Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/24

 14 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12S. X.JAN. 7, 1922. published in his ' Men-at-Arms ' (Chapman a,na Hall, Ltd., 1906). Colonel Drury writes with justifiable warmth : Oliver Cromwell had buried Admiral Blake with splendour in Westminster Abbey : Nelson, in a later age, was accorded a national funeral in St. Paul's. Let it be remembered to Charles II. 's lasting shame that he permitted the gallant Myngs to be borne to the tomb with as little ceremony as an obscure pauper. Neglected at his death, the gallant sailor has long been forgotten. England has produced so many great men that some are forgotten who would rank amongst the honoured heroes of a nation not blessed with the genius of the Anglo-Saxon, and one is tempted to wish for a society which would devote itself to rescuing great but forgotten Englishmen from oblivion. G. H. WHITE. 23, Weighton Road, Anerley. 4 THE BEGGAR'S OPERA ' IN DICKENS (12 S. ix. 309). I cannot altogether agree with C. W B. that literary allusions and quotations are not numerous in the Works of Dickens. It seems to me he was rather fond of a certain humorous type of character who is continually larding his speech with fragmentary quotations from songs, plays and other light literature. This type is at least as old as Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Knight of the Burning Pestle.' Examples in Dickens are Jingle in ' Pickwick ' ; Vincent Crummies in ' Nicholas Nickleby ' ; Dick Swiveller in ' The Old Curiosity Shop,' and Silas Wegg in ; Our Mutual Friend.' The two last named both quote trom ' The Beggar's Opera.' In 'The Old Curiosity Shop,' chap. Ixv., Dick Swiveller exclaims : " Speak, sister, speak, pretty Polly say." and in the following chapter : "Since laws were made for every degree, to curb vice in others as well as in me and so forth, you know doesn't it strike you in that light ? " In ' Our Mutual Friend,' Book III., chap, xiv., Silas Wegg addresses Mr. Venus : " For, as the song says subject to your cor- rection, sir When 'the heart of a man is depressed with cares, The mist is dispelled if Venus appears. Like the notes of a fiddle you sweetly, sir, sweetly, .Raises our spirits and charms our ears." M. H. DODDS. ^WILLIAM SPRY OP EXETER (12 S. ix. 511). Several members of the Harston family had Spry as a Christian name. This might -assist C. H. S. CECIL CLARKE. Junior Athenaeum Club. VERLAINE AT STICKNEY (12 S. ix. 429, 472, 518). MR. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG says : " No doubt in a vagabond life like Verlaine's there is an opening for literary discovery." It may be news to many readers of Ver- laine's works that the author's, so-called " vagabond life " has been very much exaggerated by all his biographers. Verlaine was a good actor on and off the literary stage, and, as Gustave Vapereau justly remarked, his great ambition was to be advertised and widely known as a nine- teenth-century Villon, without making any allowances for the distance of time. In fact, Verlaine intended at one time to write a "biographical study" of the old French " vagabond " poet. Paul Verlaine in reality heartily detested a long residence in a country district. The fields and meadows were all very well in the summer, he said, but the long winter months in such places were only suitable for natives of the soil. His principal object in coming -to England was to secure a French literature lectureship at an im- portant educational institution in London. He made applications for positions at King's College, University College, and a ladies' college near Cavendish Square, but having no influence all his efforts were fruitless. He even afterwards wrote to W. E. Glad- stone with reference to a position in the British Museum library, and to Thomas Carlyle about the London Library, but received no replies. Paul Verlaine is sometimes credited with having contributed numerous anti-English articles to Parisian newspapers, but he told my uncle and brother that this information was without foundation. He had no personal ill-feeling against the English, and the few essays on England he wrote were published with his own name. ANDREW DE TERNANT. 36, Sornerleyton Road, Brixton, S.W. HATCHMENTS (12 S. ix. 310, 337, 377, 397, 433, 476, 497). Sixty years since there were many of these hanging above the arches in the Galilee, Durham. I have a photograph which shows them. And they have left their marks on the walls. They were cer- tainly not all peers' coats of arms. Some years ago I asked the sub-verger, Mr. Thos. Atkinson, what had become of the hatchments. He said, " They are in the triforium like a vast else." About the year 1857 I remember a hatch- ment over the door of a house in the Bailey,