Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/190

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[2"< S. Js 9., MAR. 1. '56.

songs, was an inseparable companion of Mr. Clap- perton ; and for a long series of years, these gen- tlemen, and others musically inclined, used to meet and have concerts in each other's houses. Al- though possessed of an excellent and respectable business as a writer to the Signet, Mr. Clapperton left no fortune behind him. The support and education of a very large family, of whom, as before noticed, only five survived him, prevented his accumulating money. J. M. (2.)

Albert Durers Picture of Melancholy (2 nd S. i. 12. 101.) With a view of assisting your corre- spondent G. F., in his endeavours to comprehend that strange picture, Albert Durer's Melancholy, and drawing attention to a somewhat interesting parallelism in Tennyson's Palace of Art, I would suggest his reading one by the light ol the other. Of course he will find there no key to the detail, but 1 think, on an attentive perusal of both, he will agree with me, that the same idea is intended to be conveyed.

Indeed, all the concluding portion of the poem, commencing with

" Full oft the riddle of the painful earth,"

contains an exact description of the mystical figure, seated so despairingly at the foot of the tower " her lordly pleasure house." (?)

Query, Did Tennyson take the notion of his beautiful allegory from this remarkable picture ?

If he did not, here is another of those singular coincidences of the same idea, finding utterance in widely different times ; and genius, though differing in mode of speech, enunciating to the world, each in its own way, that

" . . " . . . Not for this Was common clay ta'en from the common earth, Moulded by God, and temper'd with the tears Of angels to the perfect shape of man."

I will not occupy your valuable space by say- ing anything on the subject of the emblems ; but if any of your correspondents could help me to the meaning of the square of figures against the side of the tower, I should be very much obliged to him. R. W. P.

Bristol.

Song on Tobacco (2 nd S. i. 115.) One of your correspondents, the other day, wrote all the way from Malta to say that the word tobacco, originally applied to \\\Q pipe and not to the weed. This had been previously stated in 1 st S. x. 24. In the same place will be found, I think, an answer to J. B. The line he quotes seems to be merely a variation of one of the lines of the Rev. R. Erskine, to be found at the end of his Gospel Sonnets.

While upon the subject, allow me to add the following notes relating to its literature. I have the titles only of a book called A Paper of To- bacco, another A History of Tobacco, and a third,

by Fr. Tiedemann, Geschichte des Tabaks. This last is just published, and contains eighteen illus- trations. I also remember to have seen an article in favour of tobacco in a Spanish miscellany, but omitted to make a note of it. And there are several pieces in rhyme on the same subject in the London Magazine for 1735. To these I may add, an article in one of the early volumes of the Penny Magazine for 1835, pp. 349351.

B. H. C.

In the old MS. common-place book, mentioned in 1 st S. xi. 23., the following version of the song is given :

" The Indian weede that's withered quite, Greene at morne, cut downe at night, Showes that like it we must decay.

Thus think ye when ye smoke tobacco.

" The pipe, that is so lylly white, Shews tliou art a mortall wight ; Even such breaks with a touch. Thus think ye, &c.

" And when the pipe is foule within, Think of thy soule defil'd with sin ; And then the fire it doth require. Thus think ye, &c.

" And then the ashes left behind, May serve to put thee still in mind, That unto dust returne thou must. Thus think ye, &c."

T. Q. C.

Tobacco (2 nd S. i. 53.) The Island of Tobago was first so called by Columbus, who gave it that name from tobacco, the pipe which the aborigines, to the surprise of the Spanish, smoked.

R. W. HACKWOOD.

Mason's " History of St. Patrick's Cathedral" (2 nd S i. 96.) This work was originally published in 1819, under the title of Hibernia, Part I. ; con- taining only 444 pages, exclusive of the Appen- dix. It is probably this which your correspon- dent AuntA.'has heard spoken of as an imperfect edition. Perhaps some other correspondent will be kind enough to say, whether there be any means of obtaining the deficient thirty-four pages. I should fear not. E. H. D. D.

Kentish Fire (1 st S. vii. 155.) In reply to this long-standing Query, I beg to inform ROSA that when the Earl of Winchelsea, about the year 1834, attended a very great meeting in Dublin of Protestants, who met to consider the then political state in which the kingdom was placed, the par- ticular mode of expressing great applause, called, in honour of the earl, the " Kentish Fire," was in- vented. Y. S. M.

Dublin.

Priests' Hiding-places (l t S. xii. 14., &c.) At Watcomb, Berks, in what was once the manor- house, but now a farmstead, may be found one of such nooks, the entrance to which is by uplifting