Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/49

 2'"' S. N"3., JAN, 19. 'o

NOTES AND QUERIES.

41

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1856.

Popes Mother (1 st S. x. 479.) Your corre- spondent M. I), asks where he can find an ac- count of the mother of Pope. I beg to refer him to that most admirable of all topographical works, South Yorkshire ; The History and Topography of the Deanery of Doncaster, &fc,, by llev. Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., vol. ii. p. 292. If M. D. has the means of access to the book, he will thank me for bringing him acquainted with it, even if he has no special interest in the district it describes. But in case he should not have the means of readily re- ferring to it, I will give the substance of the in- formation it contains.

Marrow House, in Worsborough Dale, two miles south of Barnsley, so called from a family of the same name formerly resident there, is said by tradition to be the birth-place of Edith, the mother of Pope. Certain it is that her baptism, together with that of three of her sisters, appears in the parish register of Worsborough ; and

" I add the entries," says Mr. Hunter, " as a contri- bution to the illustration of those still unillustrated lines: ' Of generous blood, past shed in honour's cause, While yet in Britain honour had applause, Both parents sprung.'

Only remarking that the addition of ' Mr." would not have been at that period given to her father's name, if he had not been regarded as something above the mere yeo- manry of the time :

' 1642, June 18, Bap. Edith, daughter of Mr. William Turner.' "

Mr. Hunter further refers to an account published in the Gentleman's Magazine at the time of her death, 1733, where she is said to be the last sur- vivor of the children of Mr. Turner, of York, Esq., by Thomasine Newton, his wife. Perhaps some of your readers may be able to state more respecting the family of Mr. Turner than the ac- complished author of South Yorkshire, or his pre- decessor Brooke, had been able to discover ; and if that be the result, I shall not regret troubling you with this long note. C. H.

Leeds.

Dennis the Critic. Southey has spoken fa- vourably of Dennis as a critic, and it must be ad- mitted that some of his remarks on Pope and Addison evince great shrewdness as well as learn- ing. He was, however, a coarse, violent, dogmatic litterateur, and with all his surliness a gross flat- terer when it suited his purpose. The following affords a specimen of his utter want of taste, and is also a sample of the sort of criticism which was heard at times in Will's Coffee-House. It is part of a letter addressed, Jun 14, 1720, to Henry Cromwell, Pope's friend, " honest, hatless Crom-

well, with red breeches," who went a-hunting in a tie-wig :

" There was a great dispute at Coffee-House,

between the wits there and the manager of the play-house [Booth ?], who acts the part of Othello. The wits asked the player how he liked this expression in his own part, ' Excellent wretch ! ' To which the latter answered, that he liked it so ill that he always left it out ; upon which they immediately extolled it to the skies, and looked upon the player with great contempt. Though that tra- gedian has no more judgment in tragedy than an ass in music, I am apt to believe that he was this once in the right. The terms ' excellent wretch,' being inconsistent and contradictory, make the meaning absurd, and the expression nonsense. This is my opinion at present ; but I know not how long it will be so, because I have not as yet heard yours."

D.

Pope threatened with a Flogging. Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his edition of Johnsons Lives, by an unpublished letter from Broome to Fenton, May 3, 1729, confirms the story of Ambrose Philips having hung up a rod at Button's Coffee- House, with which he threatened to chastise Pope. The following contemporary notice of this affair is curious :

" Aretin, the only author besides that of The Dunciad, Avithin these three hundred years, that acquired a famous infamy by his pen, bragged of keeping many kings and princes tributary to him. But Aretin had the shape of a man, and might bear a beating; whereas our poet "must of necessity expire under the very first blow ; and he can, by the structure of his person, only be liable to one sort of correction, that of the rod; which some time ago Mr. Ambrose Philips, being abused by him, bought for his use, and stuck up at the bar of Button's Coffee- House ; and which he avoided by his usual practice, after every lampoon, of remaining a close prisoner at home. The same discipline was prepared for him last summer, which he escaped in the manner above-mentioned." A Letter to a Noble Lord, 1729 ; the author signs himself Will. Flogg."

Another of these Pope libels (" The Martiniad") has the following amusing note :

" A cricket is an animal famous for the smallness of his voice and legs. He is observed to creep into the chimneys of old houses, where there is much filth and nastiness, and where the walls are full of holes. Hence men who get into families only to pick up scandal, and iind out their flaws, are often assimilated to cricket?."

F.

Passage in Pope (1 st S. xi. 65.) " The hero William and the martyr Charles," &c. With dif- fidence, enhanced by an impression that the sig- nature of your correspondent C. is but the initial letter in the name of the greatest living English critic, I offer the following explanation of the above' passage in Pope's "Epistle to Augustus."

Pope imagines Jonson shocked at the want of " discerning spirit " shown by Charles in pension- ing so wretched a poet as Quarles, and Dennis as having a like feeling with regard to William's patronage oi' Blackmore ; and represents each