Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/521

 ii s. iv. DEC. 23, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

515

sign of " The Dragoon." In 1857 this nam had gone, and "Tom Brown" appears Brown was born at Kirkleatham, and o: leaving the army retired to Yarm.

W. C. B.

REGIMENTAL SOBRIQUETS : BRITANNIA REGIMENT (US. iv. 446). On the arriva of our regiment, the 2nd Batt. 13th Ligh Infantry, at the Mauritius in 1863, I wa shown by the Brigade-Major at the Garrison Office, Port Louis, a heap of interesting documents connected with the capture o: the Mauritius and Bourbon by the British in 1811. When we moved toMahebourg the following year, I found a solitary leather bound manuscript casualty book in the orderly room, of the regiments engaged in both operations, amongst which the 9th was described as " 9th (the Britannia Regiment," the 56th as "56th (the Pompa dours) Regiment." The county titles of each " East Norfolk " and " West Essex," were not mentioned, as far as I recollect. How the volume in question happened to have been left there I cannot make out.

R. S. CLARKE. Bishop's Hall, Taunton.

'THE CONVICT SHIP' (11 S. iv. 468). This poem, the opening lines of which are quoted in the query, had at one time a con- siderable vogue, and was even included in some school Readers. It was written by Thomas Kibble Hervey (1799-1859), who is given a column in the ' D.N.B.' In the course of that account of his career it is stated that " hie popular poem ' The Convict Ship' first appeared in the 'Lite- rary Souvenir ' for 1825." In the previous year he had published a poem entitled ' Australia,' which met with so much success that he abandoned the law for lite- rature. He was editor of The Athenceum from 1846 until 1853, having previously been a contributor to its columns. He also wrote for The Dublin Review, The Art Journal, and various other periodicals. He died on 27 Feb., 1859, at Kentish Town, and was buried at Highgate. He pub- lished five books, and in 1866 his widow brought out at Boston, U.S.A., a complete collection of his poems with memoir and Portrait. j. p. HOGAN.

Royal Colonial Institute,

Northumberland Avenue.

This poem was written by Thomas Kibble Hervey (born 1799, died 1859), author of ' Australia ' (1824) and ' The Poetical Sketch Book 1 (1829), and for a time editor of

The Athenazum. ' My Sister's Grave ' and ' The Convict Ship ' are perhaps his best- known pieces ; they are, at any rate, the only things of his I remember to have met with in anthologies. C. C. B.

This poem appears in many anthologies for instance, in that issued by the Com- missioners of National Education in Ire- land, where it is attributed to T. K. Hervey.

EMERITUS.

[MB. W. E. A. AXON, W. C. B., MR. ANDREW HOPE, MR. J. E. LATTON-PICKERING, R. W. P., A. T. W., and MR. C. T. WATERS also thanked for replies.]

SPENSER AND DANTE (11 S. iv. 447). May not the break with Rome have had something to do with England's neglect of Dante ? Mr. Paget Toynbee states that the earliest quotation of any length from the Italian text of the ' Commedia ' printed in England was a passage of twenty-seven lines a curiosity of misprinting from the last canto of the ' Inferno ' (xxxiv. 28-54), inserted by Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, in the seventh book of his ' Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels,' which was published in 1635. A. R, BAYLEY.

Chaucer was familiar with Dante's work, and gives illustrations of his knowledge in The House of Fame,' 'The Monk's Tale,' and otherwise. The studies of most of his con- emporaries and immediate successors led them less far a-field than he was able to go, and thus for long Dante was not a direct nfluence in English verse. Spenser, how- ever, knew him, and apparently well, for again and again he adapts one or other of his sug- gestions. Two examples that have been duly noted by experts may be mentioned n evidence. In the ' Inferno,' xxiv. 46, )ante reflects on those who sit at ease and trive not after fame, pointing out, as Long- ellow translates, that " whoso his life con- umeth "

Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth As smoke in air or in the water foam.

ipenser probably had this in view when he yrote stanzas 40 and 41 of ' Faerie Queene,' I. iii., beginning thus : Whoso in pomp of proud estate, quoth she, Does swim, and bathes himself in courtly bliss, Does waste his days in dark obscurity, And in oblivion ever buried is.

The other passage to which reference has een made is the dancing scene in ' Faerie ^ueene,' VI. x. 10-16. Altogether delight- ul in and for itself, this in its inception nd certain of its details almost certainly wes something to ' Purgatorio,' xxix., xxx.