Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/349

 9 th S. XI. MAY 2, 1903.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

341

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAYS, 190S.

CONTENTS. -No. 279.

NOTES :-Lancelot Sharpe, Sir E. Phillips, and Coleridge, 341 Harvey and Marston, 343 May Day, 1660-80 Dr. Johnson, 345 " Goes" Historic Tree on Fire Marriage Sermon The Magi, 346.

QUERIES :-Reynolds Portrait GarfittB. Scutt Jones Ludlow Clerks Characters in Fiction "Anne of Swan- sea," 347 Dr. T. Rutledge : Rev. W. Smith Middlesex Families Antony Payne Goodwin "Hook it " " Copper," a Policeman Popular Myths "Wick " "Man of Destiny " Heighes and Kitchener Families, 348 Nicolini Carbonari Lacaux James More" Owl- light " Sir C. Napier Bell : Lindley : Perry " Oh ! good ale "Snakes and Horsehair, 349.

RKPLIES : Recusant Wykehamists, 350 Admiral Drew- Sir N. Rich-The Old Wife Keats : " Sloth "-Goths and Huns, 351 Black Canons at Great Missenden Bacon on Hercules John Carter Coachman's Epitaph Arthur O'Connor, 352 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' Duels of Clergymen " Whipping the cat" " Tandem "Auction by Inch of Candle, 353 General E. Mathew Phrase Wanted Seneschal Church Bells Brittany and its People, 354 "Embarras des richesses" Hoyarsabal of ^ubiburu " Cup -turning," 355 W. and R. Bent " Nether- Lochaber " : Seanuachie A. H. Hallam Bishop Godwin Vicissitudes of Language, 356 Castle Rushen " Mother of Free Parliaments "Maize, 357 Luck Money " Dognoper" Mary Seymour Hourglasses, 358.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-DobeH's ' Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne' 'Works of Charles Dickens '" The Fireside Dickens " ' Book of Matriculations and Degrees ' Staley's ' First Prayer Book of King Edward VI.' Crisp's ' Frag- menta Genealogica.'

C. W. Holgate.

Notices to Correspondents.

LANCELOT 8HARPE, SIR R. PHILLIPS, AND S. T. COLERIDGE.

THERE is no notice of Lancelot Sharpe in the ' Dictionary of National Biography,' but he is included in the ' Modern English Bio- graphy ' of Mr. Frederic Boase (Truro, 1901), vol. iii. To this notice I propose to add some details of his early writings which appear to me to be noteworthy, especially one which is of Coleridgean interest.

The Rev. Lancelot Sharpe, M.A., F.S.A., died 26 October, 1851, and in the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1852, there was an obituary notice filling a column and a quarter. From this it appears that he was the son of Mr. Thomas Scrafton Sharpe, a Mark Lane merchant, and was educated privately by his uncle Dr. Bowyer, of Christ's Hospital, until he proceeded to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1796, and M.A. in 1800. After some years' experience as a private tutor he was pre- sented by the Grocers' Company in 1802 to the living of All Hallows Staining. In 1807 he became fourth master of Merchant Taylors' School, but resigned in 1819 owing to his not being elected head master. From 1828 to 1845 he was master of St. Saviour's Grammar Lane, whence he " returned to the

rectory house, Mark Lane, where he enjoyed the scholar's otium cum dignitate in a well- stored library." He was a Prebendary of St. Paul's, and chaplain to the Grocers' and Salters' companies. He was elected F.S.A. in November, 1813, and was also a member of the Camden Society. Mr. Sharpe was twice married and had " a very numerous family, three of whom are in holy orders." From the same memoir we learn that he was an excellent Hebrew scholar, and that " some of the most pungent papers of a journal long extinct, called the Satirist, proceeded from his pen." The only literary essay specifically mentioned is his solitary contribution to Archceologia, an interesting, but not specially important letter to Thomas Amyot on the 'Towneley Mysteries,' which appears in vol. xxvii. p. 251. Mr. Sharpe edited an edition of the Rowley poems printed at Cambridge by Benjamin Flower. In the preface, which has his initials appended, and is dated from Pembroke College, 20 July, 1794, he cautiously avoids any verdict on the then disputed question whether the well- known poems were written by Thomas Rowley in the fifteenth or Thomas Chatterton in the eighteenth century. That there should have been any doubt on the subject is now felt to be an astonishing circumstance. The British Museum Catalogue credits Mr. Sharpe with a sermon on Heb. x. 25 in the Rev. A. Watson's * Practical Sermons '(London, 1846), vol. iii. He was the author of the following books, only the first of which appears in the British Museum Catalogue :

Nomenclator Poeticus ; or, the Quantities of all the Proper Names that occur in the Latin Classics, ascertained by Quotations. London, 1836.

Anaptyxis Biblica ; or, the Portions of Holy Scripture enjoined by the Church of England to be read in the course of her Daily, Occasional, and Annual Services. London, 1846.

The Gospel for Sinners and Saints, by one who is the Chief of Sinners. London, 1852.

He is said to have edited Hales's 'Chro- nology.' See Athenceum, No. 3135, 25 Nov., 1887, p. 711.

His brother, Richard Scrafton Sharpe, is believed to have written ' Dame Wiggins of Lee,' and was the author of several ^books for juveniles. See the same article in the Athenaeum.

Some time ago I became possessed of a curious volume lettered 'Miscellanies by L. S.,' and consisting of articles cut from different magazines. The writer's name did not appear, but an allusion to Pembroke College, where he had the rooms which had been Pitt's, enabled me to identify this book as Mr. Sharpe's own copy of his early contri-