Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/25

 12 s. ii. JULY i,i9ia] NOTES AND QUERIES.

of London). Hee dyed June the first, 1632, aged 60 years, leaving his most loving and beloved wife Mary, eldest daughter of John Brewster of VVyfield, in the parish of Barking in the County of Essex, Esq r, his executrix.'

" Over the inscription is the achievement : Arms, Quarterly of 4, 1 and 4, Mildmay : 2 and 3, [Sable] three helmets [argent, garnished or] within a bordure engrailed [of the second], Holyday. Impaling [Sable] a chevron [ermine] between three estoiles [argent], Brewster.

"2. In connexion with this College it is inter- esting to note that John Harvard, founder of the celebrated Harvard College, Cambridge, America, was educated at Emmanuel College ; consequently at the tercentenary festival of that College on June 19, 1884, Harvard was represented bv Charles Eliot Norton, Professor there of the History of Art.

"Sir Henry St. John Mildmay also attended the festival as representative of the founder's family."

W. W. GLENNY. Barking, Essex.

This gentleman is alluded to in ' A Memoir of the Mildmay Family,' by Col. Herbert St. John Mildmay (published in 1913 by John Lane), where his marriage and place of interment are mentioned.

He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Mildmay of Wanstead, and of Shawford, Hants. He was, thus, the grandson of Sir Humphrey Mildmay of Danbury (William, indeed, was buried at Danbury), and the great-grandson of Sir Walter Mildmay of Apethorpe, Danbury, and Queen-Camel (Hazelgrove), Chancellor of the Exchequer to Queen Elizabeth, and founder of Em- manuel College, Cambridge. I believe William left no issue. S. GN.

LATIN CONTRACTIONS (12 S. i. 468). " Expoitorum " is a regular contraction for " expositorum." " Onens " seems to be a misprint for " oneris," the accountant's charge. " P 11 " perhaps for " X 1 '."

J. J. B.

PLAYING CARDS SIXTY YEARS AGO (12 S. i. 468, 514). I think Disraeli's memory was at fault. It was not upon the ace of spades (which bore only the Lion and Unicorn and Garter rnotto around the ace, surmounted by the crown, and the amount of the duty, then one and sixpence) that the Great Mogul appeared, but upon the wrapper. They were called Great Mogul cards, and I remem- ber playing with them as a boy in the late fifties, but I think they must have belonged to a considerably earlier period. An un- opened pack which lies before me as I write has an unmistakably Georgian aspect : it might even be eighteenth century. The Eastern monarch is depicted on the wrapper

in a turban and quite impossible dn-s, and beneath is printed "Hunt <V Sons, Card Makers to His Majesty, 20 Piccadilly,. London." F. H. H. GUILLEMARD/

Old Mill House, Trumpington, Cambridge.

Mattz an

European Character* in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century. By Harry Kurz. (New York, Columbia University Press, 6*. Qd. net.) THE general idea of this book is decidedly a good one ; and it was also a good plan to limit its scope to the period between the time of Louis XIV. and the French Revolution, and, again, to deal princi- pally with works which, not being the product of genius, may be taken to represent all the more- truly the ideas of the average Frenchman of the time. As was to be expected, the best chapter is that on the English, as portrayed by the eigh- teenth-century French dramatist, and the next best that on the Germans. In particular there are some interesting and entertaining paragraphs about the- French dramatic use of 'German music and music- lovers. The material for these two studies is fairly lively, and a decidedly good feature of the book is the apt and lavish but not too lavish use of quotation. The indications of the political situation between France and the several nations concerned,, though slight, are for their purpose sufficient ; and, even if the arrangement of the subject-matter is somewhat mechanical, it can justify itself on the score of being easy to refer to.

The book has, however, one or two fundamental defects. In the first place, the reader is given no> idea as to the source or nature of the plays to be drawn upon. Every cultivated person knows something about Voltaire and Beaumarchais, and may be expected to remember the story of Figaro,, and the circumstances of Voltaire's sojourn in England, or, if he does not, to be able readily to refresh his memory. But such well-known names are most rare. The greater number of these plays not that they are actually very numerous must be unknown to the majority of readers to whom such a work as this could be of any use, and, besides that, difficult of access. It is idle to write allusively of the characters they contain, and of their authors also, as if these were Shakespeare, Moliere, or Goethe, the heroes a Harpa^on or a Faust, and the heroines a Rosalind or a Gretohen There should at least have been a list of the plays to be examined, and some methodical, though it might have been brief, account of the playwrights. And when we say ' examined " we are reminded of our second grievance against the compiler. There is a considerable parade made of an intention to- examine into things, and, after some pages have been filled, considerable parade in the way of recapitulation of things examined. But in those said intervening pages no effective examination of anything has taken place; partly because the method is so extraordinarily casual that it does injustice to the matters collected together, and partly because these matters themselves are too slight, too literally insignificant to bear examina- tion. A good deal of what is said might be fairly challenged on exactly the same grounds as those upon which one would challenge conclusions about