Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/627

 10 S. XL JUNE 26, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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lished in 1895. Of all the biographies of the Chevalier, I think this will be found to contain the best account of M. Treyssac de Vergy, a one-time ally of D'Eon.

Treyssac de Vergy was buried in St. Pancras Churchyard, 3 March, 1775 (see ' The Disused Burial-Grounds of St. Pancras,' by W. E. Brown, May, 1902, p. 38).

Is MR. ELIOT HODGKIN correct in giving the name as Tressac ?

CHAS. HALL CROUCH.

48, Nelson Road, Stroud Green, N.

JRtsallatmms.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &a

Anne Seymour Darner: a Woman of Art and Fcuhion. 1748-18*8. By Percy Noble. (Kegan Paul & Co.)

MRS. DAMER lived in a period of exceptional interest, and her several claims to a biography are far more than those of many persons whose lives have been told at wearisome length. The opposite is the state of the case here. What Mr. Noble calls ' ' this short biographical sketch " was bound to be rather thin, as his heroine's papers and letters, by her own order, were destroyed at her death. We call her a "heroine," for she was handsome, spirited, of a lively disposition, and irreproachable in moral character. She was, too, a lady sculptor of some repute in her day, and a friend of that fastidious judge of men and women, Horace Walpole, who did much fo* her training. We have said more than once that the tine ladies of the eighteenth century were, as a rule, much more accomplished in real education than their counterpart of to-day, and Mrs. Darner lends support to this conception of womanhood then and now. She possessed one of the finest libraries in London, and though there was no great danger of her work in sculpture being mis- taken for that of Praxiteles, as Walpole's courtly Latin suggested, her mere pursuit of sculpture, at the suggestion of Hume, was a piece of bravery in those days for a fashionable lady.

It may be conjectured that some of her suc- cess was due to her good looks, sufficiently indicated in the well-chosen illustrations of this book. The sketch, by Rowlandson, of the West- minster Election of 1784, when Mrs. Darner, Mrs. Crewe, and the Duchess of Devonshire rallied round Fox, and set out to canvas the electors, is a delightful specimen of his art. Mr. Noble is, we think, a little unfair to Fox, "who was an inveterate gambler and thoroughly dissolute." If there is one thing that emerges from the memoirs of the time, it is surely that Fox had charm, a quality which overrides a good many objections. He had scholarship, too, which Mrs. Darner may have appreciated. The brief account of Mr. Damer and his wife strikes us as fair to both parties. Mr. Noble has introduced some agreeable stories, and all the quotations from Walpole's letters are telling. They show us the real tenderness of a man generally regarded as an idle scoffer and fribble. Mrs. Darner's own letters are reasonable, entertaining, and credit her with an excellent temper. In Portugal she discovers "a case of a

natch being broken off between a young man and lis cousin, because she asked him, ' how he did ! ' "

A hero- worshipper, she presented a bust of Fox lim. She got Nelson to sit to her in the very coat which he had worn at the Battle of the Nile, and was one of a distinguished company of amateurs, who acted plays at Strawberry Hill, left to her by Walpole. One of them, 'Fashionable Friends^' was as risky in subject as that which won the disfavour of Sir Thomas in ' Mansfield Park.' Two nterestiug places are pictured with which Mrs. Damer was concerned in younger days Miltoa Abbey, where her father-in-law removed a village and made it one of the sights of Dorset, and Latimers, on which Walpole's comments are amusing.
 * o Napoleon, and received a fine snuff box from

Altogether, Mr. Noble has made good use of his materials, and the brevity of the text has permitted use of excellent type, which is a pleasure to the eye.

The Greatness and Decline of Rome. Vol. III. The Fall of an Aristocracy; Vol. IV. Rome and Egypt ; Vol. V. The Republic of Augustus. By Guglielmo Ferrero. Translated by Rev. H. J. Chayter. (Heinemann.)

WE have read these volumes with unabated delight in the brilliant style of the Italian historian whose work is vivid enough to persuade us of almost anything. But his conclusions seem to us to grow increasingly hazardous, not to say unlikely. The extraordinary way in which he underrates the personal qualities and achievements of Augustus can hardly fail, we think, to irritate a good many competent critics of that great man. Reading his history withou previous knowledge of what actually happened we should hardly deem it possible that Octavian could survive to rule as. Augustus ; so often is it suggested that chance and the follies of others, rather than his own ability, won success for him. We get, on the other hand, a very fair and interesting account of Cicero's merits, though the influence of his writings is surely overstated. We do not believe that the ' De- Officiis ' is a " most important document for the political and social life of Rome." The notice of other great literary figures, such as Horace andi Virgil, is delightfully fresh and vigorous, though we are of opinion that Signer Ferrero praises the former top much at the expense of the latter. We think he is certainly wrong, too, as to the inspiration of Virgil's Fourth and Messianic Eclogue. We do. not conceive it possible that any child under imperial rank, such as the son of Pollio, could be styled "magnum jovis incrementum," as Virgil styles the forthcoming babe.

We are told that " the proscriptions of the years. 43 and 44 are wrongly regarded as political ven- geance on the part ot the triumvirs. Their chief object was to plunder the richest landowners ot Italy."

We have little doubt that both motives were present in their minds. They wanted money and wanted possible opponents out of the way. Antony* in accordance with the author's prejudice against Octavian, "was the one remarkable personality '* among the trinmvirs. Antony, a great general, chose the East, according to our new historian, in no selfish longing for sensuality, but in order to reorganize what was regarded as Rome's most precious possession. The romance of Antony and