Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/287

. XL APRIL 4, 1903. NOTES AND QUERIES.

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spots intimately connected with the poet. As the present volume, intended to be in 400 pages, has swelled into 600, and as previous volumes have undergone a similar expansion, this development of the original scheme is seen to be indispensable. None will, indeed, be disposed to murmur, and most will receive with gratitude what must be regarded as an enhancement of delight. To ' Don Juan' are added fifteen stanzas of a seventeenth canto, now printed for the first time. The value of these may be contested, but their genuine- ness is not open to dispute. They were found, Mr. Coleridge says, by Trelawny in Byron's rooms at Missolonghi, were handed over to John Cam Hobhouse, and passed into the possession of his daughter Lady Dorchester, the copyright being secured by Mr. Murray. They are obviously un- finished, more than one of the lines being halting, and in stanza v. the second line being two syllables short, as is the last line of stanza vi. The illustra- tions consist of a portrait of Byron, from a drawing from life by J. Holmes ; a portrait of Wordsworth, by Pickersgill, R.A. ; a portrait of Ninon de 1'En- clos, from a miniature in the possession of "The Laird of Thurso," Sir J. G. Tollemache Sinclair, Bart. ; and a view of the fountain at Newstead. Mr. Coleridge's notes and comments maintain their high character. As regards canto iv. stanza iv., Mr. Coleridge may in a reissue notice that the idea contained in the lines

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,

'Tis that I may not weep, is suggested by Figaro in Beaumarchais.

A Catalogue of the Armour and Arms in the Armoury of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. By Guy Francis Laking, M.V.O. (Bradbury & Agnew.)

ONE of the first things General Lord Grenfell did upon his appointment to the command in Malta was to order the compilation of a catalogue of the famous armoury in the palace of Valetta. "This task has been carefully and conscientiously accomplished by Mr. Laking, F.S.A., the keeper. Though far from complete, the collection has re- markable interest. It has suffered during more than a century from neglect and, let it be added, from rapine. These things reached a climax with the British occupation of the island. With cus- tomary and, as it seems, inevitable stupidity, the ancient arms were thrown aside as lumber to make room for modern weapons of Tower manufacture. Almost 20,000 muskets with bayonets and 30,000 boarding pikes were landed in 1850. Since then priceless arms have been given away or appro- priated without ceremony, and, as Mr. Laking says, " happily for some people, without much inquiry." Under Sir GaspardLeMarchant, Governor from 1858 to 1864, a better state of things began. The remaining relics were restored, classified, and arranged. They now occupy one of the finest halls in the palace, and, though coated with a varnish necessary to protect them from the sirocco winds from Africa, destructive of all exposed steel sur- faces, make a respectable show. Mr. Laking supplies the history of the armoury from 1531, the year after Charles V. invested the knights with the supreme sovereignty of the island, till the present time. Plates are presented of the principal items, with a mention of the school to which they belong, and general views of the armoury are furnished. To those interested in the study of

armour the book is less attractive than indispens- able, and all students of history will find it a desirable possession. Four hundred and sixty-four articles are catalogued. These range from the suit of armour made presumably by the Milanese armourer Geronimo Spacini for the Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt, or a cannon of the early fifteenth century, to stone cannon balls, weighing eighty pounds each, left behind in 1565 by the Turks. A drawing is supplied of the gold hilt set with jewels, &c., of a sword given by Philip II. of Spain to Grand Master Valette, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, where it is known for some reason as the Epee de la Religion.

An Ordinary of Arms contained in the Public Register of all Arms and Bearings in Scotland. By Sir James Balfour Paul, Lord Lyon King of Arms. (Green & Sons.)

SCOTTISH genealogy is a difficult and in some respects a dangerous subject, since few themes lend themselves to fiercer controversy. On the appear- ance ten years ago of the first edition of this 4 Ordinary ' a brilliant and able genealogist, sine gone to as much rest as his spirit is capable of enjoying, commented with some asperity upon its shortcomings, consisting wholly of omissions (see 8 th S. iv. 139). Complaint and counsel have appa- rently fallen upon deaf ears, and the present volume departs chiefly from its predecessor in supplying additions. Since the appearance of the previous edition four volumes have been added to the Register. The contents of these up to the year 1901 have been incorporated in the present edition. Reference has also been facilitated by a simple process of numbering separately each entry. Thus under Fergusson of Spittlehaugh a representative of which family is still traceable in our pages the number 3984 points instanter to the arms, Arg., a lion rampant az. ; on a chief engrailed gu. a mullet between two cinquefoils of the first. Where possible, dates previously omitted are supplied, to some extent conjecturally, by Carrick Pur- suivant, " whose knowledge of Scottish arms is both wide and thorough." The book claims to be no more than a collection of the arms actually recorded in the Lyon Register. Lyon urges upon the Scottish families who had an undoubted right to arms before the beginning of the compilation of the Register in 1672, for the sake of heraldic accuracy, to make amends for the neglect of their ancestors to "obtemper the order contained in the Act of Parliament of that year, to give in their arms to be recorded by the Lyon." This involves no question of a new grant, but simply the putting on record of the old arms. The arrangement of the volume is in the main that adopted in the familiar work of Papwprth. The present volume forms, of course, an indispensable portion of every heraldic and genealogical library, and is, so far as it extends, absolutely authoritative.

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. (Savile

Publishing Company.)

WK have here the first part of the most ambitious and artistic art periodical with which -we are acquainted in this country. It is under the control of a distinguished committee, and employs a staff of well-known writers. Its greatest attraction consists in the finely executed process reproduc- tions of works of highest interest and beauty. The frontispiece presents the marvellous picture, by