Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/271

. SKPT. IB, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 221 LONDON, SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 1C. 1905. CONTENTS.-No. 90. NOTES :-Coniul Smith and his Will, 221—A Seventeenth- Century Library, 222 —Greene's Prose Works, 224 — Dekker's 'Gull's Hornbook'—Chasseur—Isaac Johnson, of Massachusetts, 227 —'The First Barring' —Cypri- pedlum—Hurstmonceaux Castle, 228. QUBRIES :—' The Battel of the Catts '—French Revolution Potrery, M8 —Brougham Castle —Icelandic Dictionary- Gibbets—" O ! for a booke "—Spanish Verse—Cumbermere Abl>ey—Lodge, Ulster King of Arms—American Civil War Verses, 229—Sir Francis Drake and Chlgwell Row—Dudley Arms—NapperTandy—Shakespeare ' Profession of Faith ' —The Genealogicalhoclety of Great Britain—'Tom Moore of Fleet Street'—Dummer Faintly—Female Cruclllxes, 330. RHPLIES : — Premonstratenslan Abbeys, 231 — " Jiggery- pokery" — " Hickery-puckery" — Gvtha, Mother of Harol.l II., 23S—Oscar Wilde a ' De Protundis'—Chim- ney-Stacks—"Academy of the Muses," 233-Abstemitis In yEiop's Fables—Moon and Hair-cuiting—Pictures from •Romeo and Juliet'—George Buchanan. 234—Rev. Wil- liam Hill—Kobertson of Struan—War Office In Fiction— Benbow—Original Keglsters Sought—Garloaldl, 235— Shepherd's Bush —George III.'s Daughters—The Alms men, Westminster Abbey, 23«—Authors of Quotations Wanted—Izard — Darwinian Chain of Argument, 237— Spanish Lady's Love for an Englishman—Cricket: Flo- tores and Bngravings, 238. HOTBS ON BOOKS:-Plait's 'Byways in the Classics'— Penny's ' Church in Madras'—' Hannah Logan's Court- ship '—' Punctuation.' Notices to Correspondents. CONSUL SMITH AND HIS WILL. JOSEPH, son of William Smith, was British Consul in Venice from 1740 to 1760. He was born probably in 1674, not in 1682, the date given in the ' Dictionary of National Bio- graphy,' for the ecclesiastical and the civil registers of his death declare him to have been ninety-six, or "about" ninety-six, at the time of his decease in 1770. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing to Lady Bute on 10 October, 1758, says that Smith was then eighty-two, which would make him ninety-four when he died. He was a distinguished connoisseur, and spent forty years and upwards in carefully forming his collections. He possessed a gallery of pictures, the more important being works by Canaletto and Sebastiano ilicci; the latter he caused to be _engraved by Liotard, of Geneva; his cabinet of gems was edited by Anton Francesco Gori, of Florence, in a volume entitled ' Museum Smithianum'; he supplied the capital for and drew the profits from the firm of printer- publishers " Giambattista Pasquali," a busi- ness in which he was interested for twenty- four years ; but, above all, his books formed the nucleus of what is now known as "the King's Library " at the British Museum. In his will, dated 5 April, 1761, he refers to negotiations for the sale of his collection to King George III. Consul Smith lived for fifty years in Venice and its neighbourhood. He was at first apprenticed to Mr. Thomas Williams, his predecessor in the consulate. Williams failed, apparently through some fault of Joseph Smith, which weighed upon his conscience and induced him to insert a clause in his will endeavouring to make amends. At Mogliano, halfway between Mestre and Treviso, Smith owned a house and garden of a campo and a half, as appears from the return of his property which he made on 27 September, 1739 (Archivio di Stato, Venice, Dieci Savii sopra le Decime a Rialto, Sez. II. Uondizioni di Decima, 320, B. I. 308). At Mogliano lie kept five menservants : Paulo Cam pel li his butler, a coachman, a postilion, Antonio Pasqualati, and Santo, the help in the garden. In Venice he lived in a house which he rented from the noble Lady Elena Balbi, for which he paid 270 ducats current per annum ; and he also occupied another house next it belonging to Signor Andrea Calichiopoli and his wife, for which he paid 90 ducats per annum (Dieci Savii sopra Je Decime, Estimo, 1740). Both houses were in the parish of SS. Apostoli in the Calle and Corte del Dragan, close to the Palazzo Michiel. The Balbi house faced the Grand Canal, the Calichiopoli house came behind it up the Calle. Smith was thus, in 1740, pay- ing 360 ducats current for rent; as the ducato corrente was the ducat of lire 6'4 (see Gallic- ciolli, 'Delle Memorie Venete,' s.v. ' Ducato'), and taking that as equivalent to five shillings, his annual rent comes out as 901. sterling, a considerable sum for rent in Venice, but no doubt he required space for the housing of his collections. But 1740 was the year when Smith became Consul, and on the strength of his promotion he proceeded to buv the Balbi house on 20 April of that year. He made a return (Dieci Savii sopra le Decime, Sez. II. Condizioni di Decima, 1740, 322, B. I. 310) of this purchase, declaring that the house was in a bad condition, part of it threatening to come down, so that he was obliged to undertake a general restoration and to re- build in part. In this declaration he promises, when the work is finished, to inform the Revenue officers whether he intends to let or to retain for his own use. He did retain the house, and in it he died. It is the house he refers to in his will as having been " built" by himself. It is now called the Palazzo Valmarana-