Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/473

 10 s. xi. MAT is, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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4. De Quincey talks of a person " barring ' the door of a cottage, and puts the word in inverted commas. Is this done because " bar " is used in the Lake District to mean simply " lock " ?

5. What were the symbols of the goddess Levana (' Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow')?

6. In ' Confessions of an English Opium- Eater,' about two-thirds of the way through ' The Pains of Opium,' De Quincey speaks of the Roman consuls " sweeping by." Or is it s translation of some expression usec by Livy ? V. H. C.

[" Sweeping by." See ' II Penseroso,' 98. J

TIMOTHY LOKEB. I have a copy 01 " Poems and Ballads, by Timothy Loker ol Cambridge," published by Jonathan Palmer Cambridge, 1861. Is anything known oi the author ? He describes himself in his preface as "a self-taught working-man.' His views are artless and seem quite free from merit. G. L. APPERSON.

"UNDER A CLOUD." What is the origin of this expression ? Is it from 1 Cor. x. 1, " Our fathers were under the cloud," in view of the condemnation expressed in verse 5, " But with many of them God was not well pleased " ? LAWRENCE PHILLIPS.

Sibson Rectory, Atherstone.

SIR CHARLES MALET IN POONA. I am compiling Sir Charles's life in Western India. He was the first Resident at the Poona Court, being at Poona from 1785 to 1797, and is known to have kept a diary there. Can any one tell me where this is to be found ? I have searched the following works : Grant Duff, Elphinstone, More, Forrest, Forbes, Douglas, Parasnis, and ' British Biography of the Eighteenth Cen- tury.' HAROLD MALET, Col. 17, Draycott Place, S.W.

' METRICAL EFFUSIONS.' Can any of your readers inform me who was the author of ' Metrical Effusions ; or, Verses on Various Occasions,' Woodbridge, 1812 ?

A. G. POTTER.

[Halkett and Laing state that it is by Bernard Barton.]

' NOUVEAUX TABLEAUX DE FAMILLE.' I have picked up the following :

" Nouveaux Tableaux de Famille, ou la Vie d'un pauvre Ministre de Village Allemand et de ses Enfans. Traduit de 1' Allemand d'Auguste La Fon- taine, par Madame Isabelle de Montolieu, auteur de Caroline de Lichtn'eld, et de la traduction de Charles Engelmau."

The book was published at Geneva in 1802.

I shall be glad if any reader can give me the date of the birth and death of Auguste La Fontaine, and also tell .me when the German work in question was first published. The most diligent search, so far, has not yielded any result. E. H.

OLIVER CROMWELL'S HEAD. (10 S. xi. 349.)

THE history of this relic, with a rough drawing of it, was given in The DaMy Chronicle of 6 Nov., 1895. Its history is partly traditional. It is known that Crom- well's body was embalmed, and buried in King Henry VII.'s Chapel, and that after the Restoration it was exhumed, and hung, with those of Bradshaw and Ireton, at Tyburn. Their bodies were probably buried there, but their heads were hacked off and set up on the top of Westminster Hall. It is said that Cromwell's was blown down in a storm some years afterwards, that it was picked up and hidden by a sentinel, and that after his death it was sold by his wife and daughter to a Cambridgeshire family named Russell, who were connected with the Cromwells. It remained with them till towards the end of the eighteenth century, when it was sold by Samuel Russell to one Cox, the proprietor of a museum in Bond Street, who exhibited it there. When the museum was closed the head was bought by three gentlemen for 230Z., and was still exhibited to the public. The last survivor of them parted with it to Mr. Josiah Wilkin- son, the great-grandfather of its present owner.

The head, which I once had the privilege of seeing, bears on it strong evidence of being Cromwell's. It is not a skull, but a desiccated head on which the skin and some of the hair remain ; the top has been sawn off and replaced, probably in the process of embalming. It is still transfixed by an iron-pointed stake. It would be difficult to name any other head which would have been embalmed first and subsequently impaled. The hair agrees in colour with Cromwell's portraits ; and though the well-known wart over the right eye is no longer there, its jlace is indicated by a small hole in the Iried skin. Though the shrunken features lave no traceable resemblance to any portrait, it must be remembered that 'rom well's face was fleshy, and that nothing >ut skin, bone, and hair now remains.