Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/359

 ii s. xii. OCT. so, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

351

children (of whom Edgar was the second) in utter destitution. Poe's paternal grand- father was a distinguished officer in the Maryland line during the war of the Revolu- tion, and his great-grandfather, John Poe, married a daughter of Admiral McBride of the British navy. John Allan, who adopted Poe, is described as a wealthy Virginian merchant who brought Edgar to England in 1816, sent him to school at Stoke Newington and took him back to America in 1822, where he remained till his death. I can trace no reference to any relations in Scot- land of that name.

WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

The late Sir Edmund T. Bewley wrote a book on ' The Origin and Early History of the Family of Poe or Poe ' (Dublin, privately printed, 1906), in which he discussed the true ancestry of the American poet.

A, ALBERT CAMPBELL.

4, Waring Street, Belfast.

Sm JOHN LADE (11 S. x. 269, 316, 357, 394, 472 ; xi. 32). See article on him by William Prideaux Courtney in Temple Bar, February, 1002, pp. 199-215. WM. H. PEET.

HENRY FIELDING (11 S. xii. 300). See ' The Cambridge History of English Litera- ture,' vol. x. (1913), chap, ii., ' Fielding and Smollett,' by Mr. Harold Child ; and chap, iv., ' The Drama and the Stage,' by Prof. G. H. Nettleton of Yale.

According to the ' D.N.B.' the only authentic portrait of Fielding is from a pen-and-ink sketch by Hogarth, taken from memory, or, according to Murphy, whose account was contradicted by Steevens and Ireland, from a profile cut in paper by a lady. It was engraved by Basire for Murphy's edition of Fielding's works. A miniature occasionally engraved seems to be taken from this. A. R. BAYLEY.

[MR. PEET and MB. SPAKKE also thanked for replies.]

PRICE OF TOBACCO IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (11 S. vi. 268, 336, 413, 477; vii. 18). The following reference to the value of tobacco in 1609 seems worth noting. It occurs in the play ' Every Woman in her Humor,' 1609:

" 'Twere sinne to wrong the dead, you shal heare the inuentorie of his pocket.

Inprimis, a brush and a combe vd.

Item, a looking Glasse id. ob.

Item, A case of Tobacco Pipes iiijd.

Item, Tobacco, half an ounz vjd."

A. COLLINOWOOD LEE. Waltham Abbey, Essex.

" DRAY (? OR BRAY) ALIAS BROKER, SOMER- SET " (11 S. xii. 302). There is, or was, a village called Brayne in Somerset, on the sea coast, to the south of the River Axe. See Stephen Whatley's ' England's Grazetteer,' 1751, vol. iii. Brayne, Somerset,. s given also in the ' Index Villaris,' by J. Adams, 1680, latitude 51 18' ; longitude 3 03'. In ' Gary's New Map of England,' &c.,. 1 794, the name is Brean. The ' Index Villaris ' gives also " Bray-High, Devon,, atitude 51 10'; longitude 3 54'," and ' Brokwer, Glocester, latitude 51 45' ; longitude 2 40'."

The above longitudes are west from London, not Greenwich.

ROBERT PIERPOINT..

0n

Oxford Garlands. Selected by R. M. Leonard.

12. Elegies and Epitaphs. 14. Poems on Animals. 15. Modern Lays and Ballads. (Milford, 7rf.net.)

THESE new numbers of an attractive and useful series are worthy of their predecessors. Within the narrow limits allowed it is impossible but that some one will complain of this or the other being included, while that or the other is left out. We confess that We do not quite understand upon what principle the choice has been made ; it Would seem that there has been an endeavour to get in as much as possible in the way of poems not otherwise so easily accessible. . So far as that is so, it seems to us justifiable, though it has sometimes involved the taking up of space for verses not much worth remembering. ' Elegies and Epitaphs ' strikes us as on the whole the most successful compilation of the three. . ' Lycidas ' and ' Adonais ' are expressly omitted as being too long, and, that being so, we hardly see why a fragment of ' Thyrsis ' should have been admitted ; it actually suffers from the mutilation more even than would five or six stanzas from ' Adonais,' say those beginning : " Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep!" We have little more to criticize, for if there are some half a score of pieces that we should have refused, this is but fair difference of opinion, and the booklet contains abundance of treasure both in the way of the familiar and of the less wellknown. The arrangement,. though explained in the notes, is, in effect, rather haphazard, but it once or twice results in pleasant juxtaposition. Thus we have side by side two poems of Swinburne that in memory of Landor, and that in memory of Morris and Burne- Jones which afford matter for interesting com- parison, and are followed by Wordsworth's ' Poet's Epitaph ' inevitable, of course, and strangely refreshing in its clear music after the turgid,, heavily accented flow of Swinburne's verse carrying so meagre a freight of thought. It was a good idea to put side by side Shakespeare's 'Full Fathom Five ' and Webster's 'Land Dirge.' Coleridge is represented by ' The Knight's Tomb,' and a note might have been added to point out that this, in origin, was but a metrical experiment