Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/121

 ]_' S. X. FKB. 4. 1022.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 95 JUDITH COWPER: MRS. MADAN. (11 S. x. 27, 97.) IF not too late, I can enlighten MR. R. H. GRIFFITH, of the University of Texas, about the connexion of the poem ' Abelard to Eloisa ' with William Pattison. 1. The poem ' Abelard to Eloisa,' ascribed | both to Judith Cowper and to William | Pattison, is undoubtedly by the former. It begins. In my dark cell, low prostrate on the Ground, Mourning my Crimes, thy Letter Entrance found ; and these words separate it from two poems | with the same title which were published j in 1725 and 1783, and which differ from! each other and from the present one. William Pattison, whose short life was to a large extent passed in penury and want, claimed the poem as his own as early as 1726 (see the Memoir prefixed to his posthu- mous 'Works,' 1728, p. 42; he died in 1727). There can be no doubt that he gave way to temptation ; and meeting this ! anonymous poem circulated in manuscript, ! ventured to assert that he was the author in order to gain credit for himself. It was accordingly printed in his ' Works ' and is identical with the one printed later as Judith's. But, as will be seen from MR. ALAN STEWART'S reply to MR. GRIFFITH (US. x. 97), the poem was written in 1720. At that time Pattison, a farmer's son, was at most 14 years old, and had not even entered Appleby school. By no stretch of imagination could he have written such a poem on this subject at that date. The poem, as Mr. Stewart says, is con- tained in Brit. Mus. MS. add. 28101, which is a collection made by Ashley Cowper, brother of Judith, a commonplace book (as it used to be called) of poems and prose pieces which he wished to set down for his own use in conversation or recital. Many pieces are by himself or by members of the Cowper family, and among them is this poem, ascribed to his sister and dated 1720. Judith was born in 1702, well educated, a friend of Pope, accustomed to good society. Three other poems of hers are dated 1720, including her most ambitious effort, ' The Progress of Poetry.' She was of a modest and retiring nature and printed nothing which she wrote : in fact the ' Abelard to Eloisa ' was never printed separately, but only in Collections in 1728 and 1764 as by Pattison, and in 1755, 1757, 1782, &c., as by "Mrs. Maclan," as she had then become. There can be no doubt at all that Mrs. Madan (nee Judith Cowper) wrote the poem. Mr. Griffith's other points- were answered by Mr. Stewart (see above). FAMA. " ANGLICA [OR RTJSTICA] GENS," &cv (10 S. ii. 405). If PROF. BENSLY is still interested in the matter, let me say that the form " Anglica [not Rustica] gens est optima flens, et pessima ridens " can be carried back from 1669 to at least 1558 r in which year died Robert Talbot of New College, Oxford, after making a collection of odd sayings out of old books. He gave the collection the name of Aurum ex stercore, and extracts, including the line given above, are printed in the Bodleian Quarterly Record, vol. ii., p. 145(1918). FAMA. ' N.E.D.' DINNER (12 S. ix. 388). The dinner was on Tuesday, Oct. 12, 1897, not 1899. It is described at considerable length in the Oxford papers of Saturday, Oct. 16 r such as Jackson's Oxford Journal and The Oxford Times. FAMA. D ALSTONS OF ACORNBANK (12 S. x. 49). In the tenth volume of the new series of the Transactions of the Cumberland and West- morland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society is a long (pp. 200-270) and careful pedigree of the family of Dalston. There is,, so far as I have discovered, no reference in it to any migration of any members of it to Ireland, but Dr. Haswell, the author, states at the outset of the paper that " considerable data are incomplete." In conjecturing, there- fore, which of the Dalstons mentioned in the pedigree may have been the founder of the Irish family, it should be remembered that any particular Dalston may have had sons not mentioned in Dr. Haswell's paper. Of those mentioned, if STEMMA'S date of 160J or there- abouts is correct, the most likely to have migrated is William, mentioned (p. 232) as under age at the time of the death of his father, Robert Dalston, son of Thomas of Dalston, at whose death the family divided into its three branches : ( 1 ) of Dalston, (2) of Thwaite in Greystoke parish, (3) of Acornbank. Robert Dalston of Thwaite died in 1 58 1, and Dr. Haswell can find no trace of William's subsequent history. The same is true of Robert, son of Sir John and grand- son of the same Thomas Dalston ; but as he was not baptized till 1595, and may be the Robert who was buried in 1595 at Penrith