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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. FEB. 27, MM.

the hair of the illustrious departed which you gave me. Receive anew my thanks. Entirely at your service, BERANGER."

Lastly, M. Paques has added an unpublished letter which he had in his possession, and which, although it does not bear the name of the person to whom it was written, appears to have been addressed by Chateaubriand to some official personage in a position to grant his request. It is dated 3 September, 1828, .and shows how anxious was the writer to rest after death at Saint-Malo :

"You cannot doubt, Monsieur, of the very lively interest I take in my native town : I have only one fear, that is of not seeing it again before I die. I have long thought of asking the town to grant me, at the western point of Grand -Bey, the point jutting out farthest into the open sea, a little corner of earth, just sufficient to hold my coffin. I shall have it consecrated and surrounded by an iron railing. There, when it may please God, I shall repose under the protection of my fellow-citizens. Accept once more, I beg you, the assurance of the very distinguished consideration with which I have the honour to be your very humble and very obedient servant, CHATEAUBRIAND."

J. L. HEELIS.

TENNYSON ON BRITAIN. Tennyson's fine stanzas 'To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava ' open thus :

At times our Britain cannot rest,

At times her steps are quick and rash ;

She moving, at her girdle clash The golden keys of East and West. 1 observe that Mr. B. B. Rogers, in his recent edition of the ' Thesmophoriazusse,' says '(note on 1. 976) that the third and fourth lines, though first printed by Tennyson in 1889, had long been familiar to him, inasmuch as they first appeared without fche author's name so far back as 1844, in the intro- ductory chapter of H. Lushington's ' A Great Country's Little Wars. 1 I do not recollect having seen this fact previously noted.

E. H. BLAKENEY. Marlow, Bucks.

FEBRUARY 30. In the ' Parish Registers of Kirkburton, co. York,' edited by Frances Anne Collins, 1887, i. 11, there is an entry of a burial on "xxx die raensis February, 1545/6, to which the editor adds a note, taken from the Leeds Mercury Supplement, 26 June, 1880, that "Monday, 30 February is duly recognized in the 'Nautical Almanac' for 1880." w C. B.

'NICHOLAS NICKLEBY': CAPT. CUTTLE. A correspondent points out (ante, p. 44) in Martin Chuzzlewit ' a slip of the author's in describing clerical costume. A still more .singular slip occurs in Nicholas Nickleby,' which 1 have never seen noticed anywhere.

Nicholas journeys down to Yorkshire in the dead of winter Snow is deep on the ground. Yet on the day after his arrival one of the pupils is absent from "the first class in English spelling and philosophy " and it is explained that he is weeding the garden. This in deep snow !

I wonder if any of your readers know where Dickens got the name Capt. Cuttle from. This matter should be of interest to every reader of ' N. & Q.' It is taken from Pepys's ' Diary ' (see under 8 Feb., 1660/1, and also 10 and 14 Sept., 1665). Pepys's phrase "poor Capt. Cuttle" probably suggested to Dickens some odd or grotesque character. In a speech at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 27 June, 1855, he speaks of Pepys's 'Diary' being "rather a favourite of his." Perhaps he had read it carefully to provide picturesque details for his ' Child's History of England ' (1853). J. WILLCOCK.

Lerwick, N.B.

SKELLAT BELL : MORT BELL. (See 9 th S. vi. 306.) In the Reliquary for October, 1903, it is mentioned that Dougal Graham, the fore- most among the chapmen of the end of the eighteenth century, was given the appoint- ment of skellat - bell - ringer to the city of Glasgow ; and the explanation is borrowed from Prof. Fraser's ' Humorous Chapbooks of Scotland ' that the " skellat bell :> was used for ordinary announcements by the town crier, and the " mort bell " for intimation of deaths. The latter, by the way, is repre- sented in the South Taw ton parish accounts by the " leche bell."

ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.

OUR OLDEST PUBLIC SCHOOL. In the Surrey Comet of 13 February is reported a speech by Mr. A. F. Leach, Assistant Secre- tary of the Board of Education, delivered in support of the appeal which is being made for funds for Queen Elizabeth's School at Kingston - on - Thames. Therein he read a document which he had found in the book of the Prior of Canterbury, and which was written at Esher by Bishop Edyngdon of Winchester (who preceded William of Wykeham) to the Prior of Canterbury, on 7 April, 1364. Bishop Edyngdon's letter- mentions that at that early date "a school had been accustomed to be kept " at Kings- ton, and he refers to it as " a public school, 7 ' the first use of that term of which Mr. Leach was aware. The usual title was grammar school, or school of a cathedral or town. Winchester College, generally regarded as the oldest of our public schools, was not founded until twenty years after the date