Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/585

. ii. DEC. 17, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

481

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 190k.

CONTENTS.-No. 51.

NOTBS : British Mezzotinters, 481' Martine Mar-Sixtus ' and Robert Greene, 483 " Licence " and "License," 484 Thomas Hobbes "Sir John I'Anson, Bart." Major Mohun, the Actor Coliseums Old and New, 485.

QUERIES :-Dr. Burchell's Diary and Collections, 486 Charles Qodwyn and Baskology "To have a month's m ind " Ingram and Lingen Families "See how the grand old forest dies " Unrestored Churches Patrick Bell, Laird of Autermony Bishop of Man Imprisoned Bankrupts in 1708-9, 487 Kant's Descent School Slates Parody of Burns " He saw a world " Chaplin Copy- ing Press Hamlet Watling, 488 Bulwer Lytton's Novels Herbert Knowles.

RBPLIES -.Bears and Boars in Britain, 489 Rev. William Hill' Steer to the Nor'-Nor'-West ' Heraldry H in Cockney, 490" Fortune favours fools " Flying Bridge Ludovico, 491 Galileo Portrait Prescriptions Governor Stephenson of iJeugal ' Tracts for the Times ' Philip d'Auvergne Mrs. Arkwright's Setting of 'The Pirate's Farewell,' 492 The Tenth Sheaf Holborn " Propale " 44 Hand"' The Death of Nelson' Poem by H. F. Lyte Alexander and R. Kdgar, 493 Women Voters in Counties and Boroughs Duchess Sarah Denny Family "Cha- racter is fate" Markham's Spelling-Book, 494 "Stob" Cricklewood Gwillim's 'Display of Heraldrie' "Mocassin," 495 Brewer's 'Lovesick King' London Cemeteries in 1860 Paragraph Mark Countess of Car- bery Sarum Genealogy in Dumas Louis XIV.'s Heart, 496-Pelican Myth, 497.

NOTBS ON BOOKS : Hudson's 'Memorials of a Warwick- shire Parish' The "Favourite Classics" Shakespeare 4 The Cathedral Church of St. Asaph.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

BRITISH MEZZOTINTERS. THE extraordinary revival of public interest in the works of the great school of British mezzotinters, as shown by the enormous prices now paid for choice examples, not less than the frequent exhibitions of engraving and the appearance of numerous volumes on the subject, might have suggested to editors and supervisors of books of reference the expediency of revising the articles on en- gravers in the light of present-day know- ledge. Some of the articles in the 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' are excellent, and all are useful for the lists of the engravers' works, but one misses the names of craftsmen like John Dean, David Lucas, Charles Wilkin, and the stip- pler John Summerfield. In a " revised and enlarged " edition of another well-known dictionary the articles on the mezzotinters, so far as I have examined them, are merely reproductions of those in the old editions published generations ago, although we were assured that the " old Biographies would be Rewritten, and upwards of 3,000 Corrections and Alterations in Dates, Names, Attribu- tions, &c., rendered necessary by the researches <of the last twenty years t would be introduced." There is no evidence of any such revision.

The "staff of specialists" have not even troubled to refer to the 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' To cite a very few instances. Dean is stated to have " scraped several plates of portraits and other subjects in a very respectable style " criticism which is reminiscent of Jeremy Collier on Shakspeare. Dixon "died in London in 1780," but we are not favoured with a list of his works. Of Dunkarton, one of Turner's chosen mezzotinters, nothing particular is said, except that he was born "in 1744,'' and ceased to publish after 1811. On comparing the articles s.vv. Brooks and McArdell, we learn that McArdell " was born

about the year 1710 was apprenticed to

James [sic] Brooks, and both went from Dublin to London about 1727." McArdell, as very obvious sources of information show, was born in 1728 or 1729, and accompanied John Brooks to London in 1746 or 1747. The articles on the Droeshouts, the line-en- gravers, are suffered to remain in their original triviality, although the researches of the late Mr. W. J. C. Moens have added much to our knowledge (see 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' and Mr. Lionel Gust's paper in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Second Series, xvi. 45). In ' Valentine Green ' we are again confronted with the erroneous statements about his birthplace and the "obscure line-engraver" his master; while in 'George Keating' we are not taken any further than the year 1799, though in the 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' he is accounted for until the time of his death in 1842. As with the engravers, so with the smaller painters. In quoting from this dic- tionary I am aware of the risk, as the pub- lishers in a " caution " addressed to the Athenaeum for 26 December, 1903 (p. 865), warned all and sundry against presuming to extract the nuggets contained in this mine of research. Appended are a few notes on some of the engravers named.

John Dean exhibited five works with the Society of Artists and six works at the Royal Academy during the years 1777-91. At the Latter institution he showed his interesting painting (which he afterwards mezzotinted) of 'A Journey to the Watch-house' (1790), and the companion pictures (also mezzotinted by him) of 'A Good Mother' and 'Dutiful Children ' (1791). Excepting for a brief stay at Epsom in 1784, he seems to have passed most of his days in Soho, first in Church Street, next at 27, Berwick Street, then at 12, Bentinck Street, from which he was burnt out between 1 September, 1790, and 1 October, 1791. On the last-named date two of his prints were published by M. A. Dean (pro- 3ably his wife) at 138, High Holborn. He