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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. JULY 25, IMS.

As the only son of the late William Warden, author of ' Letters from St. Helena,' I need not say how pleased I am to read -what MB. E. MARSTON kindly says upon this subject. He seems to me to be per- fectly right, except that the letters in ques- tion were written to my mother, then Miss Elizabeth Hutt of Appley Towers, Ryde. Several of them are now in our possession, postmarked " St. Helena." We also have my father's journal, which is written upon Government paper supplied to the ships in the Navy, so there can be no doubt of the authenticity and genuineness of the book. It had a very large circulation when first published by Ackermann in 1816, but has now, as MR. MARSTON says, dropped out of memory ; the contents, however, have been largely used for concocted stories .about Napoleon by both French and English writers. One instance I will give. In a French book called ' Le Cabinet Noir ' pp. 160 to 256 are an exact copy, through a French version, of part of my father's book. This book purports to be " translated from the original documents and manu- scripts " by C. H. F. Blackith, and was published by Longmans & Co. in 1887.

I shall be glad to give MR. MARSTON such information as I can. We have also some curious relics of Napoleon among others, the gold buckles out of his knee-breeches, which in parting Napoleon took out and gave to my father in response to his request for some small personal memento. He had previously received a magnificent set of ivory chessmen as a present.

GEORGE COCKBURN WARDEN.

SYDNEY DOBELL AND HIS EDINBURGH FRIENDS. The intimation by Mr. Bertram D obeli that he has undertaken to write a memoir of Sydney D obeli will perhaps revive interest in the work of the poet, and elicit, it is hoped, hitherto unpublished facts concerning the author of ' Balder ' and some of his contemporaries and friends. Sydney D obeli was one of a distinguished group of men of letters, consisting, among others, of the author of ' A Life Drama,' Gerald Massey, Hugh Miller, and Prof. Aytoun, all resident in Edinburgh in the mid fifties of last century. During his three years' sojourn in the Scottish capital Sydney Dobell assisted Smith in procuring the Secretaryship of the University, and jointly with Alexander Smith he published when in Edinburgh ' Sonnets on the War.' In- cidents of the Crimean campaign and of

the Indian Mutiny also formed the theme, fifty odd years ago, of a number of poems by Gerald Massey. Possibly all those named above foregathered at Craigcrook, the hospitable home, west from Edinburgh two or three miles, of John Hunter, to whom Dr. Walter C. Smith dedicated ' The Bishop's Walk,' his first volume in verse ; and it is not improbable that in his poem ' Craig- crook Castle ' Gerald Massey makes allusion to Dobell " our poet, Rubens " and other members of the group. Was Sydney Dobell, one wonders, familiar with Patrick Proctor Alexander, friend of Alexander Smith, and the editor as well as writer of the memoir in * Last Leaves ' ? The author of a clever burlesque of Carlyle, of an able criticism of J. S. Mill's ' Freedom of the Will,' of a volume entitled ' Moral Causation,' and a brochure on Spiritualism, P. P. Alexander is nevertheless absent from the ' D.N.B.' He contributed the article ' Golf ' to the ninth edition of * The Ency. Brit.,' and, curiously, his name appears in the recently issued Times handbook ' 2,000 Men of the Day' !

Thoroughly Bohemian in temperament and habits, Alexander had numerous friends in the literary circles of Glasgow and Edin- burgh, and besides producing the works mentioned, he contributed verse at intervals to Fraser's Magazine The Glasgow Citizen, and other periodicals. As in the case of Dobell, Massey, and Smith, war was both the stimulus and subject of some of Alex- ander's most characteristic poems. He died in 1886, and it has been the regret of his friends that no memoir of " Pat Alex- ander," as he was familiarly called, has been published. The now rare little volume, edited by Thomas Spencer Baynes and Emeritus Professor Lewis Campbell 'Alma Mater's Mirror St. Andrews, 1887,' con- tains a tributary sketch of Alexander from the pen of the Rev. W. W. Tulloch. D.D.

J. GRIGOR.

105, Choumert Road, Peckham.

THE "DEEDLER": " DEEDLING." In The Manchester Guardian of 13 April is a most interesting communication on " deed- ling " by Mr. Bertram Smith, " deedling " being, he considers, a lost art, and the "deedler" himself obsolete. The " deed- ler," however, is not quite obsolete, nor the art quite lost, though seldom put into prac- tice. The "deedling" is done by the mouth, the lips somewhat apart, and the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth. Mr. Bertram Smith says that " deedling was the outcome of an absolute poverty of