Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/473

 ii s. xii. DEC. n, 1915. NOTES AND QUERIES.

465

AUTHORS WANTED (US. viii. 329; xii. 421). The source of the lines quoted by Thomas Hughes,

When, the old black eagle flying, &c., has-been asked for twice in ' N. & Q.' One's first impression was that it sounded like a translation from the famous piece beginning :

Prinz Eugenius, der edle Hitter, which is said to have been written by a Prussian soldier serving under Eugene at the storming of Belgrade in 1717. But in the version given in the ' Allgemeines Deutsches Commersbuch ' (1885) there is no passage of which the English words could be a translation. Can it, however, be a mere coincidence that the English lines are in the same metre as the German ? The latter, if not the direct source, would cer- tainly seem to have inspired the later production.

Freiligrath's poem * Prinz Eugen, der edle Hitter,' beginning :

Zelte, Posten, Werda-Rufer !

Lustge Nacht am Donauufer !

has the same form of stanza. Can Belgrade be stormed to no other measure ?

EDWARD BENSLY.

(US. xii. 380.)

I will remember while the light is yet ;

And in the darkness I will not forget, is from Swinburne, but, not having his complete works at hand, I cannot place it.

W. C. K.

[Following our correspondent's suggestion, we have found the lines in Swinburne's * Poems and Ballads.' They occur in * Erotion,' and run thus : I shall remember while the light lives yet, And in the night-time I shall not forget. As quoted by our correspondents, they might almost be bracketed with

Et rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, as an instance of a mistake superior to the original.]

THE EFFECT OF OPENING A COFFIN (US. xii. 300, 363, 388, 448). A contemporary account of the opening of Edward I.'s tomb at Westminster was printed at 8 S. iv. 505. See also ' A Glimpse at the Monumental Architecture and Sculpture of Great Britain ' (1834), by M. H. Bloxam.

The following account of the opening of the tomb of Edward IV. at Windsor is taken from ' The Windsor Guide,' &c. (1800), pp. 65-6 :

" In the beginning of March, 1789, as the workmen were employed in preparing the ground for a new pavement (E, end or N. aisle, St. George's Chapel), they perceived a small aperture in the side of the vault, which curiosity soon rendered

sufficiently large to admit an easy entrance IH> the interior part. This was found to contain a leaden coffin, seven feet long, with a perfect skeleton, immersed in a glutinous liquid, with which the body is thought to have been em- balmed,* as it is near 307 years since its interment.. As soon as the labourers had communicated this discovery, the public eagerly flocked to the chapel; many of them found ways and means to gratify their curiosity, and had not a timely check been put to it, the whole of the remains would soon have been dispersed over various parts of the earth ; one secreting some hair, a second a tooth, a third a finger, &c., &c., who now boast their plundered relics of this magnani- mous prince."

A record of the despoiling of the vault appeared in The Daily Chronicle of 2 July, 1898, preparatory to an announcement that a lock of King Edward IV. 's hair was to be ' ' sold in a London auction-room on Monday next."

I have also a note (without reference to its source) that " within the last twenty years a leg-bone of Edward IV. figured in the museum of a private collector, and was afterwards publicly sold."

JOHN T. PAGE.

JOHN VARDY, ARCHITECT (11 S. xii. 400). Neither the place nor the year of hia birth is known. He had a son John, who designed, in conjunction with Bonomi in 1790-92, Uxbridge House in Burlington. Gardens. He is often confused with his father, who died in 1765; so says Beresford Chancellor.

ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.R.S.L.

JOHN LONGMAN : SPINETS (10 S. iii. 348 ? XL 92 ; 11 S. xii 199). A question relating to John Longman's barrel organs was asked at the first reference, and fully answered by the Editor. John Longman of Penton Street, Pentonville, organ-builder, took out a patent for barrel organs (No. 2468, 27 Jan., 1801). In 1785 John Jones, organist of St. Paul's Cathedral and of the Charterhouse, published with Messrs. Longman & Broderip, 26, Cheapside and 13, Haymarket, a book entitled ' Sixty Chants, Single and Double/ I cannot positively identify John Longman,, organ-builder, Pentonville, with the Cheap- side music publisher ; but a reference to Mr. Frank Kidson's * British Music Pub- lishers, Printers, and Engravers,' 1900, mentioned at the second reference above, would probably settle the point.

R. B. P.

" * In contradiction to this, some philosophical gentlemen are of opinion that the liquid and sediment contained in the coffin were simply water and earth to which all bodies resolve."