Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/73

 10 s. VIL JAN. 19, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

57

TBlessid Lady, whose ymage is honorde and worshept in the Whyte Freeres of Doncaster," &c. See further The Antiquary, February, 1895, p. 64, ' A Miracle at Doncaster,' where a full account of what happened is given.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

[A. C. H. also thanked for reply.]

ELEANOR OF CASTILE: HER TOMB (10 S. vii. 8). The late Mr. William Burges, R.A.,
 * says of this effigy :

" On examining the statue we discover the same -conventionalities as we see in that of Henry III. Thus, the line of the lower eyelid is straight, the .alse of the nose are small (the nose in this instance is straight) ; there is not much drawing in the mouth, but the middle line goes down a little at either end, and the hair flows down the back in very strong wavy lines. Now Eleanor at the time of her death was over forty years of age, and had .had several children ; it is therefore most im- probable that this can be a portrait-statue, and, to a certain degree, we are the gainers; for however curious it would have been to have seen the real likenesses of Henry III. and of Eleanor, it is still more so to have the ideal beauty of one of the brass.
 * great periods of art handed down to us in enduring

Mr. W. J. Loftie's comment on this ('West- .minster Abbey,' 1890, p. 33) is as follows : " If the beautiful Eleanor of Castile was not like the marvellous figure on her tomb, she cannot at least have been very different. As to her father-in-law, Henry III., perhaps, as all contemporary accounts make him an ugly little man, with a squint, the portrait may be flattered ; but that it is more or less a portrait, however much idealized, would seem certain, if only because of the way in which the features answer to what we know was the character of the king."

In this connexion it may be worth re- membering that Edward I. caused a con- ventional head to be placed upon his coins a type which persisted, with little change,

.-from 1279 until 1504, when Henry VII. had

.his own portrait in profile stamped upon his

shilling.

Of the other kings and queens in the Con- e's Chapel, Edward I. and Henry V. course have no effigies ; that of Ed- rdlll. " is remarkable as having connected with it the tradition that the features have been cast from a mould taken after death " ; that of his queen, Philippa, " is probably,"

-says Mr. Burges, " the first one in West- minster Abbey which has any claims to be

'Considered a portrait " ; while that of Richard II. (with his first wife, Anne of Bohemia), was made in the king's lifetime, and may be compared both with his great portrait in the Abbey and with the earlier portrait of Richard and his three patron saints, kneeling before the Madonna and

'Child, at Wilton. A. R. BAYLEY.

CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI : JEREMIAH CURTLNT (10 S. vii. 6). In November, 1899, 1 arrived at Burg im Spreewald, in order to pick up a little Wendish, which is well spoken there. I met in the inn Dr. G. J. J. Sauerwein, who had done much work for the British and Foreign Bible Society and for diverse libraries in Germany, where he was uni- versally known as " the German Mezzo- fanti." Himself descended from a long line of Lutheran pastors in the kingdom of Hanover, he introduced me to the Lutheran rector of Burg, who presented me with some books in the curious old Slavonic tongue in which I had heard him preach in a church which, like those of French Bask- land, has galleries for the men, while the women occupy the parterre. He persuaded me to prolong my stay there ; so that I was able to converse with him for two days. It was difficult, owing to his excessive modesty (which accounts for the fact that, out of his many publications, only five are recorded in the Catalogue of the British Museum), to find out how many languages he knew ; but they must have been more thanahundred, though he did not know them all equally well. He had even learned a certain amount of Heuskara, and in many letters encouraged me in my pursuit of that unjustly neglected language. When he died in Norway about two years ago, the newspapers of Christiania, where he passed some days withfme in 1903, published many accounts of him. He was buried in Kant's city of Konigsberg. EDWARD S. DODGSON.

MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS : ST. FAITH (10 S. vi. 225). With reference to W. E. B.'s query, the following may be of interest. The parish church of Overbury, Worcester- shire, is dedicated to St. Faith. In the ' Register of Worcester Priory, A.D. 1240,' published by the Camden Society (pp. 76b and 77b), in an account of a dispute respect- ing the advowson of Berrow, it is stated that a certain Robert " recognovit et concessit Deo et ecclesiae Sanctse Fidis de Uverbir' prsedictam capellam de la Bereg." From this it would appear that the saint's name in Latin was of the third declension, the genitive case being " Fidis," and the nomi- native, presumably, " Fides."

T. GLYNN.

S.P.Q.R. (10 S. vi. 467). This legend, slightly altered to S.P.Q.A., is very much in evidence at Antwerp. A popular inter- pretation is the inhospitable sentiment, " Sortez, polisson ; quittez Anvers."

FRANCIS P. MARCHANT.