Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/265

 II. SEPT. 24, '98.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Sardou). It was on the plains near Xerez, in the year 711, that Roderick, the last king of the Visigoths, was, after a three days' battle, completely routed, and the long domination of the Moors began. I fancy that PROF. SKEAT will still retain his belief that " the guttural was due to Moorish influence," and will decline to take a trip " up to the Wal- loon in Belgium " in search of it. " Que diable irait-i\ faire dans cette galere 1 "

JOHN T. CURRY.

DR. THOMPSON, OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAM- BRIDGE, AND A VICTIM (9 th S. ii. 128). A note of mine made on the piece of excellent sar- casm of which RUSTICUS IN URBE writes must, as a consequence of his remarks on its author- ship, be amended. I came across the phrase about the beginning of the present year while perusing some correspondence in the columns of the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, where it was attributed to the late Arch- bishop of Canterbury. The writer, in the course of his letter, said :

" The late Archbishop of Canterbury, in a speech made shortly before his death, with a humour I did not expect, said, 'There are none of us infallible, not even the youngest.' " Feb. 5, 1898.

Although this excerpt does not in any way clear up the issue raised by RUSTICUS IN URBE, I have deemed it noteworthy. It would be interesting to learn who really was the victim of so brilliant a piece of sarcasm.

C. P. HALE.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S HEROINES (9 th S. ii. 142). I remember to have seen MR. BOUCHIER'S point set forth many years ago in some review. I had thought the reviewer was Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh, but I can find no such passage in his collected essays. The writer laid down that it is generally im- possible for a heroine of romance to have a living mother, because the watchful care of a good mother would always preserve her daughter from the difficult situations required in romance. Hence I have always held it for an axiom, almost a definition, that a "heroine " is a noble, high-spirited, motherless girl. I wonder much that MR. BOUCHIER has not been led back from Scott to Scott's idol Shakspeare. Here is a goodly catalogue of motherless heroines : Viola, Miranda, Des- demona, Rosalind, Imogen, Ophelia, Helena, even Perdita ; and in the second rank, Beatrice, Hero, Celia, Jessica, Katharine and Bianca, and we may add King Lear's daughters. Juliet is the one exception ; and Lady Capulet may have had just wit enough to perceive that her precocious fourteen-year- old daughter had grown many sizes too large

for her governance. But the same thing runs through all romance. We scarcely ever come across a mother. One is tempted to recall the Antigone of Sophocles. But among mothers in modern times Lady Ash ton is one. Mrs. Bennet, that delicious embodiment of ineptitude in ' Pride and Prejudice,' is another. Mrs. Nickleby is a third. (The absence of good mothers from Dickens's novels was dis- cussed in ' X. & Q.' some time back.) On the other hand, we may note Sophia Western, Pamela (removed out of her mother's reach), Harriet Barlow, Evelina, Jane Eyre ; and in Dickens, Florence Dombey, Lizzie Riderhood ; even Miss Jenny Wren, and (lower still) Dora Spenlow. Thackeray, in spite of his intense admiration for Scott's Rebecca, could give us nothing better of his own than that exasperat- ing idiot Amelia Sedley, and the two worth- less hussies Beatrix and Blanche Amory ; each of whom had a mother, of some sort. Of late years, the lady who writes under the name of Mrs. Alexander has given us two or three excellent novels, in each of which the central figure is a spirited girl thrown on her own resources, a motherless heroine. I sup- pose that the list might be extended inde- finitely ; but in nearly all the cases cited it is fairly certain that the heroine could not have been a " heroine " if she had had a loving and capable mother. The few exceptions, such as that very minor heroine Dora Spen- low, seem to prove the strength of the rule, observed even when not absolutely needed.

C. B. MOUNT.

WELLINGTON AND NEY (9 th S. ii. 128). Gleig, in his 'Life of Wellington,' has gone fully into the question of the latter's attitude as to Ney's execution. He points out the reasons which prevented the duke from interfering, either officially or privately, in the matter, but distinctly states that he frequently ex- pressed himself adverse to the carrying out of the sentence of death. This does not, certainly, bear out Mr. Gladstone's words, as reported by Mr. Tollemache. But may not Mr. Tollemache have been mistaken, or (for the matter of that) Mr. Gladstone also ?

OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR, O.S.B.

Fort Augustus, N.B.

Full and definite information on this painful subject will be found in the 'Words on Welling- ton,' by Sir William Fraser, Bart. (London, J. C. Nimmo, 1889). Perhaps the following quotation may not be out of place in 'K & Q.':

"There is no subject relating to the termination of the Great War upon which more bitter things lave been said than the execution of the Prince of Moscowa ; but there was one person who, unques- tionably, was grossly wronged in the affair, and that