Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/109

 2>"S. NO 5., FEB. 2. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

101

lessly the Saxon clergy bad been harried by the Danes, surely there is reason as well as evidence for their fallen condition. E. L

" Solamen miseris" &fc. (2 nd S. i. 57.) Malone made B.'s Query sixty years ago, both in his Shakspeare and his edition of BoswelVs Johnson, but it seems not to have yet been answered. Mr. Croker had not found it. Croker's Soswell, sub. March, 1783. C.

Albert Durer's Picture of" Melancholy' 11 (2 nd S. i. 12.) This engraving is partially explained in The Works of Eminent Masters (published by Cassell), p. 38. :

" Her folded wings, emblematic of that impotent as- piration, which directs her gaze towards heaven, whilst a book, closed and useless as her wings, rests upon her knee. . . . Near her is a symbolical sun-dial, with the bell which marks the hours as they glide away. The sun is sinking into the ocean, and darkness will soon en- velope the earth. . . . Melancholy holds in her right hand a pair of compasses and a circle, the emblem of that eternity in which her thoughts are lost. Various instru- ments appertaining to the arts and sciences lie scattered around her; after having made use of them she has laid them aside, and has fallen into a profound reverie. As a tj'pe of the mistrust which has crept into her heart, with avarice and doubt, a bunch of keys is suspended at her girdle ; above her is an hour-glass, the acknowledged emblem of her transitory existence. But nothing is more admirable than the face of Melancholy, both in the severe beauty of her features and the depth of her gaze, in which may be recognised a likeness to Agnes a remarkable fact, which I do not think has before been noticed. . . Neither the sentiment of melancholy, or the word which expresses it, had appeared in art before the time of Albert Durer."

The foregoing is, I believe, translated from the French of M. Charles Blanc, in the Histoire des Peintres.

The Art Journal for 1851, p. 143., has the fol- lowing observations on this engraving :

" It is quite impossible to analyse it with any certainty of arriving at the truth of its meaning ; critics have been greatly puzzled to give it anything like a reasonable translation. That which seems the most appropriate version of the story is to suppose it indicative of the ten- dency of abstruse sciences, when too closely followed up, to induce fits of melancholy; or, as Solomon says, 'Too much study is a weariness of the flesh.' The figure is that of a female wearing a chaplet of leaves, and having wings; the latter may be typical of the rapidity of thought ... a dog rests at her feet, probably to signify vigilance. . . . The time is night, indicated by the bat, which refers to the hours the studious man devotes to his labours when others are asleep."

The writer does not attempt to explain more than this, but adds :

" Some writers upon Durer's works have supposed this print to be a satire on his ill-tempered wife, whose irri- tating conduct was a source of constant annoyance and vexation to him, and at length, as it has been affirmed, brought him to an untimely end."

CUTHBERT BEDE.

Edward Chamberlaine (1 st S. xi. 217.) " Mais- ter Edward Chamberlaine, of Barnham Broome," to whom epig. Ixx. of Peacham's Emblems was addressed, was the son of Edward Chamberlaine of the same place, and of Bixton in the sstme county, who was the grandson of Sir Edward Chamberlaine of Little Ellingham, Norfolk. He married Anne, daughter of Henry Lambe, Esq., of Tostock, co. Suffolk, by whom he had issue.

G. STEINMAN STEINMAN.

Sir Gilbert Pickering (1 st S. xii. 471.) R. R. is ri;jht. Sir Gilbert, who succeeded Sir Edward as fifth baronet in 1749, was grandson of Gilbert, second son of the first baronet. He married Ann, daughter of Frank Bernard' of Castle Town, King's County, by whom be had two sons and seven daughters. Sir Edward, the eldest, suc- ceeded as sixth baronet ; he married, but died without male issue. Townsend Edward, the second son, went to America, but whether he married or not is unknown.

Sir Gilbert, the first baronet, had seven sons, three of whom had issue, but the male line failed many years ago.

The pedigree in Burke's first edition was in many respects erroneous, and was in consequence withdrawn in the subsequent editions ; at least such is my conjecture. ANON.

Cromwell's Illegitimate Daughter, Mrs. Hartop (1 st S. xii. 205. 353.) I have to apologise to MR. WILLS for not having sooner answered his inquiry respecting my authority for stating that Mr. Jonathan Hartop's third wife was an illegiti- mate daughter, of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, and I now beg to do so, by supplying the extract below, from the first edition of Easton's work on Health and Longevity, published more than half a century ago (1799), relating to the above-named patriarch, which may probably interest some of your numerous readers who have not had an op- portunity of perusing Mr. Easton's book :

"JONATHAN HARTOP, Of the village of Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, Yorkshire. His father and mother died of the plague in their house in the MinorieB, in 1666, and he well remem- bered the great fire of London the same year ; was short in stature, had been married five times, and left seven children, twenty-six grandchildren, seventy-four great jrandchildien, and one hundred and forty great great grandchildren. He could read to the last without spec-
 * acles, and play at cribbage with the most perfect recol-

ection. On Christmas Day, 1789, he walked nine miles jered King Charles II., and once travelled from London ,o York with the facetious Killegrew. He eat but little, lis only beverage was milk, and he enjoyed an uninter- rupted flow of spirits. The third wife of this very extra- ordinary old man was an illegitimate daughter of Oliver Cromwell, who gave with her a portion amounting to about five hundred pounds. He possessed a fine portrait of the usurper by Cooper, for which a Mr. Hollis offered him three hundred pounds, but was refused. Mr. Ilartop
 * o dine with one of his great grandchildren. He remem-