Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/455

 io s. i. MAY 7, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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them about a mile and a half till the woods screened the dastardly refugees, which enabled us to accom- plish the object of the enterprise without molesta- tion. Thus without loss were the Yankees disap- pointed, as in many similar attempts, of launching into eternity a British man-of-war and her crew. A mode of warfare practised by no other nation, as cowardly as it is detestable."

Diagrams showing the construction of different parts of the boat are afterwards given. MARY E. NOBLE.

TICKLING TROUT (9 th S. xii. 505 ; 10 th S. i. 154, 274). When I was a boy in Hereford- shire I often saw a tailor from a neighbouring village wading up the river up to his armpits and feeling under the banks. I have seen him throw out many a big trout, one after the other, on to the bank. This was called tickling trout. E. M.

BARBERS (10 th S. i. 290). William Falconer, the poet and author of ' The Shipwreck,' was the son of an Edinburgh barber. There is an account of Jacques Jasmin, the barber poet of Languedoc, in Eliza Cook's Journal for 15 March, 1851. The father of Jeremy Taylor was a barber in Cambridge. Lords Tenter- den and St. Leonards were both sons of barbers. J. H. MACMICHAEL.

SCOTCH WORDS AND ENGLISH COMMENTA- TORS (10 th S. i. 261, 321). It seems to me that Burns, in

dre

The bum-clock hummed wi' lazy drone, The kye stood rowtin' i' the loan,

the

his inspiration chiefly from

beginning of Gray's ' Elegy ' ; but Gray and Collins remembered the passage in 'Macbeth ; and Gray has expressed himself as though he had the ode of Collins in his mind :

Ere the bat has flown

His cloistered flight ; ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, Hath rung night's yawning peal.

Shakespeare.

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homewards plods his weary way.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

Gray.

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short, shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing ;

Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn. Collins.

E. YARDLEY.

THE " SHIP " HOTEL AT GREENWICH (9 th S. xii. 306, 375, 415, 431 ; 10 th S. i. 111). Is not this preserved in an engraving in 'Pendennis,' vol. ii. p. 26, entitled 'Almost Perfect Happi-

ness,' representing Foker on a balcony over- looking the river, engaged in conversation with Blanche Amory ? Foker, it is said, " had some delicious opportunities of conversation with her during the repast, and afterwards on the balcony of their room at the hotel " (chap. ii.). JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

Louis XVII. (10 th S. i. 267). The deeply calculated barbarity that caused the lingering death of this hapless prince is minutely described by Thiers in his ' History of the French Revolution.' With regard to MADAME BARBEY-BOISSIER'S firm belief in " the sur- vival of Louis XVIL, son of Louis XVI., after his feigned death in the prison of the Temple on 8 June, 1795," I venture to think that the following note by Mr. Holland Rose, at vol. iii. p. 358 of his edition of Carlyle's ' French Revolution,' will interest her :

"The royalist reaction was further checked by the death of the little Louis XVII. (8 June, 1795) owing to the filth and darkness in which the Com- mittee of General Security kept him of set purpose. This was a blow to the royalists, who cared little for the next claimant to the throne, the Comte de Provence. The stories of the rescue of Louis XVIL and substitution of an idiot boy are very far-fetched. For that theory see Louis Blanc, 'La Rev. Fr.,' vol. xii. chap. ii. ; also several perversely ingenious monographs."

The italics are mine.

HENRY GERALD HOPE. 119, Elms Road, Clapham, S.W.

BATTLEFIELD SAYINGS (10 th S. i. 268). It was on the day of the fatal battle of Pavia that Francis I. wrote his mother a letter con- taining the oft-quoted words, " All is lost, madam, save honour." " Let posterity cheer for us" is attributed to Washington, when some of the American troops cheered as the sword of Cornwallis was given by General O'Hara, at the surrender of Yorktown, 19 Octo- ber, 1781, to the American commander- in-chief. The story has, however, been doubted. Several other such dicta will be found in S. A. Bent's ' Short Sayings of Great Men,' 1882. J. H. MACMICHAEL.

JAMES BRINDLEY (10 th S. i. 310). The editorial foot-note is partly incorrect. My copy of ' Lives of the Engineers,' by Dr. Smiles, is the "sixth thousand," published by Murray in 1862, and on p. 308 it is stated that James Brindley first saw the light in a humble cottage standing about midway between the hamlet of Great Rocks and that of Tunstead, in the liberty of Thornsett, some three miles to the north-east of Buxton. The house in which he was born, in 1716, has long since fallen to ruins, the Brindley family