Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/443

 12 s. ix. NOV. s, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 361 LONDON. NOVEMBER 5. 1921. CONTENTS. No. 186. NOTES : Jane Austen's Gothic Titles, 361 Saracen or Saxon ?, 362 Glass-painters of York, 363 Passing Stress, 360 Dr. Johnson and Shelley The Chesapeake and the Shannon W. Moncrieff, 368 A Modest Epitaph of the Eighteenth Century A Beethoven Piano, 369. Q I " !; K I US : " Flurdcglaiur " Tom Mostyn, 369 The Maccabees : The Spartans and the Jews Surnames as Christian Names Pinchbeck Article contrasting Oxford and Cambridge Earl of Essex in Holland, 1585 David Wykchani Martin Verbalized Surnames Xotting Barn Farm Mrs. Hunn, Mother of George Canning, 370 English Writers : Dates of Birth and Death wanted Kusnini Abercrombie or Abercromby Abbot' The Private Papers of Henry llyecroft ' " Between the Devil and the deep sea " St. Christopher and the Christ Child Dr. Whittcnbury Heraldic : the Helmet Agneta Johnston Isabella lloutledge " Lady Madge Phmket,"
 * J71 Cromwell's Methods of Diplomacy Reference wanted

(Tennyson) Author wanted, 37^. REPLIES : Thomas Stukeley, 372 Astley's and Sanger's Circuses, 373 R. Henry Newell Dr. Fifleld Allen- Rebecca Godsalve Baths or Salting Tanks. 374 " Artemus Ward " " Butter goes mad twice a year " Villa's ' Game of Chess ' Making Bricks without Straw ' Album Arnicorum ' of Wandering Scholars, 375 St. Colme's Charm Jews' Disabilities Surnames with Double Letters Brothers of the Same Christian Name The Prints and Library cf Joseph Nollekens Charles Wither Rev. E. Davies, Poet. 376 George Wateson, Rector of Millbrook Hatchments Burial-places of Eminent Scientists Mulberries School Magazines Re- prints of Old Newspapers Tudor Trevor, Earl of Here- ford Naming of Public Rooms in Inns Virement. 377 Dante's Beard" What between " : " What from " " Skelder " and " Skeldergate," 378. K.vciJSH ARMY SLANG : Comments and Correction?, 378. NOTES ON BOOKS : ' Modern English Biography ' Quarterly Review. Notices to Correspondents. JANE AUSTEN'S GOTHIC TITLES. THE list of " horrid " books which Isabella Thorpe reads to Catherine Morland in ' Xort hanger Abbey,' ch. vi., has already been discussed by correspondents of ' N. & Q.,' and all but one of the seven titles have been more or less completely identified. Mr. Saintsbury cautiously remarks : H is said that the apparently burlesque titles (' Horrid Mysteries,' &c.) of the rubbish in which UK- innocent Catherine and the less innocent Isabella revelled, are certainly genuine in part and probably in whole (' The Peace of the Augustans,' London, 1916, p. 168). As a matter of fact information about all seven books on Isabella's list is easily accessible in the literary reviews of the 1790's, and is embodied in the following series of notes : 1. 'Castle of Wolfenbach.' A German story, in 2 vols. By Mrs. Parsons, author of Errors of Education,' 'Miss Meredith,' ' Woman as she should be ' and ' Intrigues of a Morning.' 12mo. Lane, 1793. Noted in The British Critic, iii. (1794), p. 199. This novel is opened with all the romantic spirit of ' The Castle of Otranto,' and the reader is led to expect a tale of other times, fraught with en- chantments and spells impending from every page. As the plot thickens, they vanish into air4nto thin air, and the whole turn out to be a company of well-educated and well-bred people of fashion, some of them fraught with sentiments rather too refined and exalted for any rank, and others, de- formed by a depravity that for the honour of human nature we hope has no parallel in life. Evidently Mrs. Parsons, like Clara Reeve before her, was trying to put a veneer of Gothic material on the eighteenth-century novel of manners. Allibone says she pub- lished eight novels from 1790 to 1796. The catalogue of Harvard College Library gives her name as Eliza (Phelp) Parsons. She has another title on our list (see 3, below). 2. ' Clermont : A Tale.' By Regina Maria Roche. 4 vols. 12mo. Lane, 1798. Noted in The Critical Review, xxiv. (1798), &. 356 ; ' Cambridge History of English iterature,' xi. 510. There was an Ameri- can reprint, Philadelphia, 1802. Mrs. Roche is no doubt the best known writer on our list. 3. ' The Mysterious Warning.' A Ger- man tale, in 4 vols. By Mrs. Parsons. 12mo. Lane, 1796. Noticed in The British Critic, viii. (1796), p. 548, and The Critical Review, xvi. (1796), p. 474. 4. ' The Necromancer ; or The Tale of the Black Forest. Founded on facts.' Trans- lated from the German of Lawrence Flam- menberg by Peter Teuthold. 12mo. 2 vol?. Lane, 1794. Noticed in The Monthly Re- view, xvi. (1795), p. 465, and The Analytical j Review, xx. (1795), pp. 52, 594. Jane Austen j gives the title inaccurately as ' Necromancer of the Black Forest,' and I do not find that it has been hitherto identified. Of course Miss Scott's pantomime, ' The Necromancer ' (1809), discussed in connexion with these Gothic titles by correspondents of ' N. & Q.' (11 S. vii. 238, 315, 396), can have nothing to do with ' Northanger Abbey,' which was written in 1797 and 1798, and revised for the press in 1803 (William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, ' Jane Aus ten : Her Life and Letters,' London, 1913, p. 96). 5. ' The Midnight Bell ' has been well dis- cussed by W. B. H. (11 S. vii. 14), who shows that the title is included in the works both of George Walker (c. 1814) and of Francis Lathom (1798 and 1800). But there is little difficulty in supposing that we have here to