Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/492

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. NOV. 21,

when aged about 27, and took to agricultur A quarto volume of ' Observations on Hus bandry by Edward Lisle ' appeared with a advertisement by his son Thomas in 1757 Another edition in two octavo volumes cam out in the same year. To each of them wa prefixed an engraving, by S. F. Ravene of the author's portrait.

Thomas Lisle was born on 22 May, 1709 and matriculated from Magdalen College Oxford, on 10 Sept., 1725. From 1726 t 1732 he was a Demy of the College, and h took the degrees of B.A. 19 July, 1729 M.A. 23 June, 1732; B.D. 28 Nov., 1740 and D.D. 22 April, 1743. He was a Fellow of the College from 1732 to 1747, its Bursa in 1741, and Public Orator to the University in 1745. In 1730 he and several others wer brought before the President and Fellows Two of the culprits were expelled " fo blasphemy and other vile practices." Lisl escaped.

Lisle acted for some time as English chap lain at Smyrna. One of his poems wa dated from that place in 1733 ; anothe from Cairo in August, 1734 ; and a thirc from Marseilles, May, 1735.

On the presentation of his mother he was instituted to the rectory of Woditon, alias Wootton, in the Isle of Wight, on 5 May 1736. He considered the name of the parish to mean Wood-town, and in his ' Excuse for Inconstancy ' gave it the alias of Bosco- ville. I am informed by the Rev. W. H oleman, the present Rector of Wootton that the ' Handbook for Tourists,' by W. H Davenport Adams, 1888, states that the old rectory of Wootton was haunted by his ghost : " At midnight this restless priest in gown and cassock regularly ascends the old oaken staircase " ; but I have not been able to see the volume.

On 25 March, 1746, Lisle was instituted, on the nomination of the Hon. R. Herbert, the patron, to the rectory of Burghclere, near Newbury, and he held both livings until his death. He married his cousin Elizabeth, second daughter, and at length heir, of Charles Phillipps of Low Leyton in Essex. She died in 1764, and was buried at Dibden. He survived until 27 March, 1767, and was buried at Dibden on 5 April (Bloxam, ' Mag- dalen Coll.,' vi. 157-8, 206, 210-11).

The house at Crux Easton has long been destroyed, but the avenue leading to it still exists, and some quaint decorations of no merit built into the present rectory of Burghclere were taken from it. The grotto which was rendered famous by the lines of Pope (printed in Dodsley, vi. 161-2) was

in ruins in 1805, only the shell remaining. " The front was of flint, the interior studded with shells, scoriae of iron ore, and other sub- stances ; it contained a seat for each sister, with a niche for the presiding magician " (Brayley and Britton, ' Beauties, Hampshire,' pp. 236-7). Lord Carnarvon said in 1882 that the nine ladies used to rose in it as the nine Muses, " Pope being placed in tho midst as Apollo." The grotto was standing in part within his memory.

Lisle' s poem ' The Power of Music : a Song imitated from the Spanish,' is reprinted in Aikin's 'Vocal Poetry' (1810), p. 228, and is quoted therefrom in the notes to Sir Thomas Browne's works (ed. Wilkin), ii. 220. Lisle was the author of the Latin epitaph at Shepeshead, Leicestershire, on Ambrose Phillipps (Nichols, ' Leicester,' iii. pt. ii. 802). The youngest sister was an artist, and some of her pictures are at High- clere. She painted the portraits of her ac- quaintances on the trees surrounding the grotto. She died about 1802, very old ('Beauties, Hampshire,' pp. 236-7). This was either Harriet, the youngest sister, who was born at Crux Easton on 26 Aug., 1717, and died unmarried at Bath in April, 1794, being buried at Mortimer, Berkshire; or Frances, the last survivor of the family, who died at Bladud's Buildings, Bath, 19 Dec., 1802, aged 88, and was also buried at Mortimer (Gent. Mag., 1802, pt. ii. 1225).

I have been helped in this article by 3anon A. C. Blunt, the present Rector of Burghclere. W. P. COURTNEY.

(To be continued.)

MILTON'S HOUSE IN ALDERSGATE STREET. The house occupied by Milton in Alders- gate Street was not identified by Masson n his otherwise exhaustive life of the poet, 't has since been identified as standing ' at the bottom of Lamb Alley," and Milton and his servant were in 1641 rated in the books of the parish of St. Botolph Without Aldersgate to the poll-tax in the second )recinct of the parish, and so returned to he Exchequer. Lamb Alley, afterwards ailed Maidenhead Court, ran through from pposite No. 159, Aldersgate Street, into Nioholl Square ; and in the garden in the ear of Shaftesbury House, Nos. 37 and 38, Aldersgate Street (now demolished), was lilton's garden house.

These details appeared in The City Press n the early part of 1863 ; and it may be well, in view of the approaching tercen- enary of Milton's birth, to reprint them.

JOHN HEBB.