Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/487

 n s. vm. DEO 20, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

481

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1913.

CONTENTS.-No. 208.

NOTES : Thomas Hardy : a Coincidence - Christmas Bib- liography, 481 Churfhgoing in the Fifteenth Century, 483 Uncollected Kipling Items, 485 Frederick St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke A Gordon as a Hungarian Noble, 436 Fox's Widow Sir-John Harleston, 487.

QUERIES: Lost Portrait of Washington The Wild Huntsman: Herlothingi Erasmus Lewis, 487 'Pro and Con : a Journal for Literary Investigation ' John McGowan, Publisher B. Grey Pirates Mel ly : Stokes Norborne Shuckforth Matthew Parker's Ordination, 4gg Blair & Sutherlands : Blundei-buss Newnham Family. Isle of Wight-Moira Jewel Military : Coloured Print Wanted Crowle Family John Strout Thomas Hudson, Portrait Painter Hexham Chartulary Pepys Query Scotch Arms Arno Poebel Jules Verne, 489 Upright Stones in Open Churchyards Early Doubts about the Historical Jesus Pyrothonide Dramatic Criticism Harpert Tromp John Chapman, 490.

REPLIES : Elizabeth Joanna Weston : Ludomilla Kelley, 490 John Cottingham British Infantry Ancient Wit and Humour, 491 Glasgow Cross and Defoe's ' Tour,' 492 Heart-Burial The Wearing of Swords Synod of Aries, 1620 Emeline de Reddesford : 'D'Evereux" and Salis- bury, 493 Abraham Ezekiel Ezekiel Andreas Gisal- Tiertus^" Flewengge " Hertfordshire Superstitions The Pilgrim Fathers, 494 St. Katharine's - by - the - Tower- Richard Smith of Blackness Case of Duplicate Marriage Grillion's Club, 495 Choirboys in Ruffs Sir George Wright of Richmond Bird Island : Bramble Cay- Author of Pamphlet Wanted The Great Quaker, 496 Early Sheriffs of Beds and Bucks" Rucksac " or " Ruck- sac "Knight's Cap, 497.

NOTES ON BOOKS :' Ancient Painted Glass in Eng- land'' The Cambridge Mediaeval History ' ' The Pilgrim from Chicago ''A Great Mystery Solved.'

Notices to Correspondents.

THOMAS HARDY: A COINCIDENCE.

IN the course of studying the text of Thomas Hardy, our living English classic, with the attention a scholar pays to a Greek author, and the man in the street pays to the betting news, I came some \vhile since on a curious coincidence. So far, I believe, it has not been generally noticed, though it has not escaped a literary correspondent of mine in Australia. It raises some interesting questions as to the methods of authors in composition, and the possibility of forgetting one's own work. The latter deficiency, or

fift, does not surprise me, or any one else, imagine, to-day. I have known authors lose apparently all memory of their creations with the facility which enables an eminent barrister to plead a case with the fervour of conviction and deep knowledge one day, and forget all about it a week later.

In the case of the works of fiction aptly described by a novelist as

colours ; pasteboard complications of passion and
 * chromolithographs struck in the primary

adventure, with the conservative entanglement of threadbare marionettes ; the narrative set forth in a sustained fortissimo, and punctuated by the timely exits of the god from the machine,"

forgetfulness may be the due reward both of author and reader. But I do not con- ceive of a deliberate artist as either forgetting the creations of his own choosing, or repeat- ing matter once used to good purpose. Further, I should have thought the details of a first book would remain particularly clear to its author, in spite of a host of later and better volumes. Yet it is to Mr. Hardy's first book that my note refers.

' Desperate Remedies ' contains the follow- ing words at the beginning of chap. xii. :

" Week after week, month after month, the time had flown by. Christmas had passed ; dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Thaws hid ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come the period of pink dawns and white sunsets ; with the third week in April the cuckoo had appeared ; with the fourth the nightingale."

The words from " Christmas " to " white sunsets " appear also as the opening part of chap, xxiii. of ' The Trumpet Major,' the only variation being " Rapid thaws " for " Thaws," though the paragraph ends dif- ferently with " and people hoped that the March weather was over."

' Desperate Remedies ' was first published in 1871, ' The Trumpet Major ' in 1880. In the interval the author may have forgotten his previous use of a neat piece of descrip- tion which he had, perhaps, jotted down, or he may have thought that his immature work was not likely to survive. The Pre- face to ' Desperate Remedies ' of January, 1889, suggests that its reissue is partly due to the fact that it had been " for some con- siderable time reprinted and widely circu- lated in America."

Instances of such a coincidence cannot be very common, but could doubtless be found. I am content to cite the case of Virgil, who has used two beautiful lines both in the Second Georgic and the First ^Eneid.

V. R.

CHRISTMAS BIBLIOGRAPHY.

(Continued from II S. vii. 3.)

1610. Two Sermons preached before the Kings Majestic at Whitehall. Of the Birth of Christ. The one [on Gal. iv. 4, 5] on Christmas Day 1609. The other [on Luke ii. 10, 11] on Christmas day- last 1610. By Lancelot Andivwes. 1610.

Also published separately.

1629. XCVI. Sermons. [Sermons of the Na- tivity.] By Lancelot Andrewes. 1629. Second edition, 1631. Third edition, 1635 (noticed 9 S. ii. 505). Fifth edition, 1661.