Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/207

 las. vi. MAY 1,1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

167

'Thus, of the same committee, Voltaire ays that there were seven members, and they pronounced against the contents of the book ; Michelet says that there were 'twelve members ; Martin that there were 'ten members. The last two historians affirm that the committee did not condemn the 'book. The truth as to the numbers is immaterial, and perhaps the different state- ments can be reconciled in some way or other. I only quote them to show, as I have often noticed, how difficult it is to arrive at the exact truth as to details in historical ^questions. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG.

The Author's Club, Whitehall Court, S.W.

^REFERENCE IN RU3KIN. (See ^11 S

-vii. 209.) In the fifty-first chapter of 'Fors Clavigera ' Ruskin describes how when a child of 3J years he was painted by North - cote, and how two rounded hills as blue as 'his shoes were introduced in the background of the portrait at his own request. He had already been once, if not twice, taken to Scotland ; and his Scottish nurse had sung to him as they approached the Tweed or JEsk:

For Scotland, my darling, lies full in my view, With her barefooted lassies, and mountains so blue.

'The story and quotation are repeated near the beginning of ' Praeterita,' with the change of "my" to "thy view."

The query about this song put seven years ago by R. R. of Vienna has remained unanswered in 'N. & Q.' I am indebted to my neighbour, Mr. J. E. Morris, for showing
 * me the source of these lines. They are by

Robert Bloomfield, coming in the third stanza of his ' Song for a Highland Drover returning from England.' It begins: "O 'Tweed ! gentle Tweed," and was published in his 'Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs,' 1802. A note in this edition, by C. L., characterizes the piece as : " Natural, affectionate, spirited, and poetical." C. L. stands for Bloomfield's patron, Capell Lofft the elder, who annoyed Charles Lamb by signing sonnets with his initials. Lamb .himself, when he had " the felicity of hearing George Dyer read out one book of the 'Farmer's Boy,' ' thought it "rather childish," and told Bernard Barton after Bloomfield's death that he was not ac- quainted with any other of his writings.

"Lassies " has been Scotticized from the .Suffolk versifier's "lasses."

-Much Hadham, Herts.

EDWARD BENSLY.

We must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

BURTON'S ' ANATOMY ' : " DEUCE ACE NON OSSUNT." Can some one tell me whether this agreeable couplet is Burton's own ? It occurs in a note to ' Anat. Mel.,' i. 2, 4, 6, and plainly exhibits the middle class as the milch-cow :

Deuce ace non possunt, et sex cinque solvere

nolunt ; Omnibus est notum quater tre solvere totum.

The 'N.E.D.' quotes a (later) English version from J. Jones, ' Ovid's Ibis ' :

Deuce ace cannot pay scot and lot

And Sice Sink will not pay : Be it known to all, what payments fall

Must light on Cater Tray. Is there a good modern edition of the ' Anatomy ' ? Mine (1861) has a number of misprints, and blunders such as Venice for Venus, and Lemnian Lake for Lake Leman in a well-known tale of St. Bernard. The notes are often tantalizing ; but perhaps that is Burton's fault. G. G. L.

VAN BALEN : CHARLES LAMB. In his letter to Barton, 1827, Charles Lamb writes : " Apropos of Van Balen, an artist who painted me lately. ..." I should be grateful if any reader could tell me anything of this artist. Although there is nothing about a portrait of Lamb by the American artist Van der Lyn, " Van Balen " may be an error for his name, due either to stammering of the name or to Lamb's playfulness.

Van der Lyn was a friend and countryman of N. P. Willis, whose impressionist pen- portrait of Lamb is indubitably fine.

Lamb seems to have had a knack of re- christening artists especially, in his letters at least, where H. Meyer becomes Myers.

FRANCIS H. CLARKE.

17 Kockmount Road, Upper Norwood. S.E.19.

TOULMIN. According to the 'D.N.B.' the Rev. Joshua Toulmin, D.D. [Harvard], the Nonconformist historian and biographer who d. 1815, was son of Caleb Toulmin of Aldersgate Street, London. Can any one give me the names of his mother and her parents, or explain Dr. Toulmin's exact relationship with his kinsman Dr. Samuel Morton Savage ('D.N.B.'), 1721-91, who had an " Uncle Toulmin " with whom he studied medicine for a short time in Wapping;