Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/17

 9 th S. II. JULY 2, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

9

chronicles without finding this journey re- corded in any. If any reader could afford the reference it would oblige me. Failing its discovery, it would appear to have been con- tained in one of those chronicles which have been lost. W.

THE EGYPTIAN KITE. Can any reader of 'N. & Q.' tell me where I can find a satisfac- tory sketch of the hedaije, or Egyptian kite, which is so constantly seen circling about in the air over Cairo 1 I want it with outspread wings, it being especially the form or outline of the wing which I desire. W. F.

Alexandria, Egypt.

THE REV. GEORGE LEWIS. Can any one give me information about this clergyman, who was living in 1719 1 Was he in any way connected with Madras or with the East India Company ?

BERNARD P. SCATTERGOOD.

19, Grove Road, Harrogate.

LADY ARAMINTH A ROBARTES. To whom and when was Lady Aramintha Robartes (daughter of John, Lord Robartes, first Earl Radnor) married, and had the pair any children ?

MARTIN W. WINN.

19, Quesnel Street, Montreal, Canada.

SCOTTER. Can you inform me where I may trace the history, of the family of Scotter, formerly spelt Scoter ? The family belonged to Lincolnshire, I believe. H. S.

HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE.

(9 th S. i. 421.)

YOUR correspondent .1. B. S. may rest assured that I am not what he calls a " lite- rary wasp." The subject has long engrossed my attention. I am firmly convinced that diffuseness and haste in erecting memorials to perpetuate the fame of celebrated men and women are always presumptuous, and fre- quently misinterpret the ultimate verdict of posterity. If J. B. 8. sets so much value upon contemporaneous judgment let him examine the epitaphs affixed to the walls of Westminster Abbey. Let him ponder over the fulsome eulogies lavished, no doubt sincerely, on St. Evremond, on the im- mortal Christopher Anstey, and on many other more or less worthy men whose names and whose works have passed for ever from the knowledge of mankind. One hour's reflection will convince him that impetuous grief is responsible for the fact that West-

minster Abbey is replete with monuments erected in haste to commemorate individuals \vho can never have possessed a claim to more than transient notoriety. Whether these memorials were in each case a voluntary tribute of the people's grief, or merely the result of official pressure (as in the case of St. Evremond), matters little. Space has been absorbed, and the nation can no longer find room within the Abbey walls to com- memorate the achievements of her noblest sons. The monuments and mural tablets dedicated to foreigners and mountebanks, sycophants, lords, ladies, great men and nonentities, huddled together in hopeless incongruity, form a striking example of the value of contemporaneous judgment. Depend upon it, Carlyle was right when he said that "Time has a strange contracting influence on many a widespread fame." The Abbey proves it. Carlyle might have added that Time has also a strange expanding influence Shelley and Keats are two out of many that could be named whose expansion of fame is remarkable. Their contemporaries were either right, or they were wrong in their judgment of both. At all events, it has taken half a century to change their tune, and we have not yet reached the exact pitch with either.

Your correspondent tells us that Byron and Keats both suffered from " a tardy recognition of merit." Is that so ? Keats certainly was not conscious of immortality when he died, but Byron had his full share of celebrity during his lifetime. Did he not wake one morning to find himself famous ? Ay, and is he not famous still ? For fifty years after his death, owing to the influence of what Mr. Disraeli called " contracted sympathies and restricted thought," his eclipse was partial ; but his light reappeared in 1875 ana has been burn- ing steadily ever since. We have not done with Byron yet, in spite of the insufferable cant about his lack of " technical perfection " which Mr. Traill and others are now flaunting in the public press. The immortality of Byron is as certain as that of Dante. In spite of the cavilling of a certain class of critics and poetasters, who have dared to deny to Byron a place among the great singers of the world, he has long held a posi- tion among English poets from which nothing can shake him. His genius, his achievements, and the manner of his death make him inde- pendent of the verdict of his contemporaries. He belongs, so to speak, to Time and to Eternity, and our feeble judgment will not affect him through the ages yet to come.

But it seems to me that your correspondent