Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/218

 178

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. v. MABCH 3, i<m

in hand. A foot-note on the same page says: "See a particular account of the strange ceremony of swearing on the pea- cock in M. de Sainte Palaye's 'Memoires sur TAncienne Chevalerie.' "

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

GHOST STOP.Y IN DICKENS (10 th S. v. 149). MR. R. LUCAS will find what he wants in of the haunted set of chambers. C. W. B. [Other correspondents also thanked for replies.]
 * Pickwick,' chap, xxi., in the old man's story

PORTMAN FAMILY (10 th S. y. 48, 150). I would add in relation to this family, the chiefs of which I have enumerated ante, p. 150, that a handsome pedigree, with en- graved arms and quarterings, is found in the 1861 edition of Hutchins's * Dorsetshire,' i. 253. A general account of the family is also supplied, and in addition the history of Bryanston, the Dorsetshire estate acquired by Sir William Portman, sixth Baronet, shortly before his death in 1690. He was the last Portman who resided habitually at Orchard Portman. W. L. BUTTON.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Visitation of England and Wales. Edited by Frede- rick Arthur Crisp. Vol. XII. (Privately printed.) THE eighteenth century was a period when special contempt was poured out on genealogical studies. This was a barbarism, no doubt, but there was some excuse for it. Pride of family reached its climax in a time when some of the most worthless of men were unquestionably of noble race, as heralds reckoned nobility ; so it came to pass that nearly every man of letters, except professed antiquaries, who in any way came in touch with the subject sneered contemptuously. The spider of pride was thought to lurk somehow in a family pedigree. The heralds had ceased to make their visitations, and so new families were not recorded unless they were fortunate enough to be adorned with a title. This made the dis- tinction between one class and another more marked than it had ever been before, and is one reason, though by no means the chief one, why in many cases it is more difficult to work out a family genealogy during the years between the accession of George I. and the death of George III. than in earlier times. As in so much else, Sir Walter tScott led the way ; much of the love of pedigree lore which abounds at the present day may be traced to Abbotsford. We owe much also to America, where it has long been a favourite study ; and our cousins across the Atlantic have strong claims to be the discoverers of the important fact that an accurate family genealogy is not only an important historical document, but also one of scientific value which it is not easy to overrate.

Mr. Crisp appreciates the value of this study from a far wider point of view than most of his contemporaries seem able to do. His twelfth

volume is now before us. We have had great pleasure in noticing several of the previous volumes of the series. The present seems to make a distinct advance on its forerunners. Unless we are much mistaken, the information is fuller, and at times even more definite ; indeed, we have never pre- viously met with a book where the evidences of race are given with such completeness or in such well-ordered sequence. Following the example of some of the compilers of the Heralds' Visitations, Mr. Crisp in these pedigrees deals generally with comparatively recent facts. We do not think any of the pedigrees go further back than the accession of George II. This is an advantage not to be de- spised. The pedigrees of more remote times, when they can be demonstrated at all, depend on docu- mentary evidence ; those of modern days in great part on the memories of persons now or recently living. Were their knowledge not recorded and put into tabular shape, much important evidence would certainly perish.

This issue contains in all thirty-nine families, nine of which are of peers and one a baronet. By far the most interesting to many persons will be that of "Gordon of Khartoum." His earliest ancestor in Mr. Crisp's record is a certain Capt. Gordon, who was taken prisoner by Prince Charles's army at the battle of Preston Pans, and for whose son William Augustus Gordon the Duke of Cumberland stood godfather. Several other of these pedigrees' are of more than common interest that of Shirley, for example, a junior branch, as we believe, of the Shirleys of Eatington, which produced the dis- tinguished scholar Walter Waddington Shirley. The pedigree of Lord Avebury's family is evidently compiled with great care. On his mother's side his lordship is descended from Sir John Hotham, the Governor of Hull who at the beginning of the Civil War refused to open the town gates to admib Charles I.

The volume, like its predecessors, is enriched with portraits and armorial engravings.

As Dai-id and the Sibyls Say : a Sketch of the Sibyl* and the Sibylline Oracles. By Mariana Monteiro. (Sands Co.)

THE task here accomplished was, the author ex- pressly tells us, "initiated and projected" by the late Very Rev. Alfred Canon White, and carried out at his request. We all of us know the line in the 'Dies Irre.'

Teste David cum Sibylla ;

most of us have heard of Amalthea, the Cum rear* Sibyl, and her sale to Tarquin of the three books out of nine ; while a few have read of the Erythraean Sibyl of Plato and the ten Sibyls of Varro. Ac- cording to the mediaeval monks, there were twelve Sibyls, and it is with them that Miss Monteiro concerns herself in a volume printed and published at her own expense. Illustrations supplied to a folio volume, ' Sibyllarum Duodecim : Les Oracles des douze^Sibyls,' 1586, have been reproduced, pre- sumably in a reduced sizs, as have been other illus- trations designed by Canon White. These are strik- ing, supply naturally the emblems of the various Sibyls, and add greatly to the value and interest of the volume. It is from the religious standpoint that the work is intended to appeal. It is a little embarrassing to the profane reader to hear of the Sibilla Phrigia, a daughter of Dardanus, said to be the son of Jupiter, who writes in 2996 B.C. of the