Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/507

 12 S.X. MAY 27, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 417 SOME MID -VICTORIAN COTERIES (12 S. x. 321). I presume the " two distinguished Fellows " (of the Society of Antiquaries) who founded the Noviomagian Society in 1828 were T. Crofton Croker and A. J. Kempe. An interesting resume of the Society from the pen of Mr. George R. Wright, F.S.A., was published soon after the death of Sir Benj amin Ward Richardson in 1896, and included the names and official titles of members from 1884, many of the titles being quaint and curious. It says nothing as to the power which apparently, at a later date, authorized dissolutions at the hands of its then President or "Lord High"; the earlier work by Sir B. W. Richardson I have not seen. A long - lived coterie has been " The Club of Nobody's Friends," a dining club founded in 1800 and still existing. Its Biographical List of Members, privately printed in two volumes (1885 and 1902), furnishes some good reading, with short and useful sketches of over 350 members ; and vol. ii. includes records of meetings from 1885 to 1902, sometimes racily put, as when a newly appointed Rouge Dragon " stood on his hind legs and unfolded his tale (tail)." W. B. H. " TIGHT " AND OTHER EQUINE TERMS (12 S. x. 367, 399). On the general meaning of " tight " in the sense of approval may be quoted N. Bailey's ' Dictionarium Britanni- cum ' (1730, folio), which gives : Tight ; not slatternly in Dress. Tightness; Cleverness in Dress, in. opposition to Looseness ; also, Cleverness in household affairs or Housewifery. W. B. H. ADMIRAL SIR CHARLES COTTON, BART. (12 S. x. 371).' The Georgian Era,' vol. ii. (1833), says that the Admiral was born about 1746. . . . He died suddenly on the 23rd of Feby, 1812, at Stoke, near Ply- mouth. . . was married on the 27th of Feby, 1798, to Philadelphia, eldest daughter of Sir Joshua Rowley, by whom he had issue two sons and two daughters. It will be seen that the dates above differ from those in the query. W. B. H. PEEL YATES (12 S. x. 310, 379). A short account of the Yates family, formerly of Yates Peel, near Manchester originally of Blackburn will be found in No. 6 of ' Pilgrimages to Old Homes,' by Fletcher Moss, in which book there is also a portrait of Joseph Yates, High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1728. FREDERIC CROOKS. ROPE OF SAND (12 S. x. 309, 353). This query throws some light on the Emersonian allusion to Asmodeus as a weaver of ropes from sand. In February, 1845, Carlyle, replying to a letter from Emerson, who had described E. P. Clark of Boston as the truest of all Carlylians, with a wonderful collection of portfolios and prints (now in the Boston Public Library), wrote : You have done one very ingenious thing to set Clark upon the Boston booksellers' accounts ; Michael Scott setting the devil to twist ropes of sand. The ' Jewish Encyclopedia,' under ' Athenians,' shows that the Talmud and Midrash have stories of making thread or string from sand. THOMAS FLINT. In The Folk -Lore Journal for May, 1884, at p. 157, Mr. G. H. Kinahan says that according to a legend of St. Patrick that he heard in the neighbourhood of the Shannon, the saint gave the devil a number of things to do, all of which he succeeded in, till at last he told him to .make a rope of sand. This he failed in, and the remains of the devil's rope is the Eskers that stretch across Ireland from Dublin to Galway Bay. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. EARLY VICTORIAN LITERATURE (12 S. x. 210, 273, 332, 372). The recollections of the late Mr. W. E. Church cited at the last reference are, I fear, at fault in claiming George Daniel as one of the writers of this sensational fiction for Edward Lloyd. Daniel produced in his eighteenth year a novel in three volumes, ' The Adventures of Dick Distich ' (published anonymously by Effingham Wilson, 1812) ; this was possibly suggested to its author by ' Tristram Shandy ' and a desire to satirize his own contemporaries and experience, but it is dull reading. Later he wrote satire, verse, dramatic criticisms and antiquarian gossip. But such weird fictional romances im- possible ! He lacked the ability, and his occupations gave a different direction to his tastes. Probably Mr. Church knew him well as a rather dogmatic authority on Shakespeare, the Drama, old London and subjects then familiar to him, but not as a writer of romances. ALECK ABRAHAMS. MR. ANDREW DE TERNANT throws con- siderable light upon the subjects in question, and " clears the air " surrounding some of these " mysteries." I wonder whether the material collected by the late Mr. W. E.