Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/119

 iu s. VIL FEB. 2, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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ierence. The idea was fanciful, and I should imagine unique ; but, whatever its origin whether deliberately entered upon or not the alternating movement, from long con- tinuance, became automatic when he took up his position at his accustomed place.

When the old stone bridge above referrec to was demolished, the historic " blew-stone,' as it or one like it was termed by Grey in his ' Chorographia,' as far back as 1649, found an appropriate resting-place with the Newcastle Antiquaries. On the new bridge, however, Tommy took up his wonted position. In an ordinary way he stood without speaking, unless a passer-by ad- dressed him, when he was by no means slow in retort. But occasionally, when his takings were very scanty, he lost his temper and poured out a steady stream of profanity on a hard-hearted world. This brought him now and again into the clutches of the police, who, however, were extremely indulgent towards the old mendicant, so long as they could reasonably be indulgent, and usually gave him the opportunity, by the slowness of their approach, of seeking sanctuary at the other side of the boundary, where their authority ceased.

By the death of Tommy-on-the-Bridge a familiar figure has passed out of the sight of Newcastle and Gateshead folks, and Tyne- siders, to whatever distant corner of the world they may have wandered, will feel the poorer for the knowledge that when they return home and recross the Tyne Bridge it will be to find that one of the old associa- tions that linked them with the days of their youth has vanished for ever.

JOHN OXBERRY. Gateshead.

After the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Thomas Habington, of Hindlip in the county of Worcester, a well-known sym- pathizer with the Catholics, was apprehended and condemned to death, but, almost at the last moment, pardoned upon the con- dition that he should never, during the rest of his life, leave the county of Worcester. He was then 46 years old, and lived to be 87, and during that long period he devoted his whole time to the accumulation of notes for a history of Worcestershire, which have recently been edited by Mr. John Amphlett, and published by the Worcestershire His- torical Society. 'When he came to Tarde- bigge he found that the county boundary passed through the church in such a way that the nave only was in Worcestershire, and therefore, although he " streached his

chayne to the vttermost leangthe," he could do no more than view the monuments in the chancel from a distance, for that part of the church was in Warwickshire.

BENJ. WALKER. Gravelly Hill, Erdington. COLERIDGE'S ' DEJECTION ' : A MIS- PUNCTUATION (10 S. vii. 45). The intrusive comma is omitted without editorial comment in the ' Poems of S. T. Coleridge ' which Messrs. Bell & Ualdy included in their Elzevir series of 1864. The late Mr. Thomas Ashe also rejected it in his Aldine Coleridge, published in two volumes in 1885. He punctuates thus :

Joy, Lady ! is the spirit and the power, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower

A new Earth and new Heaven, c. In a foot-note he indicates that he has made the alteration simply from a sense of fitness. " We have," he says, " removed a confusing comma : ' Joy, wedding Nature, gives us in dower a new earth,' &c." This gloss accords with one of the readings suggested by MR. SHAWCROSS, but it seems less satis- factory than his alternative arrangement of the clause. This, by the placing of commas after "which" and "us" respectively, shows that through the agency of Joy a union is effected between Nature and the human spirit, and this appears to be the poet's meaning. THOMAS BAYNE.

GENTLEMEN'S EVENING DRESS (10 S. vii. 48). See chap. iv. of ' Pelham.' Lady Frances, writing to her son, after recom- mending the wearing of flannel waistcoats as " very good for the complexion," observes "Apropos of the complexion : I did not like the jlue coat you wore when I last saw you ; you look >est in black which is a great compliment, for >eople must be very distinguished in appearance m )rder to do so."

In the ' Life of Lord Lytton,' his son, the first Earl, writes :

"One at least of the changes which the book Pelham ' is referred to here] effected m matters

>f dress has kept its ground to this day till then

oats worn for evening dress were of different olours, brown, green, or blue, according to the ancy of the wearer ; and Lord Orford tells me hat the adoption of the now invariable black dates rom the publication of ' Pelham.' All the contem- >oraries of Pelham would appear to have been simultaneously possessed with the idea that they, were entitled to take to themselves the great com pliment paid by Lady Frances to her son. ' Life vol. ii., p. 195. ' Pelham ' was published in 1827.

Capt. Jesse,* who! met Brummell at Caen in 1832, describes the Beau as " standing to his Whig colours to the last " :