary title of the chief of the Leinster septs) whose rebellions were, on two occasions, the cause of Richard II.'s two great expeditions to Ireland. Then follows the tale of "Fitz-Harris and the Prior of Tintern Abbey." Fitz-Harris, or Fitz-Henry, was an Anglo-Irish baron, who resided in the south of the county of Wexford, in the neighbourhood of a convent, which having been founded by Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and supplied with monks from Tintern in Monmouthshire, was named after the parent monastery. The Fitz-Harris's are said to have descended from Meyler Fitz-Henry, the "indomitor totius gentis Hiberniæ," but they became, to quote Spenser's adage current of the Anglo-Irish of his day,