Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/207

 ii s. viii. SEPT. 13, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

201

LONDON. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1913.

CONTENTS. No. 194.

NOTES : Charles Lamb's " one H ," 201 The Forged ' Speeches and Prayers ' of the Regicides, 202 Robin Hood Romances, 203 Amersham Churchyard Inscrip- tions, 204 Women and the Freedom of the City of Lon- don" Party " as " Parti "Echo of the " Forty-Five " A Family of Sextons La Beaumelle's ' Pensees, 1 206.

OUERIES : Cross - legged Effigy at Birkin Buckfast- leigh's Isolated Church Sales of Quaritch MSS., 207 Biographical Information Wanted Inwood Family Soap-BubblesSmyth of Newbottle Armigall Wade Dutch Ambassador in Paris " Whistling Oyster" Paulet of Eddington, 20& Smuggling Queries -Highland lan Tartan Whichcote in Wiltshire " Mister " as a Surname Historical Designations of Cities and Towns British Graves in the Crimea " Corpse " " Grass widow _An Elzevir, 209' A Collection of Ordinances for the Royal Household ' Cameo of Nelson Dane O'Coys c The Adventures of Brusanus, Prince of Hun- garia,' 210.

REPLIES : The Earldom of Lincoln, 210 The Three Heavens ' The City Night - Cap ' : ' Plutus ' Choir Balance : St. George's Chapel, Windsor. 212 -" Buds of marjoram " " To pull one's leg "Irish Family Histories Corporation of St. Pancras, Chichester, 213 " Cerne" " Scolopendra cetacea "Source of Quotations Wanted Old House in Bristol, 214 Gore of Weimar Hon. James Bruce of Barbados Napoleon I. and Duelling Hebrew or Arabic Proverb Old Novel Wanted, 215 Bures A Christian Rule Derived Senses of the Cardinal Points- Disraeli Queries Solicitors' Roll Austrian Catholic Mission in the Sudan, 216" The Five Wounds " Burial- Place of the Disraelis Rings with a Death's Head 'The Arabian Nights Entertainments,' 217 Bishop Trelawny Author Wanted, 218.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' A Handbook of Lancashire Place- Names ' ' Folk - Lore ' ' A Few of the Famous Inns of Bath ' ' The Imprint.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

JElotes.

CHARLES LAMB'S "ONE H ."

THERE stand in a corner of my bookcase four volumes in plain Quaker-like garb, whose solid calf backs bear the simple lettering 'Philanthropist,' i., ii., iii., and iv. respectively. *

I remember with some amusement the purchase of these from a persuasive-tongued bookseller, who brought them forth from a mysterious corner of his shop, declaring that they held much interesting matter on North American Indians and on Slavery about which I cared little. However, I bought the books, knowing that they con- tained something of which my good book- seller was clearly ignorant to wit, certain sell on one account ; I bought on another. He disposed of Slavery literature, and I purchased Lamb.
 * Confessions of a Drunkard.' He sought to


 * London, Longmans Co., 1811-14.

On a subsequent examination of the volumes I found to my delight that the very Slavery articles which had attracted the worthy dealer's attention contained " Eli- ana." Readers of Lamb will recollect his reference, in ' Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago,' to the tyranny of a certain monitor :

" There was one H, who, I learned, in after

days, was seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I natter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of that name, who suf- ferred at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts some few years since ? My friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) "

This appeared in The London Magazine for November, 1820, over the signature of Elia ; and " my friend Tobin " was the James Webbe Tobin whose brother John wrote some plays, one of which, ' The Honey Moon,' met with a fair success. The copy before me, published by Longman in 1805, bears on its title-page the words, which should have been comforting, " As per- formed at the Theatre -Royal, Drury-Lane, with Universal Applause." But the author, alas ! had been dead for some months.

To return to James. His connexion with Nevis was due to the family possession of an estate in that island, which had come to his father through marriage with the daughter of Mr. Webbe, a West Indian planter, who had taken up his residence at Stratford under Old Sarum, in the manor house in which William Pitt was born. In addition to the friendship of Lamb, James Tobin enjoyed the intimacy of the circle which included Sou they, Coleridge, and Wordsworth ; and it was he who, having got sight of the proof-sheets of ' Lyrical Ballads.' implored Wordsworth to omit would damn the book.
 * We are Seven,' which, he considered,

The Tobin story, as set forth in an article on the ' State of the Slaves in the British West Indies,' in the first volume of ' The Philanthropist,' is this : Towards the end of 1809 Tobin arrived at Nevis, and was forth- with offered a seat in the Council, which he declined on the ground of ill-health and want of sight* ; and he would have meddled in

brothers Lamb referred to in the following quota- tion from ' Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading': "Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading the 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Comus,' he could have read to him but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet."
 * This sets at rest the doubt as to which of the