Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/94

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. i. JAN. 20, 1910.

GENERAL IRETON' s DEATH. Two of our most recent and highest historical authorities give varying dates for the death of Crom- well's son-in-law.

Prof. Gardiner says :

" On November 7 [1651] Ireton died, a victim to the self-abnegation which refused to spare the body in the service of his country." ' History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,' vol. ii. p. 38.

Prof. Firth says :

" Immoderate labours and neglect of his own health produced their natural result, and after the capture of Limerick, Ireton caught the pre- vailing fever and died on 26 Nov., 1651." ' Dictionary of National Biography,' vol. xxix. p. 41.

For historic accuracy it may be useful to point out this discrepancy, so that the correct date may be inserted in any later issue. R. B.

Upton.

" FUNCTION," A CEREMONY. The mean- ing of " function " mentioned in the ' N.E.D.' under 5 b, "a public ceremony ; a social or festive meeting conducted with form and ceremony,'' and there ascribed tenta- tively to Spanish origin, I have come across lately in French, viz., the translation of Casanova's ' Memoirs,' Paris, Garnier Freres, tome iii. p. 148 : " II y a six mois .... que, me trouvant avec notre consul M. Smith, avec lequel j'avais ete voir je ne sais plus quelle f one t ion. . . ."

I have never seen the word so used in that language. G. KRUEGER.

Berlin.

T. L. PEACOCK'S ' ESSAY ON FASHIONABLE LITERATURE.' The position taken up by Thomas Love Peacock as regards his lite- rary contemporaries is well known to readers of his works. Every novel contains allu- sions to them ; but it is sometimes difficult to discover the various writers who are castigated, under different names, by his ridicule and sarcasm. Dr. Garnett and other critics have supplied Us with considerable help in this direction, and with their aid it is often an easy matter to unravel the veiled references to contemporary persons, fads, and prejudices which are so frequent in Peacock's tales that they might almost be said to constitute them. There is in existence, however, an unpublished essay which contains an expression of many of the views and ideas that are to be found in the novels. It is entitled ' An Essay on Fashionable Literature,' and is included in vol. 36815 of the manuscripts in the British

Museum. In a small compass many of Peacock's bugbears such as universities, parsons, Scotchmen, periodical literature, and the like are lucidly explained, and, since everybody and everything is men- tioned by name, the essay is invaluable as a commentary on its writer's novels.

One instance of this may be given. The criticism of The Quarterly Review and The Edinburgh, which began with his first novel, ' Headlong Hall, ? and ended with the last, ' Gryll Grange, l is here supplemented by remarks that remove all doubt as to his opinions and sentiments concerning these two journals.

The last part of the essay is singular. It contains a long defence of Coleridge's ' Christabel * and ' Kubla Khan,' and a bitter attack on Moore's adverse criticism of them in The Edinburgh Review, That Peacock should uphold the very poems he covered with ridicule in ' Nightmare Abbey ' is indeed surprising. On the other hand, his dislike to Moore is nothing new, since we know that a contribution of Peacock to The Westminster Review on 'The Epi- curean'- led Moore to publish in The Times the poem entitled ' The Ghost of Miltiades,' a censure of the editor, Sir John Bowring, for having inserted the article in his magazine. Moore afterwards at- tempted, as a result of this incident, to provoke Bowring to a duel, but the latter appears to have succeeded at last in pacifying him. A. B. YOUNG.

FAMILIES DYING OUT : AUSTIN. As with plants, some human families seem to have a limited initial stock of vitality, which gradually exhausts itself, and which the crossing at each generation does not fully restore ; but the falling below reproduction point often comes as an apparently sudden break. A striking instance of this may interest others, as it did me when I came upon it twenty years ago. Searching for the family of Cowper's Lady Austin (which I did not find), I found her husband's, as follows :

William Austin or Austen, of Heronden and Tenterden in Kent, had as eldest of ,six children Robert, created baronet 1660, who passed the title down through John, Robert 2nd, and Robert 3rd (eldest of five), all three living at Hall Place, Bexley. The last-named and his two brothers died without issue, two of them, 1743-54, and the title passed to a younger branch, a great -grandson of the first Robert by a second son, holding Tenterden ; who and