Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/370

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. ix. MAY 9, 1911.

On the wall of the entrance to the Edg- loaston Oratory of St. Philip Neri, in Hagley Hoad (where he died), is a tablet to John Henry Newman, Cardinal (1801-90). It bears beneath a Cardinal's shield, with motto " Cor ad cor liquitor," his name, and the inscription " Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem." He came to Birmingham in 1847, and is buried at Rednall beside the Lickeys.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones's birthplace, at No. 11, Bennett's Hill, on the left going up the hill from New Street, is marked by a tablet between two windows on the first floor. He was born on 28 Aug., 1833, and died in London in 1898.

A tablet formerly on the outside of Ed- mund Hector's (now demolished) house in the Old Square, recording the fact that Dr. Samuel Johnson was frequently a guest there, is permanently preserved in the " Johnson " Room at Aston Hall ; and the steps of the Old Wharf in Paradise " Row," from which John Wesley used to preach, were removed only a few months ago on the demolition of the wharf buildings. The fine portico of the Society of Artists, which -stood from 1829 to 1912 in New Street, and on the columns of which J. H. Foley, the sculptor, is said to have worked as a mason, has disappeared ; and the house in Easy Row (close to the residence of John Basker- ville, the famous printer) immortalized, according to local belief, by Charles Dickens ,-as the home of the elder Mr. Winkle in the ' Pickwick Papers,' was dismantled about the same time.

For many years after the public acquisi- tion of Aston Hall the length of the west front was disfigured by a large glass pavilion used for a miscellaneous assortment of plaster statuary and more or less interesting .art-work in show-cases. This unsightly struc- ture was removed more than twenty years restored to its original appearance. On the removal of the pavilion the plaster models of figures and groups were dispersed or destroyed. Some of them were decidedly striking as " classic " reminders of a bygone taste. There was a terrific group of a ' Massacre of the Innocents,' which appealed to many. The exhibition was not without interest, and I regret my inability to give a fuller account of its contents and their fate, details of which would be acceptable. .1 remember that works by Peter Hollins, the Birmingham sculptor, were represented, with many others.
 * ago, and the fine facade of the Hall happily

There has stood since 1867 in the entrance hall of Aston Hall a full-sized bronze copy of the Warwick Vase, the marble original of which, in the grounds of Warwick Castle, was discovered in Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli in 1770, and presented by Sir William Hamilton to the Earl of Warwick. The Aston copy was cast at the Thomason works WLLMOT COBFIELD.

THE FIRST DUTCH COURANTS. (Cf. ante, p. 341.) Subject to correction, I believe that the first known copies of cthe "Courants" of Broer Jansz. have been those in Holland, dated 1623 and 1626, and that practically all that is known of the earlier ones is contained in entries in the books of the Dutch East India Company.

Jansz's employment as" courantier " has been taken to refer back from an uncertain date down to the year 1609, when the armistice between Spain and Holland was concluded, and, of course, the Dutch forces had no further need of a " courantier."

The actual date of commencement of Dutch journalism is, I am told, not known, but in 1607 the East India Company decided that no one was to remove any " Courant " or other paper from the Company's offices, under penalty of three guilders. And on 11 April, 1616, it was noted that ten ryks- daalders were to be paid to the courantier, with a notice that the Company would not require his Courant any more.

To this information the British Museum can add three Courants of the years 1619 and 1621 one of them published by Jansz, whose style of " out courantier in 't Legher van sijn Prince. Excel." appears also on his Courants of 1623 and 1626. The press-mark of the volume in which the first two Courants are contained is T. 2423. The third is in T. 2424. I do not think that any others of these dates are known to exist. All three are half -sheets in folio.

1 . (No title, but the document is badly cropped, so that it is impossible to say whether it had one or no.)

" Gedruckt by Broer lansz, out Courantier int' Leger van sijn Prince. Excel, den 22 No vein., 1619." (Black-letter.)

2. " Courante uyt Ttalien, Duytslandt," &c. " Gedruckt te Amsterdam by loris Veseler

aende Zuyder - Kerck inde Hope. Ao. MDCXIX. Den 25 November." (Printed in black-letter, and on one side only.)

3. " Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt," &c.

" 't Amsterdam by loris Veseler. Ao. 1021. Den 12 Februarius. Voor Caspar van Hilten, aende Beurs inden geeroonden Hoedt." (Black- letter.)

J. B. WILLIAMS.