Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/49

 9 th S. X. JULY 19, 1902.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

41

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1903.

CONTENTS. No. 238.

NOTES : The 'Craftsman' on Chess, 41 Bacon- Shake- speare, 43 Dunwich or Dunmow a Bishop's See, 44 Of Alley " Motherland " "Curmudgeon" "Coke'' Hiddenite, 45 Young's ' Night Thoughts ' Comic Scotch" Wedgewood," 46.

QUERIES : Lowell Quotation Monastic Sheep-farming Lambrook Stradling " Tressher" Byron's Bust, 47 Pronunciation of O Dictionary of Greek Mythology- Douglas ' Ghost at the Funeral' Cucking or Ducking Stool Sixteenth-Century Duel "Care, vale "" Harry Dick hat " : " Adelaide waistcoat " " Armada " Chests, 48 Stafford Family Projection on a Saw Wellington Pam- phlet Chi-Rho Monogram Botanical Szechenyi, 49.

REPLIES -.Shelley's Ancestry, 50 Guest Family Straw- berry Leaves Trinity Monday, 51 Byron's Grandfather Honorificabilitudinitas Cockade of George I. Old Wooden Chest, 52 Westminster City Motto "Mere- steads" Lovel : De Hautville Tedula Almanac Medals, 53 Tennis Jews' Way, Gate, &c. " Heroina" Metrical Psalter " Ycleping " the Church, 54 " Auto- crat " in Russian Merry England and the Mass Arthur's Crown "Sixes and sevens," 55 Wilcocks "Babies in the eyes " Londres Ainsworth, 58 Mrs. Thrale's Streat- ham House" Flowering Sunday," 57 Yarrow Unvisited Follett King's Champion, 58 Gladstone : an Italian Address Arms of Continental Cities Trentham and Gower Families, 59.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Arrowsmith's Registers of Wigan' ' Catalogue of Deeds in the Record Office,' Vol. III. ' Folk-lore.'

Notices to Correspondents.

THE 'CRAFTSMAN' ON CHESS: L. ROU.

1. IN its number (376) for 15 September, 1733, the Craftsman the chief contributors to which were Bolingbroke, William Pulteney, Nicholas Amhurst, Swift, Arbuthnot, Pope, Gay, and Chesterfield published a paper styled, in its introduction, ' A Short Essay on the Game of Chess.' It had, as was to be expected, an undertone of Toryism, but was set off by a more or less allegorical display of words and phrases drawn from the technical vocabulary of chess. It was signed R. That this signature throws no certain light on the authorship of articles to which it is affixed has been shown by Mr. Walter Sichel in the recently published second part of his ' Bolingbroke and his Times ' (pp. 248-54) ; but the author's analysis of the Craftsman's contents, of great value in respect to so many contributions, does not include this essay, although the statement is made that " the greater portion of those signed 'R.' are by Bolingbroke." In an obliging response to a private inquiry, Mr. Sichel says, however, that " Bolingbroke contributed little, if at all, to the Craftsman in 1733," and that " there is

no trace of his ever having been a chess- player " ; while, in regard to the essay on chess, he adds : " At all events, I feel pretty sure that its author was not Bolingbroke." The Craftsman paper was reprinted the same year in the Gentleman's Magazine (iii. 473-4). Any suggestions tending to identify its writer are greatly desired.

2. Almost immediately after its publication appeared a pamphlet in reply to the essay. It was dated (21 September) from Slaughter's Coffee-house, which was probably then, as it surely was a little later, the principal London resort of British and foreign chess-players. Its title was : ' A Letter to the Craftsman on the Game of Chess, occasioned by his Paper on the Fifteenth of this Month ' ; it was like- wise to some extent political (Whig) in cha- racter, though assuming its main object to be criticism and correction of the chess language employed by the Craftsman's contributor. This pamphlet has usually been ascribed to Lord (John) Hervey, a well-known London figure, at one time Lord Privy Seal, the friend of (" Cicero ") Middleton, the object of Horace Walpole's odium, but especially remembered as the husband of the attractive and intel- lectual Lady ("Molly") Hervey. Is there any real ground for this ascription? Lord Hervey, a few months before, had prefixed a dedication (addressed*' to the patrons 1 of the Craftsman ") to another pamphlet, ' Sedition and Defamation Display d,' in which he had ruthlessly assailed Pulteney and Bolingbroke, an act which had led (25 January, 1731) to a rather harmless duel between the former and Hervey. Have not the two pamphlets been confounded 1 Did Hervey ever acknowledge the authorship of the chess tractate ?

3. In the year subsequent to its appearance, this rejoinder fell into the hands of William Cosby, then Governor of New York, who showed it to a resident of that colony noted for his ability at chess. This was the Rev. Lewis Rou (as he signed his name though some of his contemporaries speak of him as "Louis Roux"), pastor, from 1710 to his death, of the most important Huguenot church in America, a man of learning, edu- cated at Ley den, but born at Paris, where his father, Jean Rou, was an " avocat au parlement," an influential Protestant, and an historical writer of ability. Obedient, as it appears, to a request from the Governor, Rou penned a response to the brochure under the title of ' Critical Remarks upon the Letter to the Craftsman on the Game of Chess occa- sioned by his Paper of the 15th of Sept., 1733, and dated from Slaughter's Coffee-house Sept. 21.' In this reply the author paid no