Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/471

 11 8. V. MAY 18, 1912.

NOTES AND QUERIES.

387

then, at the earnest request of his faithful servant Tom Allen, was consigned to the carpenter's storeroom until the ship arrived in England. When Nelson lived in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, its place was at the foot of Tom Allen's bedstead. But when Allen's wife, at Nelson's express desire, came up from Burnham Thorpe to stay with him, she was so alarmed by it that she declared the room was haunted, and that she dared no longer sleep in it.

With Nelson's consent Allen at length took the coffin to Banting in Brewer Street, and in due time it was used to enshrine the mortal remains of the hero of Trafalgar. Vide The United Service Journal, 1841, November, No. 156, p. 336. L. M. R.

[The references in ' N. & Q.' to the story of Nelson's coffin are to volumes so far back that we print our correspondent's communication in full.]

BAMPFYLDE AND BOWT.ES. I am indebted to the kindness of a Dublin friend for a sight of the seventeen sonnets of John Codington Bampfylde (1754-96). " Bamp- fylde's Sonnets," Robert Southey said, " are some of the most original in the language." Noteworthy are his poems ' Morning,' ' Evening,' ' On Christmas,' ' On a Wet Summer,' and ' Country Re- tirement.' The finest sonnet in the collec- tion, in my opinion, is ' To the Redbreast,' which I venture to reproduce here, in order to show that such a fine artist deserves to be rescued from oblivion as quickly as possible. Twenty years of his tragic life he passed in an asylum, and the efforts made on his behalf and also on behalf of William Lisle Bowles (1776-1850), with whom he invites comparison by Robert Southey will ever redound to the Laureate's honour.

To the Redbreast. When that the fields put on their gay attire,

Thou silent sitt'st near brake or river's brim,

Whilst the gay thrush sings loud from covert

dim ;

But when pale winter lights the social fire, And meads with slime are sprent, and ways with mire,

Thou charm'st us with thy soft and solemn

hymn

. From battlement, or barn, or haystack trim ; And now not seldom tunest, as if for hire, Thy thrilling pipe to me, waiting to catch

The pittance due to thy well-warbled song ; Sweet bird ! sing on ; for oft near lonely hatch,

Like thee, myself have pleased the rustic

throng, .And oft for entrance, 'neath the peaceful thatch,

Full many a tale have told, and ditty long. Bampfylde lived in open intercourse with mother earth, and had learnt from her some of her rarest secrets ; but fortune never

aided him, as she aided Bowles, whose sonnets, fourteen in number, were published by Mr. Cruttwell of Bath in very romantic circumstances, as he tells us himself in the ninth edition of his collected poems (1837). Bampfylde's sonnets were published in 1778, Bowles's in 1789, and Coleridge's thin 12mo of ' Juvenile Poems ' saw the light in 1796, just seven years afterwards. We know from the ' Biographia Literaria,' and from the sonnet on the older bard beginning

My heart has thanked thee, Bowles ! for those

soft strains

Whose sadness soothes me like the murmuring Of wild bees in the sunny showers of spring,

how much Coleridge considered himself indebted to Bowles's sonnets. I would especially refer to ' Evening,' ' To the River Itchin,' ' The Bells of Ostend ' a master- piece ' Influence of Time on Grief,' and ' Distant View of England from the Sea.' Bowles was the greater poet : Bampfylde the greater artist. M. L. R. BRESLAR.

Percy House, South Hackney

" ASH ' ' COINCIDENCE. In The Devon and Exeter Gazette of 6 April appears an adver- tisement with a singular combination of the word " ash.' ' Mr. R. L. Ashton is advertised to sell 190 large ash trees near Ashbury Station on the date named above ! Surely the long arm of coincidence comes in here. ANDREW HOPE.

" THE GOLD LION " IN LOMBARD STREET. In the will of Francis Barnham, gent., dated 4 June, and proved 31 Dec., 1624 (109 Byrde), is a reference which may deserve a corner in ' N. & Q.' The testator left to his daughter Hannah part of a house called " the Gould Lion in Lumbart Street, London," at that time in the tenure or occupation of Edward Bradbank, haber- dasher. Later on the testator refers to some property in George Alley, behind the said house, held by him of the Vintners' Company at 161. a year. According to Larwood's ' History of Signboards,' the " Golden Lion " may be said to head the list of what are, no doubt, heraldic signs that is, of those where a lion is the charge ; but this house is not mentioned. Nor, on turning to the second edition of Boyne's ' Tradesmen's Tokens,' do we find any mention of it ; and it has no place in Philip Norman's ' London Signs and Inscriptions.'

On 21 April, 1886, Mr. F. G. Hilton Price read a paper before the Institute of Bankers called ' Some Account of Lombard Street, its Early Goldsmiths, and the Signs of their