Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/286

 278

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. I. APRIL 2, '98.

the land and marine forces of the Honourable East India Company. An excellent biography of him will be found in Charles Knight's Singularly enough, he was the second son of Richard Child, and was born on 7 May, 1630, and I was the second son of Eichard Child, and born on 7 May, 1830.
 * National Cyclopaedia ' (division Biography).

JOSIAH CHILD.

An inquiry for the brothers and sisters of Sir Josiah Child, Bart., has already appeared in ' N. & Q.' It seems that a brother died at Bombay 4 February, 1690. References were given to the 'Dictionary of National Biography 'and Burke's 'Extinct Baronetage/ See 7 th S. iv. 247, 534; v. 74.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

MR. BUMBLE IN LITERATURE (9 th S. i. 205). Literally Mr. Bumble had nothing to say on the subject of literature. He was not even asked for more gruel by Oliver Twist. The request was made to the master. The latter, however, did not scowl. "He gazed in stupefied astonishment." And on the request being repeated in response to the master's faint "What!" said master "shrieked aloud for the beadle." It is not even recorded that thereupon the beadle, otherwise Mr. Bumble, scowled. But, apart from the special condi- tion of the querist with regard to Dickens's works, isn't it straining literalism too far to apply scientific methods to the use of stock tags? ARTHUR MAYALL.

"SCALINGA" (9 th S. i. 107, 215). In the fifties, when wheat was selling for about eighty shillings a quarter, my father took a farm on the Nottinghamshire Wolds. The soil was clay, and the farm consisted almost entirely of grass land. Some thirty acres were floated preliminary to being " broken up " for wheat. I was only a small boy at the time, and I have but a hazy recollection oi the details of the process ; but the implement used was called a " float," and was a sort oi " breast-plough " (as MR. ADDY puts it), whicl simply shaved off the sward, but did no plough it in. The sward thus taken off was then burnt, and the ashes were spread upon the land, which was afterwards ploughed ii the usual way. In this neighbourhood th< float is called a "skimmer." C. C. B.

Ep worth.

WORDSWORTH AND BURNS (9 th S. i. 208). "The poor inhabitant below" introduces th< fourth stanza of ' A Bard's Epitaph,' writter for the Kilmarnock edition of the poem, when Burns meditated emigration to the

Indies. He wrote several pieces in of the farewell that he was preparing o take, but this is the strongest, most vivid, md most impressive of them all. In a Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns ' (James jray of Edinburgh), Wordsworth described a puolic declaration from his own will a con- fession at once devout, poetical, and human a history in the shape of a prophecy" 'Prose Works of W'ordsworth,' ii. 15, ed. jrosart). See Scott Douglas's 'Works of Robert Burns,' i. 326. THOMAS BAYNE. Helensburgh, NB.
 * he poem as " a sincere and solemn avowal

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Aiistrcdicts First Preacher: the Rev. Richard John- son. By James Bonwick, F.R.G.S. (Sampson Low Co.)

THE Rev. Richard Johnson, the friend of Charles Simeon, John Newton, and William Wilberforce, was the first clergyman sent out as chaplain to the settlers in New South Wales. He was appointed n 1786, when he appears to have been thirty-three fears of age, was a very zealous and earnest man, Belonging to what was called the Evangelical section of the Church of England, and had a suffi- ciently varied and, as may be believed, painful experience. When in 1841 Mr. Bonwick first visited Australia he came on few traditions of a man whose name, apparently, had all but vanished. While pursuing his investigations of colonial his- tory he collected such information as he could find, the result being the appearance of this interesting and, in its way, important book. As a biography of a remarkable man and a chronicle of strange and sometimes romantic events it will appeal to many readers. It supplies, however, in audition, much curious and stimulating information not only as regards convicts sent to Botany Bay, but with respect to English convicts in America, the state of English prisons in the last century, the native population of New South Wales, the South Sea islands, missionaries, convicts' voyages, colonial marriage questions, and similar matters. It may be read, accordingly, by most with the certainty of pleasure and the probability of edification. The most dramatic episode in the volume narrates \ the exceptionally barbarous murder of Samuel Clode, an ex-missionary, which in one or two respects recalls the famous history of Ai'den of Feversham. Should the book, as is probable enough, j reach a second edition, we should be grateful for an ' index.

An Eton Bibliography. By L. V. Harcourt. (Son-

nenschein & Co.)

MR. HARCOURT'S bibliography, formed principally upon his own collection of Etoniana, and enlarged by the titles of books which he seeks to possess, is arranged chronologically, the first item bearing date 1560. Two hundred copies in all are issued. We do not always know in what respect books are entitled to rank as Etoniana, and should be glad sometimes of further information. The bibliography does not claim to be complete. Among works.