Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/186

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XIL AUG. 21, woo.

LAND OFFICE : " LAND OFFICE BUSINESS." The 'N.E.D.' cites Alexander Hamilton, 1790. But land offices antedated the Ame- rican Revolution, for The Massachusetts Gazette, 7 March, 1774, says : " Letters from London, by way of South-Carolina, mention that the land- offices in North- America will be opened again." The ' N.E.D.' further cites a report to Congress in 1882 as stating that a certain company " once did a land office business in crushing ore." This, however, is unexplained. A " land office business " means a rushing business, with allusion to times when the land offices had more work to do than could well be managed.

I should be glad of earlier examples, accurately dated, under either heading.

RICHARD H. THORNTON.

W, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.

JOHN BOSSOM, COOK OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. In Joseph Foster's ' Alumni Oxonienses ' (second series) there is the following entry : " John Bossom, Cook of University College, privilegiatus March 18, 1729/30.

Will some one explain what was meant by the process here styled " privilegiatus " T and can any one give me information con- cerning the individual, his place of birth, his death, marriage, and descendants ? He seems to have had in later life some con- nexion with Avon Dassett, near Leamington ; and he is said to have had three handsome daughters Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth.

Sarah married in September, 1738, the Rev. John Prinsep, then a newly fledged B.A. of Balliol College, about twenty-one years of age, afterwards Vicar of Bicester, Oxfordshire, and father of John Prinsep, an Alderman of the City of London. Hannah is said to have married an Oxford Don of the name of Mason. Elizabeth married Henry Reeves, the well-known usher and writing- master at Harrow School, whose son Fre- derick Reeves went to India in the Bombay Civil Service in 1781, and upon his return to this country settled at East Sheen and was a J.P. for Surrey. F. DE H. L.

ST. CROSS HOSPITAL, WINCHESTER : ITS WOODEN LECTERN. Having in vain tried to find out the meaning of the wooden lectern at St. Cross Hospital^ I venture to ask th readers of ' N. & Q.' to help me. The lectern has eagle's claws webbed, cock's feathers in the wings, and eagle's body with parrot's beak and cock's head, the comb being in the shape of a heart.

A. E. HUDSON.

MACLEAY FAMILY. I shall be grateful f any of your readers can tell me of a history )f the Macleay family. A book was once >egun by a bearer of the name in New York, '. am told. Any information will be gladly 'eceived. (Miss) JANE REID.

9, Wilbury Road, Brighton.

LORD MACAULAY AND W. J. THOMS :

'THE DUNCIAD.' (10 S. xi. 165, 215, 293, 354.) SINCE my return to England, I have ooked up the " Grantiana " in my posses- sion, in the expectation of finding something rearing on this question, and I have not been disappointed. Col. Grant had preserved the correspondence in The Daily News, commencing with the issue for 29 Sept., 1885, in which Mr. Edgar Sanderson's letter appeared ; and it contains not only bis own reply, but a letter from Mr. Edward Solly, F.R.S*, whose name will be familiar to the older readers of * N. & Q.' as that of a writer whose knowledge of eighteenth-century literature was almost unparalleled. Mr. Solly stated that he had heard the story from Mr. Thorns himself ; but it is un- necessary to enter further into this corre- spondence, which included another in- temperate letter from Mr. Sanderson his contention being that Macaulay referred only to the complete work published in 1742, which contained no mention of Dryden as a few days afterwards (17 Oct., 1885) Mr. Solly published a full account of the whole occurrence in the columns of ' N. & Q.' (6 S. xii. 301), under the heading ' Pope and Dryden.' I am a little surprised that MR. FRANCIS, whose mind is steeped in the traditions of ' N. & Q.,' did not recollect this extremely valuable and interest- ing article. Mr. Solly returned to the subject in The Athenceum the following week (No. 3026, 24 Oct., 1885) in a lumin- ous bibliographical paper entitled ' Pope's Dunciad, 1728.'

Summarily the question stands thus. In the first three issues of the first edition, purporting to be " Dublin, Printed ; Lon- don, Reprinted, for A. Dodd," with the Owl frontispiece, 1. 94, Book I. runs

And furious D n foam in Wh 's rage. This was one of the enigmatical lines with which Pope delighted to throw dust into people's eyes, as D n might be taken to apply equally to a great poet, Dryden, or