Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/529

 10 s. XIL NOV. 27, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

437

saucer. If the term " dish " has any par- ticular reference to the shallow vessel, it is to the bowl. In Chambers' s ' Book of Days,'- i. 172, is an engraved representation of a coffee-house temp. Charles II. Five persons, one of them smoking, and evidently, from their dresses, of different ranks in life are seated at the table, on which are small basins, without saucers, and tobacco pipes, while a waiter is engaged in serving coffee.

Coffee -drinking was ridiculed at first, and it was said :

A little dish, and a large coffee house. What is it but a mountain and a mouse ?

TOM JONES.

From Mr. H. S. Solly's ' Life of Henry Morley, LL.D.,' it appears that the expres- sion " dish of tea "- was used by Dickens, as is evident from the following passage : " Dickens had lately bought Tavistock House, and Mr. Morley went there early in December for ' a dish of tea,' which he found meant a pleasant evening party."

I may add that in the Netherlands it is still a custom to invite one's friends " een kopje thee to komen drinken " (to come and have a cup of tea) when one wishes them to come and spend the evening, the reason being that the Dutch always have a cup of tea in the early part of the evening, some time after dinner. J. F. BENSE.

Arnhem.

4 THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM * : " LAPP'D IN LEAD " (10 S. xii. 346). Woodcuts in Raine's ' Auckland Castle,' 1852, p. 44, and in Stanley's ' Westminster/ Supple- ment, 1869, p. 152, seem to show bodies laid on sheets of lead, with upper sheets of lead laid over them and shaped to their forms so as to show their general con- figuration, and, lastly, soldered on to the lower sheets. This process may have been described as " lapping in lead." J. T. F.

Durham.

Perhaps W. A. C.'s reference to drawings is to the " Drawing by George Scharf, Esq.," which is reproduced in Dean Stan- ley's ' Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey/ 3rd ed., 1869, facing p. 681 (in the Appendix). It represents the interior of the vault of Henry VII., and the coffins of James I., Elizabeth of York, and Henry VII., " as seen on the opening of the vault in 1869." At first sight these coffins (in the drawing) might be taken for lappings in lead : " The leaden coffins of all three sovereigns, which were all in good con- dition, were slightly shaped to the head and

shoulders, and straight downward." (They have something like the shape of Egyptian mummies.) That of James I. " was sur- rounded with the remains of a wooden case.'' As to the others, " these two coffins were bare lead, the wooden casing, even that underneath, being wholly removed."

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

The following passage from Spenser's ' Shepheard's Calendar * may prove ex- planatory of this custom :

But ah ! Maecenas is yclad in claye, And great Augustus long ygoe is dead, And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,

That matter made for poets on to playe ; For ever, who in derring-doe were dread, The loftie verse of hem was loved aye.

.ZEglogue, x. 61 ff.

This custom of wrapping the bodies in lead was not unusual in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A former Vicar of Easton Maudit, co. Northampton, told me that he had seen in the vault of the Yelverton family in that church bodies thus buried in leaden shapes.

In the ballad of ' Lord Soulis,' by John Leyden, in the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' we read :

They roll'd him up in a sheet of lead,

A sheet of lead for a funeral pall ; They plunged him in the cauldron red, And melted him, lead and bones and all.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

Apparently it is to the practice mentioned by W. A. C. which would seem to have been a familiar one in his day that Spenser refers in * The Shepherd's Calendar. *

In June, concerning Tityrus, Colin Clout wails :

Now dead he is, and wrapt in lead ; in October he states that

All the worthies liggen wrapt in lead ; while in November he laments :

Dido, my dear, alas ! is dead, Dead, and lieth wrapt in lead.

New York City.

M. C. L.

J. M. W. TURNER : PORTRAIT (10 S. xii. 209). Through the courtesy of the Editor, I have seen a photograph of this portrait, but I cannot see the faintest resemblance to Turner, and other people to whom I have shown it endorse my opinion. I do not know who are the relatives in whose posses- sion the portrait is said to be.

C. M. W. TURNER.

22, Dawson Place, W.