Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/172

 162

NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. XL FEB. 27, 1915.

" heir," which Robert married Mary, daugh- ter of Thomas Bennett the elder of Steeple Ashton, " and heiress of the family " (M.I. Combe Hay) ; but this Bobert (the LL.D. ) cannot have been the elder son of Bobert I. , as he departed this life 5 April, 1755, aged 54, and he cannot, therefore, have had a younger brother born in 1680 and married in 1713, viz., John Smith I. The only con- clusion appears to be that B>obert I. had an elder son (?) Robert II., who had a son

Bobert III., who married Mary Bennett,, heiress of Combe Hay ; but in that case the- rather curious result follows that the uncle,. John I., and the nephew, Bobert, III., married two sisters, unless Mary and 11 Ann Bennett were aunt and niece, and both daughters of a Thomas Bennett. ^ <Mi$| The inveterate choice by each generation of the names Bobert and John is confusing. The pedigree, so far as ascertainable, is as: follows :

Robert Smith I., of Foxcote=rDorothy, dau. of John Champneys, and Littleton, d. 9 May, 1714, d. 15 Dec., 1721, set. 70.

set. 60. M.I. Foxcote. M.I. Foxcote.

1

1st son ? Robert Smith II. ===

1

1st wife 2nd son | 2nd wife Ann, dau. of Thos. Bennett=f John Smith I. of=r of Steeple Ashton. Littleton, d. 24 Jan., 1724, d. 20 June. 1748, set. 38. set. 68.

2nd wife

Ct

1 1st wife

Robert Smith III.- of Combe Hay, LL.D., d. 5 Apr., 1755, set, 54. M.I. Combe Hay. Called "nephew" in will of John Smith I.

-iviary, aau. ui

Bennett, and heiress of her brother, Thos. Bennett.

Cath. Houston John on of Litt will pi 11 Mar

John Smith III., M.P. for Bath=

1768-75, bur. Steeple Ashton, 19 Nov., 1775.

leton, Littleton, oved Ibur. Foxcote, .,1768. 29 Aug., 1751.

[=Hon. Ann, dau. of 5th Viscount Tracy, m. 23 June, 1757.

John Smith IV., bapt. Combe Hay, 23 July, 1759, assumed name of Leigh in 1802, d. 1813.

'Mary, dau. of Hon. Geo. Shirley of Ettington, m. 1782.

H.

HAPPY WABBIOB' AND NELSON.

IN the poet's words, " the course of the great war with the French naturally fixed one's attention upon the military character." The author of ' The Happy Warrior ' found that " Nelson carried most of the virtues that the trials he was exposed to in his department of the service necessarily call forth and sustain ; if they do not produce the contrary vices. But his public life icas stained wilh one great crime, so that, though many passages of these lines were suggested by what was generally known as excellent in his conduct, I have not been able to connect his name with the poem as I could wish, or even to think of him with satisfaction in reference to the idea of what a warrior ought to be."

The words " public life " and " the idea of what a warrior ought to be " seem to point to something else than Nelson's having! in a friend's house, made the wife there his mis- tress however shameless these friends may have been. Is all that his " public life " ?

Prof. Dowden in his ' Poems by Words- worth ' (p. 446) seemingly v thinks that it is :

" Nelson's relations with Lady Hamilton pre- vented Wordsworth from ' thinking of him with, satisfaction in reference to the idea of what aw warrior ought to be.' "

Yet what Southey says in his ' Life of Nelson T seems to make it certain that his poet- friend was not thinking of the liaison with Lady Hamilton as the " public crime," but rather of what in 1799 she led the victor of the Nile to do to the Neapolitan Sicilian revolutionists, and to those who fought on behalf of the republican government set up in Naples and Sicily by revolutionary France against the King of Naples and his Queen y the sister of Marie Antoinette.

Southey, be it said by the way, thought,, concerning the " infatuated attachment for