Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/138

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. vn. FEB. 15, 1913

ALMSHOUSE NEAR THE STRAND. In tlie early part of the nineteenth century there was a little model almshouse somewhere near the Strand. It was a pretty, quiet little place with grass plots. I should be glad of any information about it. There was a chaplain attached to it.

F. C. BALSTON.

Springfield, Maidstone.

AUTHOR WANTED.

" These children are dear to Me. Be a mother to them and more than a mother.... if they weary thee, I will be thy consolation ; if thou sink under thy burden, I will be thy reward." Where is this passage to be found ?

ARMADA.

THE TAILOR ON A GOAT. I can remember on a mantelpiece at home, more than half a century ago, a china ornament Dresden, no doubt beautifully finished in all its details, a goat with a tailor on it. I can see his open shears or scissors now, and I think there was also a flat-iron. I have just seen a very similar ornament in a friend's house, with a pincushion on the back of the goat, with, bestowed about, other accessories of the sartorial art. The tailor wore a cocked hat, I think, and an elaborately flowered coat, with large lappels down to his high top-boots, the whole thing beautifully finished and coloured in various designs. My friend said that he had been told that admission to the Dresden china works was anciently refused to all and sundry, but that the King's tailor managed to overcome objections and get in. Permis- sion was, however, only given on his consent to his being modelled, and the well-known ornament was the (? spiteful) result. Is this correct ? And, if so, why the goat ?

D. O.

[See ' Tailor in Dresden China,' 10 S. iv. 469, 536 ; vii. 292, 476.]

THE EARLDOM OF SOMERSET IN THE MOHUN FAMILY. A correspondent of a local paper, The Western Morning News, states that one of the Mohuns (Reginald) received from the Pope of the time the title of Earl of Somerset ; while a second asserts that it was another member of the family (William, who was created Earl by the Empress Maud, a title which was not confirmed by Henry II., and afterwards given by Richard I. to his brother John, along with the Earldom of Cornwall.

In what way did the Pope claim the right and power to create an English peerage ? Are there other instances of its exercise, and was the gift merely that of a title ?

What is the worth of the statement in Fuller's ' Church History,' Book III. v. 26, that the same Pope gave Sir Reginald a pension of three (? two) hundred marks charged on Peter's pence ? W. S. B. H.

ROBERT ARMOUR. I have a copy of Cocker's ' Arithmetic,' Glasgow, 1787, bear- ing on the fly-leaf the inscription " Robert Armour, his Book, Mauchline, February, 1796." Can any correspondent of ' N. & Q.' say if Burns's " bonnie Jean " had a younger brother or a nephew named Robert to whom this book may have belonged ? C. D.

GALIGNANI.

(11 S. vi. 409.495; vii. 71.)

A VOLUME on the Galignanis would be of much interest to the literary world, and if the accounts of the firm are still in existence, and a complete set of their paper can be consulted (for the copy at the British Museum is very imperfect), the groundwork would be found in them.

Cyrus Redding edited their paper, Galignanis Messenger, io? three years (1815- 1818). At one time he got into temporary trouble with the French Government through the early publication in the news- paper of a concordat between the Courts of France and the Pope. He says that

" the elder Galignani was then alive. He had a good business and had published a useful Italian grammar after an idea of his own."

This must have been the volume by Mr. Galignani which is entered in Robert Watt's ' Bibliotheca Britannica ' as

" Twenty-four lectures on the Italian language, delivered at the Lyceum of Arts, Sciences, and Languages ; in which the Principles, Harmony, and Beauties of the Italian Language are by an original Method simplified and adapted to the meanest Capacity, and the Scholar enabled to attain, with Ease and Facility, a competent knowledge of the Language without the help of any Grammar or Dictionary. London, 1796, 8vo."

The work was printed for the author at No. 3, Little Brook Street, Hanover Square* and sold at 6s. It was highly praised in The Monthly Review for September, 1796, pp. 87-9. The second edition was printed under the editorship of Antonio Montucci at Edinburgh in 1806. The third edition came out in 1818, the fourth in 1823. A volume of "Italian Extracts. . . .intended as