Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/354

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. xn. OCT. 9, im

LAST DUEL WITH SWORDS IN

ENGLAND. (10 S. xii. 227.)

THE following are taken from ' The Field of Honor : being A Complete and Com- prehensive History of Duelling in all Countries,' by Major Ben C. Truman (New York, 1884) :

" On the 2d of February, 1773, the Earl of Bella- mont and Lord Townshend fought at Marylehone Fields, near London. They went to the grounds armed with swords and pistols, but upon their arrival it was decided by their seconds (Hon. Mr. Dille for Bellamont and Lord Ligonier for Towns- hend) that they should fight with the latter weapons, and the Earl was dangerously wounded at the first fire," P, 254.

"On the 17th of November, 1778, at Bath (England) Count Rice and Viscount du Barry quarrelled Early the following day the prin- cipals met according to agreement, accompanied by seconds and a surgeon, provided with pistols

and swords Viscount du Barry fired first and

lodged his bullet in Bice's thigh, the ball from the Count's weapon taking effect in Du Barry's breast ; at the second shot they both fired together but their pistols ' flashed in the pan.' They then threw away their pistols and advanced toward each other with their drawn swords, 1 when all of a sudden, Du Barry fell, saying : ' Je vous demand [sic] ma vie ' (I ask you for my life) ; to which Rice replied : ' Je vous la donne ' (1 give it to you) ; and in a few seconds Du Barry expired." P. 197.

"In England in 1790, two physicians, named Mead and Woodward, met in combat with swords, and after a while Woodward, while attempting a deadly lunge, slipped and fell. Mead at once had his antagonist in his power, and exclaimed, ' Take your life ; I do not want it ' : To which the prostrate Woodward replied, 'I'll take anything but your medicine ; I can't take that.'" P. 533.

" In 1809, in England, Viscount Falkland and A. Powell, with swords, the former was mortally wounded." P. 252.

" In 1823, in England, near Kew Bridge, General Pepe and General Caraseosa ; they fought with swords, and Caraseosa was severely wounded in the right shoulder." P. 231.

I give these extracts for what they are worth. I doubt their being very precise.

As to the Bellamont-Townshend duel, according to The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xliii. p. 99, " they were armed with small swords, and a case of pistols, but it was agreed to use the latter first." The Hon. Mr. Dillon (not Dille) was Lord Bella- mont 's second.

As to the duel at Bath, both The Gentle- man's Magazine' and W. Toone's ' Chrono- logical Historian ' have Count du Barre, not Viscount Barry.

As to the Mead- Woodward duel, the date is probably wrong. In J. P. Malcolm's ' Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century,' 2nd ed., 1810, i. 261, is the following :

' Doctors Mead and Woodward fought like a pair of butchers, in June, 1719, at the very gates of Gresham - college. "

Toone gives 28 Feb., 1809, as the date of the Falkland-Powell duel, but neither he nor The Gentleman's Magazine mentions the weapons used. Toone, i. 184, says that " Duelling with small swords was first introduced into England " in 1588.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

LAURENCE THE WIT (10 S. xi. 309, 355). SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN'S remark at the second reference that Macaulay regarded Dr. French Laurence as the second-best of the writers in ' The Rolliad ' sent me to my shelves in search of that book. Nowa- days it has perhaps lost its interest, and I can imagine that the present generation might consider its humour to be rather rococo and old-fashioned. Political satire in the days of our great-grandfathers was written by classical scholars, and the con- tributors to ' The Rolliad ' were masters of an admirable English style, if not quite that of the twentieth century. Amongst those writers Laurence took a foremost place, and he seems to have been responsible for the general make-up of the book. He wrote not only the dedication and other prefatory matter, but several of the " Criti- cisms," " Odes," and " Epigrams." It may be remembered that in the first series of ' N. & Q.' several valuable articles were communicated by various writers, giving the names of the contributors to ' The Rolliad.' The most authoritative of these articles was that in which the late SIR WALTER CALVERLEY TREVELYAN gave the names of the writers from a copy of ' The Rolliad ' that belonged to Laurence (1 S. ii. 373), or as was stated later, " certified by the initial of Dr. Laurence, from whose copy all of them were taken by the individual who gave me the volume " (1 S. iii. 129). This copy is presumably still at Wallington, and it may not improbably have been perused by Macaulay.

In 'The Poetical Register' for 1808-29, published in 1812, are two epigrams trans- lated from the Greek, and signed with a couple of reversed daggers, thus f-j-. My copy of that work was originally in tho possession of Mary Russell Mitford, whe