Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/459

 11 S. X. DEC. 5, 1914.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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and a pension of 600Z. a year for two lives (see Treasury Letters). He is reported to have been imprisoned at the outbreak of war. His brother John Skottowe, who died in 1786, and is also buried at Chesham, was Governor of St. Helena, and his son, who died in 1820, appears to have disposed of the Buckinghamshire property. I doubt if the family, which was early connected with Norwich, had any connexion with Skottowe Hall. If still in existence, they appear to have parted with all the old landed possessions in Bucks, Norfolk, and York- shire. J. P. Norwich.

Thomas Skottowe was Secretary of State to South Carolina 1762-75. A copy of George III.'s order for his appointment is in the British Museum, Additions, MS. He is described in his will as the fourth son of Thomas Skottowe of Great Ayton, Cleveland. The Skottowes held Little Melton Hall, near Norwich, from the days of Elizabeth to 1745. Early in the eighteenth century they in- herited large estates in Northumberland, Durham, Yorks, and Bucks, including Great Ayton and Chesham. There is no evidence of connexion with Scottow Hall or Scottowe village, unless it can be proved that they were descended from the De Skothowes, who owned the estate till 1279.

Thomas Skottowe left seven sons and one daughter. He is buried in the family vault in Chesham Church, where there is a tablet with inscription. His will is at Somerset House. B. C. S.

JANE AUSTEN AND COLUMELLA (11 S. x. 388, 409). I have the following notes on ' Columella : the Distressed Anchoret,' which may furnish some additions to the account given by MR. HUMPHREYS :

Cornelius Milward, alias Columella, in- herits, when young, a small estate and a competency. Being of a quiet, retiring, romantic disposition, he resolves to pass his life in rural solitude, and adopts no pro- fession. But in the quiet of his country home he becomes nervous and irritable, and sinks into vice from sheer boredom. Eventually he marries his housekeeper, and lives a martyr to gout and spleen, with no amusements than the education of his children and the theological controversies of his neighbours a parson, a Papist, and a Methodist. With him are contrasted his two college friends, Atkins, alias Atticus, and Horton, alias Hortensius. They both take up professions, at which they labour until

they have acquired comfortable fortunes ; they then marry beautiful young ladies of their own rank,' and settle down in the country to the occupations of husbands,, fathers, and magistrates.

It is most appropriate that this book should be quoted in ' Sense and Sensibility/ as it carries even to excess Elinor Dash- wood's distrust of romance and belief that everybody ought to be like everybody else- The moral is that every young man ought to work hard at some profession in order to keep himself out of mischief, and that every middle-aged man ought to retire and marry. The author regards work merely as useful to the individual, for he sneers at the physician who, when he might retire, con- tinues to work " for the good of humanity. ' r There are no plot, no action, no living cha- racters, and very little literary charm. All the other persons in the tale abuse poor Columella, and tell long stories which enforce the author's moral, or illustrate kindred points. One shows the misery of love in a cottage ; another points out the danger of doing anything unusual, for a tutor nearly ruined his career by persuading his pupil to give a classical banquet, where the guests reclined on sofas and were crowned with chaplets ; another commends the prudence of a young lady who, when her parents objected to her lover, would not many him until he went to the West Indies and returned rich ; and so on.

The book is interesting only for its illus- tration of eighteenth-century manners, and at first sight it appears to contradict all our usual ideas about that period. We imagine it to have been the age of dignified leisure, in contrast to the rush of modern life, yet here we find Columella absolutely unable to enjoy his leisure, after he has finished contriving groves, vistas, cascades, and grottos in his grounds. We imagine that it was the age of strongly marked individual character, yet here every small deviation from the ordinary is condemned, even when it is obviously for the better.

Mr. Graves, however, did not practice as he preached. He himself, though very popular for his wit and good humour, was markedly eccentric in dress and habits. The original of Columella is supposed to have been the poet Shenstone, who must have been able to employ himself in his rural solitudes by writing." Finally, Graves, the professor of common sense and the opponent of romance, made a love match which offended all his family, but turned out very happily for himself ( see 'D.N.B.'). My