Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/438

 430

NOTES AND QUERIES. P* s. xn. NOV. as,

without honor." A scroll of parchment lies on the floor, on which are the words " Court- Martial, Brighton, Oct., 1840." I shall be exceedingly obliged to any reader who can furnish me with particulars of the incident to which this evidently alludes.

CHARLES DRURY.

DICKENS REFERENCE. In ch. xii. of 4 Dombey and Son ' we read that little Paul regarded Miss Blimber "as a kind of learned Guy Faux, or artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw." Who was Bogle? The George Bogle (1746-81), who held an appoint- ment in the service of the East India Com- pany, and wrote a journal upon his mission in Tibet ; but this is probably not the person referred to. F. G. KITTON.
 * Dictionary of National Biography ' gives

St. Albans.

[" Bogle " is a Northern form of " Bogey."]

" OMNIUM GATHERUM": M. E. "Here and There over the Water : being Cullings in a Trip to the Netherlands. By Omnium Gatherum. Drawn and written by M. E., Esq. Engraved by Geo. Hunt. London : published by Geo. Hunt, 18, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. 1825." Who was Omnium Gatherum or M. E., Esq .1 The book is quarto. It has many coloured pictures as well as four pages containing small facsimiles of tablets (twenty-three in all) placed on the walls of the church at Waterloo to the memory of those who fell there or at Quatre Bras. The facsimiles contain the inscrip- tions, apparently most carefully copied.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

RALPH GOWLAND was admitted to West- minster School'on 19 June, 1770. Can any correspondent of * N. & Q.' give me informa- tion concerning him ? G. F. R. B.

CANDLEMAS GILLS. A few years ago it was customary at Horbury, Yorkshire, to give each of the ratepayers half a pint of ale, known as a Candlemas gill. Can any of your correspondents tell me the origin of the usa^e and state when discontinued ?

WILLIAM ANDREWS. Hull Royal Institution.

PORTRAIT OF LORD MONTEAGLE. The por- trait of Wm. Parker, fourth Lord Monteagle painted by Paul van Somer, was lent in 1866 to the South Kensington Museum Exhibition by Mr. John Webb, a dealer. The approach- ing tercentenary of the Gunpowder Plot gives especial interest to the portrait. Can any reader oblige by naming its owner ?

C. J. PEACOCK.

" SERENDIPITY." (9 th S. xii. 349.)

THIS word is a coinage of Horace Walpole's, and is not a stranger to the columns of 4 N. & Q.' (5 th S. iii. 169, 316, 417, 517 ; x. 68, 98, 358 ; 6 th S. x. 194). What the proprietors of the "Serendipity Shop" mean by it I cannot say, but Walpole explains himself in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated 28 Jan., 1754 (Cunningham's edition, ii. 365). Writing about a discovery he had made in connexion with his picture of Bianca Capello, he says :

" This discovery I made by a talisman, which Mr. Chute calls the Sortes Walpoliance, by which I find everything I want, a pointe nommee, wherever I dip for it. This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavour to explain to you : you will under- stand it better by the derivation than by the defi- nition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called ' The Three Princes of Serendip ' : as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of : for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only the left side, where it was worse than on the right now do you understand Serendipity ? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that wo discovery of the thing you are looking for comes under this description), was of my Lord Shaftesbury, who, happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table."

The book which Walpole read in the days of his youth, and which seems to have left a deep impression on his memory, is not a common one. The late MR. EDWARD SOLLY, who was a great collector of eighteenth- century literature, could only quote a description of it from a contemporary book- seller's advertisement (5 th S. x. 98). I was fortunate enough to obtain a copy of it some years ago, and, in view of its rarity, venture to append the following collation :

"The | Travels | and 1 Adventures | of | Three Princes of | Sarendip. | Intermixed with Eight Delightful and J Entertaining Novels. | Translated from the Persian into French, | and from thence done into English. | To which is added, | Amazonta, or The Politick | Wife ; a Novel, j Adorn'd with Cuts. | London, | Printed for Will. Chetwood, at M.DCC.XXII." 12mo, pp. [iv]+276.
 * Cato's Head in Russel-street, Covent-Gar- | den.

Before the title-page is a leaf, containing a list of books printed for Will. Chetwode, which includes the second edition of * Moll Flanders ' and three novels by Mrs. Hay- j wood. ' The Three Princes of Sarendip ' ends