Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/277

 10 S. VII. MARCH 23, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES,

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Huth Library has but one portrait, " sitting at her study, under a canopy " ; and only this plate occurred in the Sykes Sale, lot 913, bought by Grove at 11. 12s.

Bulstrodus Whitelock [64]. "Gay wood sc., 51.5s. Hulsbergh sc., I/. 1*. Bulstrode Whitelock by Gaywood is scarcer than any other print of him, though Faithorne's sells for 8A or 10/. Gaywood's is not so line a Print, which probably is the reason it does not bring an eqxial price, many col- lectors contenting themselves with one Print of a person. I do not remember Hulsbergh's print in !Svo, but think it must be worth II. Is. ; the folio one by him, copied from Faithorne's, is worth 21. 2*."

A copy of Faithorne's print occurred in the Sykes Sale, lot 1297, " from the collection of Mr. Allen," and was bought by " Clarke " for 19Z. 19s. This is the print reproduced by Richardson, 1 Feb., 1800.

ALECK ABRAHAMS. 39, Hillmarton Road, N.

(To be continued.)

I can remember seeing in a volume of The Universal Magazine, of perhaps 120 years ago a whole-page engraving represent- ing ' Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Ports- mouth, in an Undress.' Perhaps this was reduced from a larger engraving. It de- picted a very handsome woman, seated with a fan in her hand.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

PACOLET. Pacolet is the name Steele gives in The Tatler to a familiar spirit. Isaac Bickerstaff sees a " venerable gentle- man " sitting on a bench in Lincoln's Inn Fields, who declares himself to be a guardian angel. " Mr. Pacolet " the name occurs only once explains his knowledge of human nature by the statement that he had been born the heir of one of the wealthiest families in Great Britain, but was accidentally drowned at the age of one month. This familiar appears in only three numbers of The Tatler, namely, 13, 14, 15 (10, 12, and 14 May, 1709). Exactly where Steele got the name from does not appear, but he was not the inventor of it. Prof. Victor Chauvin, of the University of Liege, contributed an interesting note on ' Pacolet et les Mille et une Nuits ' to Wallonia for Jan.-Fev., 1898. In a French ' Valentine et Orson ' the name of Pacolet is given to an adept in magic art who constructs a wooden horse worked by a plug or pin in its head. This horse of Pacolet is coupled with that of Pegasus by Rabelais in a passage in ' Panta- gruel ' (liv. ii. c. xxiv.). Prof. Chauvin follows this quotation by citations from

Marot, Cyrano de Bergerac, Madame de Sevigne, and other French writers. At a later date pacolet came to mean a talisman. The clever dwarf of the marionette theatre of Liege a generation ago retained the cha- racteristics of Pacolet the magician. But he was generally identified with the little devil diablotin in the service of a sorcerer.

Pacolet is a French word not admitted to. the ' Dictionnaire ' of the Academy, but synonymous with cheville. Hence it is- suggested that cheval a pacolet has been transformed into cheval de pacolet, and thence into cheval de Pacolet, thus giving the magic horse a magician rider.

Prof. Chauvin thinks that the story of Pacolet may be linked by the ' Cleomades ' of Adenet-le-Roi and the ' Meliacin ' of Girard d' Amiens, probably through a Spanish source, with the episode of the magic horse to be found in more than one form in different editions of ' The Thousand and One Nights.'

Evidently Steele's " Mr. Pacolet " can claim a pedigree as long, and perhaps as veracious, as some of those to be found in Burke. WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

BERWICK LAW. Recent historians of Scottish literature, fired with zeal for a ready-made theory, have striven to show that the record of their country's poetry ends with the work of Robert Burns. The impartial student may, however, find pro- ducts of a somewhat later date not unworthy of consideration. There is, for instance, a notable achievement to be set to the credit of Robert Tannahill (1774-1810), a hand- loom weaver, whose mastery of lyrical form is at once genuine and distinctive. Four or five of his songs some of them, perhaps, indebted to their musical setting by the author's friend R. A. Smith have had a steady popularity in Scotland, and they fully deserve a wider recognition. As it is possible that the English reader may come upon the standard edition of Tannahill' s- poems, edited by David Semple, it may be well to draw attention to a note on the song ' Wreck on Gloomy Isle of May,' which occurs at p. 278 of the volume. The poet represents a forlorn damsel giving voice to her sorrow over the shipwreck by which she has been for ever bereft of her lover. The picture is in some respects the converse of that which is given in Burns' s " Go, fetch to me a pint of wine," and the Firth of Forth, with Berwick Law overlooking it, is the scene of both lyrics. Tannahill's desolate maiden, thus opens her lament :