The following details, which J. M. will not find in any book, may be interesting, to him:—Joseph Wedgewood, the illustrious potter, lived at Etruria, in Staffordshire; for such was the appropriate name of the house he built for himself. He had six children,—three sons, John, Thomas, and Josiah; and three daughters, Sarah, Catherine, and ****. John married a Miss Allen (one of four Devonshire lasses), who was accounted one of the most accomplished and excellent ladies in the county. Joshua married another of the sisters. Thomas never married. He was indisposed, both from ill health and taste, towards the pottery business, and took to philosophy. He was endowed with a rare genius, and enjoyed the society of the first literati of his day. But he died while he was still a man of promise.
Of his sisters, Sarah was an accomplished lady with a strong intellect, which captivated Basil Montagu, without reciprocity. Catherine was a first-rate horse-woman. The third daughter married the celebrated Dr. Darwin, of Shrewsbury. All of them, I believe, are dead.
C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.
Birmingham.
Praying to the Devil (Vol. v., p. 273.).
—Bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience (Decade iii. Case 2. Lond. 1654), alludes to the fact of Satanic compacts, as indeed do many others of our old divines. The master work on the subject is, I believe, that entitled Disquisitiones Magicæ by Martinus Delrio. Let me particularly refer your correspondent R. S. F. to Lib. ii. of said volume, Quæst. 4. pp. 99., &c., and to Lib. v. sect. xvi. pp. 759., &c. (Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1633, 4to.)
In turning over the leaves fortuitously, I stumbled upon the name of Catherine de Medicis, and perhaps in a connexion that will render the legend of the steel box not incredible:
"Sic ille ipse, Bodino non ignotus, faciebat Italus Parisiis, tam carus Catharinæ Mediceæ, qui chirothecis, globulis, vel pulveribus suave fragrantibus, alios solo necabat odore illæsus ipse, et hoc pacto à se interfectam Navarræ Reginam Albretham, veneni vi per nares in cerebrum penetrante, gloriabatur. Vera causa est, hæc ex pacto fieri per dæmonem," &c.
Lib. iii. pars i. quæst. 3. sect. 2. p. 394.
RT.