Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/170

 NOTES AND QUERIES. U2s.iv. ju NE ,i9i8.

extract from Joseph Foster's ' Alumni Oxonienses,' 1888 :

" Pickwick, William, son of Eleazar, of Bath, Somerset (city), gentl. St. John's College, matri- culated 15 May, 1793, aged 16."

There can be little doubt that the next extract is an account of the death of this youth :

" In his 19th year, after a long, often flattering, but at last fatal, illness, Mr. William Pickwick, son of Mr. P. of the White Hart inn at Bath. He had been but a short period entered at Oxford, when the rupture of a blood vessel unpaired a constitution naturally good, and terminated in depriving society of a valuable \oung man, and his distressed parents of an only child," &c. Under date 23 April, 1795, Gentleman's Magazine, 1795, vol. Ixx. pt. i. p. 441.

If Eleazar was about 25 years old when his son (William) was born, he (Eleazar) was born about 1752, and was, perhaps, the Eleazar who married Susanna Combs in 1775.

There is a record of another eighteenth- century Pickwick with an Old Testament name in ' Alumni Oxonienses,' ut supra :

" Pickwick, Rev. Charles, 2nd son of Aaron, of Bath, Somerset, gent. Worcester College, matri- culated 10 October, 1822, aged 19 ; B.A. 1826, died at Becklington Rectory, Somerset, 12 Decem- ber, 1834."

If Aaron was about 25 years old when his son Charles was born, he (Aaron) was born about 1778. He may have been a son of Moses who witnessed Eleazar's wedding in 1775. He could not be a son of Eleazar if The Gentleman's Magazine is correct in saying that the boy William was an only child.

At 7 S. ii. 325 MB. GEORGE Ems cites a notice of the death, on Dec. 8, 1838, at Bath, of " Mr. Eleazer Pickwick, the well-known West of England coach proprietor." He quotes no authority excepting " the obit- uary " of 1838. Possibly this is the Eleazar mentioned above aa of the White Hart.

Probably Eleazar was the "Co." or one of the " Co." of Moses Pickwick & Co. ; see the screen. It is, of course, impossible to prove absolutely that no Pickwick was a foundling ; but what I have written takes the family back to about 120 years before Dickens read " Moses Pickwick " on the coach door. It would be far from unlikely that there should be a Pickwick family in Bath 200 years ago and much earlier, taking its name from the village, distant about eight miles. Perhaps the name " Moses " (one of Eleazar, Moses, and Aaron) was the sole foundation of P.'s legend and its retrogressive variants.

ROBEBT PlEBPOINT.

In Kirby's ' Winchester Scholars ' the- following entries occur, under the respective years 1791 and 1816, at pp. 281 and 301 :

" Pickwick, William (Bapt. 8 Aug., 1776), Lyncombe and Widcombe, Bath. Left, April, 1793. Major in the Army, and son of the Coach Proprietor. See ' Pickwick Papers,' ch. 35."

"Pickwick, Charles (Bapt. 17 Sept., 1803), Bath. To Wore. Coll. B.A. 1826."

JOHN B. WAHTEWBIGHT.

BABBEL-OBGANS (12 S. iv. 100). The statement that the first barrel-organs were imported into England from the Low Countries rests on a passage quoted by Miss Schlesinger in her article in ' The Ency. Brit.' from Jedediah Morse's ' Ameri- can Geography ' (Boston, Mass., 1796). The lady begins her article by defining a barrel-organ as " a small portable " instru- ment " mechanically played by turning a handle," and follows thia up later with a reference to a certain organ-builder, Jehan van Steenken dit Aren, in the fifteenth century, who built an organ that was not portable like the English street-organ, but a very substantial instrument, which, more- over, evidently played of itself without any human help. Next we have the statement that accurate and detailed diagrams of every part of the mechanism for a large stationary (not portable) barrel-organ worked by hydraulic power (not by hand) were published in 1615. We may assume that the lady means Solomon de Caus's ' Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes,' which was published during that year at Frankfurt in Germany, and an English translation of which (?) by John Leak was issued in London in 1659, though in this the author's front name is Isaac. Then we have a reference to a barrel-organ, also worked by hydraulic power, described by Dr. Robert Fludd, the Rosicrucian, in a book published at Oppenheim, also in Germany, 1617.

With regard to the " organo tedesco '.' mentioned in the list of the Duke of Modena's instruments in 1598, we are told that " tedesco " meant either Dutch or German ; but so did " Dutch " in England. Nothing is said about the French name " orgue d'Allemagne " (Germany again), if this was ever actually used. M. J. Rambosson in his ' Histoire des Instruments de Musique ' (Paris [1897]) reproduces an engraving of a portable hand-played barrel-organ by Bou- chardon (1737-42), and calls the instrument " une orgue de Barbarie," the name being, no doubt, a corruption of Barberi, the name