Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/65

 n s. XL JAN. 16, mo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

55

Eckermann himself uses the word in the ame sense, as where he says in the Intro- duction, "I really thought of nothing but poetry and art, and the higher human culture." Again, soon after making the acquaintance of Goethe, he says :

" I added, that a practical intercourse with Goethe would have a most favourable effect on any own culture " ;

and he reports Goethe as saying :

" Dante seems to us great ; but he had the culture of centuries behind him .... Whoever will produce anything great must so improve his culture that, like the Greeks, he will be able to elevate the mere trivial actualities of nature to the level of his own mind."

It really seems that the word Kultur has deteriorated in meaning since Goethe's day. Does this argue a corresponding deterioration of the German mind ?

C. C. B.

LUKE BOBINSON, M.P. (11 S. xi. 9). The following information about the return of two Luke Bobinsons, both M.P.'s, may be of interest to MB. LUKE N. BOBINSON :

Scarborough Borough, 25 October, 1645. Sir Matthew Boynton, Knt. and Bart. High Sheriff of the County of York, and Luke Robinson, Esq., vice Sir Hugh Chomley, Knt., and John Hotham, Esq.

York County, North Riding, 20 August, 1656. G-eorge Lord Ewre, Robert Lilburn, Esq., Luke Robinson, Esq., and Francis Lascelles, Esq.

1658-9. Malton Borough, York. No return found. On 7 March, 1658/9, the above, viz., Philip Howard, Esq., and George Marwood, Esq., were declared duly elected, and another Indenture by which Col. Robert Lilburne and Luke Robinson, Esq., were returned, was ordered to be taken off the File see Commons' Journals.

Scarborough Borough, 4 April, 1660. Luke Robinson, Esq., and William Thompson, Esq.

1741. Hedon Borough, 29 November, 1746. Luke Robinson, Esq., vice George Berkeley, Esq., deceased. Returns amended by Order of the House dated 11 February, 1746/7, by erasing the name of Samuel Gumley and substituting that of Luke Robinson, Esq.

The above are the only references to Luke Bobinson in the Lists of Members of Parlia- ment since 1200. WILLIAM BULL.

Hammersmith.

None of the ordinary sources give any account of Luke Bobinson, though I find that he was a Counsellor -at-Law, and elected a member of Parliament for the Borough of Hedon (Yorkshire) in 1741, but was unseated on petition, being accused of " most notorious bribery and corruption." At the hearing of the petition at the Bar of the House no counsel appeared on his behalf, and he was

duly unseated. On the death of his suc- cessor, in 1744, a new writ was applied for, and Bobinson was nominated, but defeated at the poll. In 1746 he was again defeated, but obtained the seat on petition, and retained it until 1754, when he was defeated once more, and he does not appear to have ever regained a seat for Hedon or elsewhere. ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.B.S.L.

Luke Bobinson was an eminent Justice of the Peace for Middlesex. Among the magistrates with \vhom he sat at Hicks Hall, John Street, Clerkenwell, was Henry Fielding. I have a copy of a deed, dated 23 May, 1751, in which Henry Fielding was

" held and firmly bound unto Thomas Lane, Esq., Luke Robinson, Esq., and Henry Butler Pacey, Esq., Justices of our Lord the King, assigned to keep the Peace in the county of Middlesex . . . . in one hundred pounds,"

as a surety that William Pentlow will observe the conditions of his appointment on being made Keeper of the Prison at Clerkenwell. Pentlow had been strongly recommended to the justices by Fielding, and he was selected in preference to one John Bland, a candidate of the Duke of Newcastle, who could neither read nor write.

Thomas Lane, named in the bond, was the Chairman of the Middlesex Sessions ; he was also a Master in Chancery. When his term of office as Chairman ended, he was succeeded on 7 Dec., 1752, by Luke Bobin- son. J. PAUL DE CASTRO.

1, Essex Court, Temple, B.C.

A SHAKESPEABE MYSTERY (11 S. x. 509 ; xi. 36). The circumstances which ST. SWITHIN has in mind are as follows. Some four or five years ago a certain Dr. Owen and another American gentleman, whose name I forget for the moment, claimed to have discovered in Sir Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia' (1598) a cipher disclosing that the MS. of Shakespeare's plays, as well as that of other unpublished plays by the " Bard of Avon," were contained in sundry iron chests which had been buried beneath Chepstow Castle, but had been removed (for fear of fire) and deposited in a stone chamber under the bed of the Biver Wye near the castle. These two gentlemen came over to this country, and having duly obtained the permission of the Duke of Beaufort, the owner of that portion of the river, commenced to prosecute their re- searches, and claimed to have discovered in Chepstow Castle the handle of one of the chests, which, the cipher mentioned, had