Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/105

 i2S.vi.APKiL3,i92oj NOTES AND QUERIES.

81

LONDON, APRIL J, 1KO

CONTENTS. No. 103.

."NOTES : Wordsworth's ' Ecclesiastical Sonnets ' : Date of Composition, 81 The Parish of St. Michael : Crooked Lane, 83 Principal London Coffee-houses, Taverns, and Inns in the Eighteenth Century, 84 Hugh Griffin, Provost of Canibrai, 86 ' Bloody "Book of Common Prayer Freight-charges during the War, 87 -A Mid-Victorian Memory John Felton, Assassin of the Duke of Marl- borough, 1628, 88.

-QUERIES : Oliver Cromwell and Bogdan Chmielnitzky The "Big Four" of Chicago 'The Three Westminster Boys '-Places in 'Sybil,' 88 Keith of Ravenscraig ' The Holy History 'Sir Henry Cary, 89 - ' Anne of Geiemtein ' Rev. Thomas Garden Song : 'The Spade ' Le Monu- ment " Quand M6me " St. Leonard's Priory. Hants William Thomas Rogers, 90 Theodorus of Cyrene, 91

"REPLIES : Chpss : The Knight's Tour, 91 Mathew Myerse Mrs. Gordon. Novelist, 93 Value of Money Morbus Anglicus Quotation from Hood, 94 General Stonewall Jnckson-Cantrfll Family Burial at Sea : Four Guns Fired for an Officer Capt. B. Grant, 95 George Shepherd Capt. J. C. Grant Duff Homeland, St. Alban's, 96 Clergymen at Waterloo "Cockagee ": " Cypress" : Wine Labels, 97 Bishops of the Fifteenth Century Hallowe'en Epigram :" A little garden little Jowett made " Lieut.-General Sharpe, 98 Pseudonyms "Fray": Archaic Meaning of the Word, 99.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' French Terminologies in the Making : Studies in Conscious Contributions to the Vocabulary ' ' Elkstone : its Manors, Church and Registers.'

Notices to Correspondents.

WORDSWORTH'S 'ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS ' :

DATE OF COMPOSITION. (Pt. iii., Nos. 16, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31.)

THE following paragraphs embody the results of some recent investigations made among the manuscript collection of the late Mrs. Henry A. St. John of Ithaca, New York, and it has been suggested that the establish- ment of the dates of composition of certain of Wordsworth's ' Ecclesiastical Sonnets ' might be of interest to the readers of


 * N. & Q.'

Of Pt. iii., Nos. 26, 27, 28, and 31.

In the ' Letters of the Wordsworth Family,' iii. 249, Knight has printed as follows part of a letter from William Wordsworth to Henry Reed :

Bydal Mount, Sept. 14 [sic] 1842, MY DEAR MR. REED,

... .A few days ago, after a very long interval, J returned to poetical composition : and my first employment was to write a couple of sonnets upon

subjects recommended by you to be placed in the ecclesiastical, series. They are upon the marriage ceremony ....

The original of this letter is in the library of the late Mrs. Henry A. St. John, at Ithaca, New York. It bears the date " Septbr. 4th, 1842 " ; "to take place " is the correct reading, instead of "to be placed " ; and the text which Knight interrupts after "marriage ceremony " continues thus :

"... .and the Funeral Service. I have also, at the same time, added two others, one upon Visiting the Sick, and the other upon the Thanks- giving of Women after Childbirth, both subjects taken from the Services of our Liturgy. To the second part of the same series I have also added two, in order to do more justice to the Papal Church for the services which she did actually render to Christianity and humanity in the Middle Ages. . . ."

Bishop Wordsworth, in his ' Memoirs of William Wordsworth,' quotes the letter correctly (London edition, 1851, ii. 389-90), as does also Henry Reed, under whose supervision the ' Memoirs ' were published in America (Boston edition, 1851, ii. 394-5).

We have final evidence, then, that ' Ecclesiastical Sonnets,' iii. 26, 27, 28, and 31, entitled respectively 'The Marriage Cere- mony,' ' Thanksgiving after Childbirth,' ' Visitation of the Sick,' and ' Funeral Service,' were composed " a few days " before Sept. 4, 1842. They must have been composed after April 28, 1842, as is proved by the following quotation from Reed's letter of that date. The original manuscript in Mrs. St. John's library has been con- sulted :

"... .1 trust ygu will not think your kindness in this matter [the composition of the sonnets on ' Aspects of Christianity in America '] is made a

Eretext for me to abuse it, if I suffered myself to e tempted to make another suggestion respecting the Ecclesiastical Sonnets, the completeness of which, considering the sacred association of the whole series, is especially to be desired. This consideration will I hope weigh with you as some excuse for my venturing to inquire whether among the sonnets in the latter part of the series on the rites and ceremonies of the Church Baptism Catechizing and those (very favourite ones) on Confirmation, there should not be introduced two more, on the solemnization of Matrimony, and the other on the Burial Ser- vice. . . ."

That Hutchinson and Nowell C. Smith in their respective editions of Wordsworth's poetical works show uncertainty as to the date of the sonnets ' Thanksgiving after Childbirth ' and ' Visitation of the Sick ' is partly due to their failure to consult the reprint of Wordsworth's letter of Sept. 4, 1842, as given in the ' Memoirs,' but perhaps more directly to the incomplete version of the