Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/611

 12 s. VIIL JUNE 2 g, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 501 LONDON, JUNE 25, 1921. CONTENTS. No. 167. NOTES : A Note on Raphael Morghen, 501 Reynolds of Coolbeg, Co. Donegal, 502 Aldeburgh Chamberlains' Account-Book, 506 Louis de Rougement Cheese sup- plied to the Army, 1650-1 The Pseudonym " Jacob Larwood," 508 American Editions of Gray's ' Elegy ' The Rhine regarded as a French River Dublin Street Place-Names, 509. QUERIES .-Horse-riding Records ' Neck or Nothing ' : Author Wanted, 509 Flag flown on Armistice Day Trai^portations after the Forty-five " Bomenteek " Ladies' Portraits Combe House, Herefordshire The Growth of Bogs Tuninghen Cheese-r-Manchester and Milford Railway, 510 " Foolproof " Relapses into Savage Life Alexander McLeod Thomas MacGuire Dr. John Misaubin The Surname Mayall Printing of Registers Sun-dials Pulse Wild Horses Foxes and Lambs Hop-picking Songs, 511 Silver Medal : Identification Sought Maximilian William, Brother of George I. Bishop of Oxford's Coinage " To curry favour " Staresmore of Froles worth Hebrew and English Idioms, 512. REPLIES : Wringing the Hands, 512 Hackney, 513 Franklin Nights (or Days) Shakespeare's Songs Robert Johnson, 514 Joan of Arc " Parliament Clocks " " The Poor Cat i' th' Adage Early Stage-Coaches, 515 Olive Schreiner " Auster " Land Tenure " Viscount Stafford " Good old " James Macburney S. E. Thrum Old London : The Cloth Fair Arms of Elling- ham, 516 Danteiana The Caveac Tavern " Mag- dalen " or " Mawdlen," 517 Hearth Tax " Tenant in Capite " The Hooded Steersman Four-Bottle Men : Glass Collections Window Tax and Dairies, 518. NOTES ON BOOKS: 'English Metrists ' ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona ' ' A Manual of Seismology.' Notices to Correspondents. A NOTE ON RAPHAEL MORGHEN. WHILE examining some MSS. in the Semi- nario of Padova, one of those quietly baautiful libraries which form very exqui- site recollections in the mind of the student, I discovered a letter written to a certain famous Padovan professor, not entirely insignificant in itself and profoundly in- teresting to the lover of Italian literature. It is addressed : ALL' EGBEGGIO S. PROFESSORS, IL SIG. DOTT. A. MARSAND, PADOVA, and runs as follows : Bureau des Affaires Etrangeres, ce 2 juillet, 1821. Monsieur, J'ai 1'honneur de vous accuser reception de la lettre en date du 8 juin, que vous m'avez fait 1'honneur de m'adresser, au sujet de 1'exemplaire de I'Edition des Poesies du celebre Petrarque, que vous adressates, il y a quelques mois, a Sa Majest6, mon Auguste Maitre. Le superbe Ouvrage est effectivement parvenu a sa haute destination, et j'ai bien du plai|ir, Monsieur, en vous assurant du haut Prix que le Roi mettra a la possession d'un livre auquel vous paraissez avoir youes tant de soins, et qui transmet a la posterite les Compositions de votre illustre Poete, en une maniere qui doit faire Honneur a la fois au memoire de 1'Auteur et aux talens de son Editeur, J'ai PHonneur d'etre, Monsieur, votre tres humble et obeisant Serviteur LONDONDERRY. The letter shows George IV. in a new light, as a patron of Italian letters if not as a profound student, and may serve, in some measure, to restore some of its brilliancy to the lustre of that cosmopolitan beau ; but it has a finer signification beyond this : it shows undoubtedly that Italian letters, Italian scholarship, counted on Britain as a centre of interest, if not of great financial support. The edition of Marsand, published in two large folio volumes by the Tipografia del Seminario in 1819, remains one of the most perfect editions of Petrarch in exist- ence, an edition entirely worthy of that fine old press which contributed so much in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the love of beautiful printing and equally beautiful engraving. Even now the actual paper of the edition is snow-white, and the letters have a delicate yet intensely black type reminiscent of the finest works of the Venetian presses. It is a fit memorial to the poet associated with neighbouring Arqua, and the librarian shows with pride an autographed Latin epistle by him written in a small, exquisitely clear hand. The great interest of the edition, however, lies in the engraving given as a frontispiece by Raphael Morghen after a painting by Simon Memmi Beati gli occhi, che la vider viva surely one of the few engravings which give to the portrait of a supremely beautiful woman a supremely beautiful realization. The lifeless portrait of Memmi becomes, in the hands of Morghen, a rich, lovely, palpitating thing quivering with life and dignified at the same time ; the flesh tones are rendered very softly and graded imperceptibly, with a very great precision of line, silvered and toned from velvety shadow to a milkier light the introduction of colour into engraving by means of engraving alone. The history of this engraver presents many points of interest and is, in fact, vital for our knowledge of that art which