Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/564

 464

NOTES AND QUERIES, no* s. in. JUNE 17, 1905.

to Lawrence, in which this passage occurs <' Prose Works,' vol. iii. p. 345) :

" Your ' Empire of the Nairs,' which I read this -spring, succeeded in making me a perfect convert ~to its doctrines."

The following passage, taken from Prof. Dowden's 'Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley,' speaks for itself (ed. 1886, vol. i. p. 286) :

"Among the strange books which Shelley had lately read was Sir James Lawrence's ' Empire of 'the Nairs,' which convinced him, if any doubts yet remained, that marriage is essentially an evil. Having borrowed through Hookham a copy of Lawrence's poem 'Love, an Allegory,' he wrote to the author, and, confessing that he had submitted for his wife's sake to the bondage of the marriage ceremony, added a graceful acknowledgment of his happiness: 'I am a young man not yet of age, and liave now been married a year to a woman younger than myself. Love seems inclined to stay in the (prison.'"

A. D.

TNCLEDON: COOKE. (See ante, p. 373.) It was not Charles Incledon, I believe, but George Frederick Copke, who was concerned in the incident at Bristol (as I heard my own father tell me nearly eighty years ago) not at Liverpool, as reported in ' Diet. Nat. Biog.,' vol. xii. p. 84, by J. K., whom in all cases I accept as a final authority in dramatic -criticisms and bibliography, supreme for accuracy and judgment. But he rightly doubts the originality of the speech, so far as Liverpool is accredited. The words came to me as "There is not a stone that was not cemented by the blood of a slave." The misquotation " blood of a nigger " is an un- pardonable inaccuracy and anachronism. A few days ago a journalist garbled and mis- applied to Dr. Samuel Johnson the century- earlier saying of Anthony Ashley Cooper on "the religion of all sensible men." The cheap press is full of such blunders.

J. W. E.

H. K. ST. J. S. diverges from the original subject, and asks for chapter and verse of an anecdote. As regards Bristol I am not -able to answer, but it is given in 'Liverpool a Few Years Since,' by an Old Stager (Liver- pool, 1852). Speaking about the players who performed in Liverpool, he continues :

" Cpoke, likewise, the predecessor of Kean in his peculiar line of character, often appeared upon the Liverpool boards. He was not famous for his sobriety, and one night, being hissed for his usual in, he rushed forward to the lights, and most unceremoniously told the audience that ' he was not there to be insulted by a set of wretches, every brick in whose infernal town was cemented by an African's blood.' This was a home thrust for our grandfathers."

J. H. K.

KEATS'S ' GRECIAN URN ' : THE HEIFER. It has been objected to Keats that, as a townsman unfamiliar with the ways of cattle, he misrepresents the attitude of the bellowing heifer described in the fourth stanza of the ' Ode on a Grecian Urn.' The poet, his critics complain, makes the animal raise its head unnaturally high, and thereby destroys the effect of his picture. This is the familiar passage : Who are these coming to the sacrifice ?

To what green altar, mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

Keats may, of course, have had a limited bucolic experience, but the touch that gives "silken flanks" is intimate and happy, and if the pose is in any respect amiss, it is made in the worthy company of Ovid, as, per- chance, the poet may have known. The por- tentous heifer vouchsafed for the guidance of Cadmus (' Metam.' III. i. 20) thus proclaims her affinity with the original that inspired Greek sculptor and English lyrist, and with all the herds that roam on a thousand hills : Bos stetit, et tollens spatiosam cornibus altis Ad coalum frontem, mugitibus impulit auras. THOMAS BAYNE.

LOCAL RECORDS. One of the most frequent things the inquirer especially the inquirer into pedigree or family history wants to know is the whereabouts of collections of documents relating to a given place. The available sources of reference are soon ex- hausted, and one can, of course, find refer- ences to isolated documents relating to a given parish in a hundred different places; but the most useful find is, as a rule, the dis- covery of a collection relating to the place in which one happens to be interested. I am trying to make a list of such collections con- cerning definite places as are in private hands, in public libraries, and elsewhere, and would invite readers to send to me direct notes of any within their knowledge. It may be useful to mention that I possess myself small collections of original deeds and other papers relating to the following places in Somersetshire :

Bath, 1762-1810; Blagdon, 1752-1806; Bris- lington, 1655-1820; Burnham, 1674-1738; Cad- bury, 1625-1818 : Camerton, 1684-1808 ; Chel- wood, 17081813; Chew Magna, 1665-1835; Chew Stoke, 1692 1832; Compton Dando,1623- 1811 ; Compton Martin, 1796-1801 ; Doulting, 1713-1804; Dundry, 1632-1808; Farmborough, 1781-1815; Goathurst, 1728-1809; Harptree, East and West, 1778-1805; High Littleton, 1793-1802; Keynsham, 1613-1832; Kingston Seymour, 1713 - 1809 ; Lopen, 1777 - 1816 ;