Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/205

 12 S. II. SEPT. 2, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

199

It i.-^ a generally accepted historical fact, hardly open to question, that Moscow was set on fire by Muscovite incendiaries acting under the orders of Rostopchin, the Governor of the city. Napoleon himself is reported to have said in reference to Rostopchin, " The miserable wretch ! To the dire calamities of war he has added the horrors of an atrocious conflagration, created by his own hand, in cold blood!" (See Bussey's ' History of Napoleon,' which gives full particulars of the circumstance.)

WlLLOTJGHBY MAYCOCK.

1. Mr. H. Stuart Jones, in 'The Roman Empire,' 1908, p. 78, says :

"In A.D. 64 took place the burning of Rome.

It was neither the first nor the last of such

visitations, and no proof can be adduced that it was other than accidental ; but it owes undying fame in part to the rumour which gained credence that Nero was its author and sang an aria from his own opera on the Fall of Troy as he watched the flames, in part to the fact that it led directly to that persecution of the Christians which brought to the apostles of the Jew and the Gentile the

crown of martyrdom To Nero the burning of

Rome seemed a fortunate accident, since it enabled him to rebuild the city on a rational and healthy plan, sweeping away its foul and dangerous slums, and replacing them by wide arcaded thoroughfares,

and above all to create the palace of his dreams

the Golden House."

2. I understand that Dr. Holland Rose, lecturing at the recent Cambridge Extension Meeting, stated that Moscow was accident- ally set alight by a party of drunken marau- ders much to the wrath of the reigning Tsar. A. R. BAYLEY.

CHING : CORNISH OR CHINESE? (12 S. ii. 127.) What about the well-known and old- established firm of wholesale ironmongers and manufacturers, Comyn Ching & Co., of 54 Castle Street, Long Acre, and elsewhere, now a limited company ? This was an old business in the eighties, and the founder was certainly not a Mongolian.

W. H. QUARRELL.

EMMA ROBINSON, AUTHOR OF ' WHITE- FRIARS ' (12 S. ii. 149). There is an interest- ing notice of her, extending to nearly a folio column, in the sixth volume of Mr. Boase's ' Modern English Biography,' in which I have had the honour of assisting (the word collaborate to me is detestably ugly). The volume is only in print up to " Wai " at present, and not ready for publication. Miss Robinson died at the London County Lunatic Asylum of " senile decay," the certificate of death says. Mr. Boase says her father

(query, when didhedie?) foralong time kept her out of the proud position she had won, by not allowing her to put her name to her novels. RALPH THOMAS.

on

England's First Great War Minister. By Ernest Law. (Bell & Sons, 6s. net.)

THOSE who are acquainted with the writings of Mr. Ernest Law will open this book with the expecta- tion of enjoying a vigorous piece of work, in which it is not unlikely there will appear an element of quite inoffensive, but well-pronounced truculence. He will not here be found to disappoint such an expectation. The faults of the book are the roughness of the writing and the unsparing use of" exhortation and reprimand, addressed, however, not to the reader, but to the authorities responsible for the all too numerous blunders in the conduct of the present war. To which we would further add the tediousness of too frequent and too heavy praise of his hero. Mr. Law seems to interweave a triple intention into his book : the telling of a very good story ; the arousing and admonishing of the English public and its leaders ; and the working off of certain vehement indigna- tions, scorns, and enthusiasms which are or have been surging within his own breast. Now, this last purpose is no worse than the other two far from it ; but he has let it, time and again, balk him of the others, chiefly by interference and excess.

Nevertheless, we read this book with great' interest, and are glad Mr. Law has given it us. For he is well justified in thinking the parallels between the present war and the brilliant cam- paign organized by Wolsey and carried out by- Henry VIII. in 1513 amply worth renewed study. In those days, as in our own time, there was a tendency on the Continent to regard the English as more or less negligible from a military point of view ; and over much the same ground as is now the theatre of their activity and after the same sort of effort as we have lately been making in the gathering, disciplining, and organizing of an army, the very existence of which seemed but a dim possibility a few months before it appeared on the scene fully equipped and efficient English troops had demonstrated to France and to their own allies, and perhaps also to themselves, the falseness of the prevailing opinion. Mr. Law sets this fine bit of history out alter the plan of Brewer reconstructing it, that is, straight from the actual records of the time, and he adds several telling and curious details which have been recently unearthed. It is instructive to realize how strong was even then the disgust felt for German cruelty and " beastli- ness," and to see how nearly the methods of the " Almayn " resembled those of the present Borlir. Mr. Law gives us the record from a letter of a Welsh officer of the preparation, in the trenches before The'rouanne, or " fumigations " to poison and stop the assailants : a device which he ratht-r naively imputes to the German mercenaries em- ployed by the French and to them alone. A minuter and more curious coincidenco which he mentions is the presence at Tournay of an official'