Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/463

 II. DEC. 3, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

455

bystander," &c. and quotes a long passage from Junius, No. 41, 14 Nov., 1770, which he claims for his own. It seems impossible to endorse the eulogium passed upon him on the mortuary stone found at Boulogne.

A. HALL.

Mr. Thicknesse's tombstone was "reversed " and "a fresh inscription" was "cut on the underside," thus making "what antiquaries call a palimpsest." Let me respectfully sug- gest that the word palimpsest is in this case misapplied. The term is properly used only when a first inscription is rubbed off and a new inscription placed on the same surface.

W. C. B.

Landguard Fort, of which Philip Thick- nesse was governor, is on the Suffolk coast, some eight miles distant from this small parish (Newbourne). Thicknesse was born in 1720, and died in 1792. Allibone's 'Dic- tionary ' devotes some twenty lines to an account of him and his writings, for he seems to have had some claims to be considered a literary man, and in many other books there are incidental notices of him.

One of his brothers was George Thicknesse, high master of St. Paul's School (1748-69), who had amongst his pupils the celebrated Sir Philip Francis, one of the supposed authors or Junius.

In ' Oxford and Cambridge Nuts to Crack ' (1835) there are some amusing anecdotes recorded of Ralph Thicknesse, who was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and probably a cousin. On one occasion there was a disturbance in college, and Dr. Willy- mott, who was then the vice-provost, sum- moned the offenders to appear before him, when impositions were given, " to two of them a few lines from the 'epsilon' of Homer [i. e. t book v.j, but to the chief offender, Battie [afterwards a noted phy- sician], the ',yhole of the third book of Milton to get, as we say, by heart." The probable date of this circumstance might be about 1725 or 1735. It is worth noting as showing the college punishments inflicted in those days. Dr. Willymott, on the authority of Allibone's ' Dictionary,' was born at Roy- ston, and admitted as a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, in 1692. He, on the same authority, published several school- books.

William Battie, M.D., Fellow of King's College, on the authority of the ' Cambridge University Calendar,' founded a classical scholarship of the value of 301. or 35. per annum in 1747, tenable for seven years.

is a pedigree of the family of Thicknesse of Beech Hill, co. Lancaster, though they appear to have once held an estate called Barterley or Balterley, co. Stafford. The Rev. Francis Henry Cold well, on marrying Anne, the only- surviving child and heiress of the late Ralph Anthony Thicknesse, assumed, in 1859, the surname and arms of Thicknesse.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

MRS. SHERIDAN AS ST. CECILIA (9 th S. ii. 247, 347). This celebrated picture was exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition at Man- chester in 1857. An engraving by William Dickenson was issued in 1776, price 7s. 6d.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

CLERICAL KNIGHTS (9 th S. ii. 326). I hope that MR. PICKFORD is not opening the door to that hardy perennial the prefix "Sir" as applied to the clergy. For if there is one subject that has been discussed to satiety in these columns, that is it. Looking through the indexes, I find that the subject was started in the second number of 'N. & Q.,' bearing date 10 November, 1849, and that it has appeared in every series since (except the Fourth and Sixth) down to 12 December, 1896. Here are the references : 1 st S. i. 19, 122 ; 2 nd S. i. 234, 299, 401 ; 3 rd S. ii. 9, 58 ; 5 th S. iv. 226, 376 ; 7 th S. x. 505 ; xi. 72, 236, 394 ; 8 th S. x. 396, 481. RICHARD WELFORD.

Gosforth.

An instructive article on this subject, entitled 'Sir John,' by F. P. Barnard, M.A., F.S.A., appeared in the Genealogical Maga- zine for September last. A. R. BAYLEY.

In Burke's 'Landed Gentry,' Y pl. ii, 1370,

SHAKSPEARE AND THE SEA (9 th S. i. 504 ; ii. 113, 189). One thing MR. YARDLEY does not seein to apprehend, and that is that Shakespeare was a genius as well as a writer of verse. The combination of these conditions is only occasional, and the result is not in- variably understood. An ordinary man might sail round the world and describe his path through the waters without using one word to which MR. YARDLEY could take exception : his narrative would be accepted as bearing the stamp of truth because it would be strictly in accordance with the experience of other commonplace people. But set genius afloat, or let it stand upon "the beached margent of the sea," and wonders are revealed too grand for ordinary language to describe, and the poet avails himself of hyperbole and of figures of speech which delight his sympathetic hearers, but shqck the matter-of-fact, For my own part