Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/179

 n s. vn. mar. i, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 171 part in polities. His tastes were for print- collecting. Bull purchased the estate and Jacobean mansion of North Court in the parish of Shorwell, in the Isle of Wight. Its " ter- raced gardens are of great beauty and con- tain some fine trees" (Murray's ' Hand- book,' p. 49). He died here on 12 Dec, 1805, aged 84. No entry of his burial is recorded in the parish register, but he is believed to have been buried at Shorwell. A roundel to his memory was placed on the north wall of the nave " by his only sur- viving daughter." Portraits of him and his wife belong to Mrs. Disney Leith and to Miss Isabel Swinburne of 61, Onslow Square. He had two daughters, Elizabeth and Catharine Susanna. The latter died at North Court on 13 Oct., 1795 (Gent. Mag., 1795, pt. ii. 971). Elizabeth died at North Court on 20 March, 1809, and was buried on 28 March. Her portrait was painted by H. D. Hamilton, and engraved by J. Strutt (O'Donoghue, ' Portraits at the British Museum,' i. 282). She erected on Brigh- stone Down a round tower known as " Miss Bull's Folly," and placed in a deep dell at North Court a gloomy summer-house in which are tablets with sentimental verses. At her death the estate became the property of her half-brother, R. H. Alexander Bennet, and now belongs to his descendant, Mrs. Disney Leith. Elizabeth Bull, by her will dated 2 Oct., 1808, and R. H. A. Bennet, by his will dated 8 May, 1811, each left 1,000*. for the benefit of the poor of Shorwell. The charity is now worth nearly 3,0007. Richard Bull ranked among the half-dozen principal collectors in England of engraved portraits. He was one of the select com- pany of distinguished virtuosi who used to attend the Thursday mornings of John Ratcliffe at his house in East Lane, Rother- hithe. At the sale of James West's curiosities in 1773 he purchased some of the lots which at one time belonged to Joseph Ames (Nichols, ' Lit. Anecdotes,' ii. 160 ; iii. 417 ; v. 266 ; viii. 456). Before the publication by the Rev. James Granger of the ' Biographical History of England,' Bull and others bought their most valuable prints for sums not exceeding 5s. A long Setter from him is printed in Granger's 'Letters' (1805), pp. 316-20. Horace Walpole records, in a letter to the Rev. William Cole on 16 May, 1781, that Bull was " grangerizing " his ' Anecdotes of Painting,' and that it made " eight magnificent folios, a most valuable body of our arts." When Walpole was ill, Bull amused him by the loan of his copy of the ' Royal and Noble Authors,' " let into four sumptuous folios in red Morocco gilt, with beautiful impressions of almost all the per- sonages of whom there are prints " (' Letters,' ed. Mrs. Toynbee, xi. 451 ; xii. 150, 359, 385-6). Bull sold his English heads to Lord Mountstuart before 1782, but his principal collections were not dispersed until long after his death. At the death of the younger R. H. A. Bennet, on 12 March, 1814, the Bull library was divided between his two sisters and coheiresses, Lady Swinburne and Lady Willoughby-Gordon. The part belong- ing to Lady Swinburne descended to her grandson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, but, as he had not the means of housing the books, his mother bought them of him after he had selected as many volumes as he wished to keep, and sold them at Sotheby's. The first sale (29 April-1 Mav, 1880) produced 4,071*. 18s. 6tt, the copy of Walpole's ' Anecdotes of Painting,' now in fourteen volumes, imperial folio, fetching 1,800*. Bull's name was not mentioned on the title-page : the library was described as " collected, and many of the books tastefully illustrated, by an intimate friend of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford." The second sale (23 May, 1881, and six following days) brought in 2,173/. 6s. 6rf. It was described on the title-page as the sale of a " most interesting collection of drawings, etchings and engravings illustrating the rise and progress of the fine arts in England, from Holbein to Hogarth, formed during the last century by Richard Bull, of North Court, Isle of Wight. The other half of the Bull-Bennet library is at North Court, and is the property of Mrs. Disney Leith. I am indebted to that lady and to the Rev. G. P. Jeans, Vicar of Shorwell, for some of the information em- bodied in this article. W. P. Courtney. Decipherment of Old Tombstone In- scriptions (11 S. vi. 246, 337).—Mr. Staple- ton, while kindly expressing his interest in my suggestions (the outcome of personal ex- perience) for ridding exposed grave-slabs of moss, &c, remarks that I have omitted to allude to a very common obstacle to the reading of inscriptions, namely, the sod into which they have sometimes sunk deep. I have often been tantalized in this way where stones attractive from their antiquity have been partially lost to view under turf that one did not like to disturb. But in regard to the churchyard that was in my