Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/291

 1'J S. II. OCT. 7, 1916. |

NOTES AND QUERIES.

285

Lieutenant General Clayton's Regiment Dates of their

Dates of their first

of Foot (continued). present commissions.

commissions.

Captain Lieutenant Nicholas West. . . . . . 23 July 1737

Ensign, 15 June 1715.

' John Scrivener

5 Mar. 1720-1

Ensign, 13 Oct. 1710.

Ventrice Columbine. .

12 May 1729

Ensign, 11 June 1708.

William Pudsav

24 June 1730

Ensign, 24 June 1710.

John Bell (3) '. .

5 April 1732

Ensign, 15 Jan. 1721-2.

r. , Alexander Grozet Lieutenant* .. \ Edward Booth (3) ..

13 Nov. 1733 27 June 1734

Ensign, 18 Mar. 1722-3. Ensign, 27 Jan. 1725-6.

1 Richard Russell (3) ..

31 Jan. 1735-6

Ensign, 8 Feb. 1727-8.

Stringer Laurence (4)

11 Mar. 1735-6

Ensign, 22 Dec. 1727.

James Montresor (5). .

23 Juh 1737

Ensign, 5 April 1732.

Bartholomew Corneille (3)

19 Jan. 1739-40

Ensign, 13 Nov. 1733.

Henry Rollo

13 Mar. 1733-4.

Thomas Boyer (3, 6). .

10 Dec. 1735.

Edward Browne

25 June 1736.

Thomas Hill

11 Aug. 1737.

Ensigns. . . . -

William Atkins

17 July 1739.

Thomas Baylies (7)

12 Jan. 1739-40.

Francis Lynd (7)

2 Feb. 1739-40.

!-> I.. ,.,.,, /O\

3rHttn

i ii ii' i' \* j t ( Brereton

'111 1 ! 1.

4 ditto.

(3) Still in the regiment in 1755, as Captain.

(4) The celebrated " father of the Indian army." See ' D.N.B.'

(5) Still in the regiment in 1760, then being senior Lieutenant. Was Lieutenant-Colonel in the army, Jan. 4, 1758.

(6) Or Bowyer.

(7) Still in the regiment in 1755, as Lieutenants.

(8) Christian names George James. Still in the regiment in 1760, Captain.

J. H. LESLIE, Major, R.A. (Retired List). (To be ccnttinued.)

GRAY: A BOOK OF SQUIBS.

GRAY was a writer of squibs as well as of odes and elegies, and Mason, his faithful Boswell, is credited with having sedulously garnered them, but what fate, good or ill, has befallen the fasciculus " no manknoweth unto this day." Mr. Edmund W. Gosse calls attention to it thus in his little volume on the poet (" English Men of Letters Series," 1882, p. 167) :

" Mason appears to have made a collection of Gray's Cambridge squibs, which he did not venture to print. A ' Satire upon Heads, or Never a barrel the better Herring,' a comic piece in which Gray attacked the prominent heads of houses, was in existence as late as 1854, but has never been printed, and has evaded my careful search. These squibs are said to have been widely circulated in Cambridge, so widely as to frighten the timid poet, and to have been retained as part of the tradition of Pembroke common- room until long after Gray's death. I am told t hat Mason's set of copies of these poems, of which I have seen a list, turned up, during the present [nineteenth] century, in the library of a cathedral in the north of England. This may give some clue to their ultimate discovery ; they might prove to be coarse and slight, they could not fail to be biographically interesting."

One may perhaps be permit ted to express wonder why Mr. s*r did not follow up

the clue himself, and so strive to enrich his own pages, and those of literary history, with an interesting discovery. However, it has been my self-appointed task to do what, thirty-four years ago, he left undone, with the subjoined result.

Of the eleven Northern cathedrals, four only York, Durham, Carlisle, and Chester came, as likely points d'appui, within range of my quest. As Mason had been (1762) a Residentiary Canon of the first named I approached the librarian thereof, the Rev. Canon Watson, who courteously informed me that, amongst other Mason personalia, the Minster Library does possess a MS. Book of Poems in Mason's handwriting containing squibs, not by Gray, however, but by Mason himself, which was presented to the library in 1855 by the widow of Canon Dixon. Very likely this is the " set " to which Mr. Gosse, possibly misled by his informant as to its authorship, refers ; the coincidence between what he had heard and what I ascertained certainly warrants the inference.

Gray, as we know, was a frequent visitor to his old college friend Dr. Thomas Wharton at Old Park, Durham. Could the " set,'\in