—In one of Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe books is the following entry of a trinket, devised at the period of the Duke of Alençon's courting her Majesty:
"Item, one little Flower of gold, with a Frog thereon; and therein mounseer his physnomie, and a little Pearl pendant."
"'Query,' says Miss Strickland (Queens, vol. vi. p. 471., 1st edit.), 'was this whimsical conceit a love-token, from the Duke of Alençon to his royal belle amie, and the frog designed, not as a ridiculous, but a sentimental allusion to his country?'"
To which Query I would add another: When was the term of Johnny Crapaud first applied to the French people, and on what occasion? I am aware of the notion of its being on account of their said partiality for eating frogs; which, by the bye, having tasted, I can pronounce to be very good: mais chacun à son goût. Is the frog introduced in the arms of Anjou or Alençon?
PHILIP S. KING.
Poems in the "Spectator."
—The fine moral poems which first appeared in the Spectator, e.g. that commencing "When all thy mercies, O my God;" the version of the Twenty-third Psalm, "The Lord my pasture shall prepare;" "The spacious firmament on high," &c., are, as most of our readers are aware, commonly ascribed to Addison. In a recent collection of poetical pieces, however, I have seen them attributed to Andrew Marvell. Can any of your readers certify either of these contradictory assertions?
J. G. F.
Old John Harries, "Bishop of Wales."
—I have "An Elegy to the Memory of the late worthy and pious Mr. John Harries of Amleston, in Pembrokeshire, Preacher of the Gospel;" from which it appears that, after devoting himself to preaching for forty-six years, through both North and South Wales, and more particularly in "Roose, Castlemartin, Pembroke, Haverfordwest, Narberth, Woodstockslop, and Amleston," he died at Newport on the 7th of March, 1788. Will you allow me to ask your numerous correspondents whether any of them can assist me in tracing his pedigree? One of his sons, a minor canon of Bristol, bore the arms of Owen Gwynedd, viz. "vert, three eagles displayed on a fesse, or," on his book-plate. He was often called the "Bishop of Wales," from the large district through which he overlooked the progress of the Gospel.