Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/203

 9*s.m MAR. n, m] NOTES AND QUERIES.

197

might have phrased it), and pops it off, bereft of its poison, in harmless pleasantry on boun- cing, domineering, good -hearted, virtuous Peggy's prodigious Terpsichorean exertions in jig-dancing at the Government House ball in India " lassata nondum satiata recessit."* All the same, it might have been wished that some other quotation than one pornographic- ally descriptive of the abominable Messalina had been applied by our favourite author, even in a Pickwickian sense, to dear, kind Lady O'Dowd. H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.

THE MARRIAGE OF LANDOR (9 th S. iii. 125)' The passage in the Gentleman's Magazine (January, 1899, p. 7) cited by MR. F. ADAMS is incorrect. Charles VIII. of France died in 1498, and the daughter of an official of his Court could not well have married Landor in 1811. The real facts are given in an auto- graph memorandum written by Landor him- self, and now in my possession. Writing in the third person, he says :

"In 1811 he married Julia, daughter of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, descendant and representative of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, Baron de Nieuveville, First Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles VIII."

This was written in 1837 ; but some years later Landor informed a friend that the Baron "was not First Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles VIII., but only one of them" (' Letters of W. S. Landor,' Duckworth, p. 192). Forster's account of Mrs. Lander's connexions, also quoted by MR. ADAMS, is in- correct in another way. (See St. James's Gazette, 22 September, 1891.) There are several mistakes in the article in the Gentle- man's Magazine. Landor was born, not, as stated, at Ipsley Court, but at his father's house in the town of Warwick. Again, one of his best-known works is wrongly quoted as 'The Last Leaves of an Old Fig Tree.' It should, of course, be * The Last Fruit off an Old Tree.' Nearly all the poems which the writer gives as almost unknown are printed either in ' Heroic Idyls,' 1863, or in the 1876 edition of Landor's collected works. Another poem, reprinted in 'Letters, &c., of W. S. Landor' (Bentley, 1897), is misprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine. Landor wrote Sicania, not " Sicaria."

STEPHEN WHEELER.

WILKIE'S 'EPIGONIAD' (9 th S. ii. 121, 350). This epic, so far as the rhymes are concerned, seems to me to be about on a par with other heroic poems. In all such poems (as of course is well known) there were many faulty rhymes.


 * Juvenal, Sat. vi. 129.

In a work of any considerable length eye- rhymes were always considered allowable, though readers are more exacting now than they were when the ' Epigoniad ' was written. In Walker we find (1) rhymes, (2) allowable rhymes. These latter are often not really rhymes at all. This I should have said was the explanation of such rhymes as strive, retrieve ; give, deceive ; retrieve, survive ; &c. The change which the pronunciation of many words has undoubtedly undergone may account for some of these rhymes, but surely not for them all. Thus come, doom; heard, appeared ; dead, succeed ; streams, swims ; and many others, may be explained in this way ; butsurely notsuchrhymes as toils, souls; learn, warn ; breast, assist ; heaves, waves ; beam, claim ; state, regret. Besides, Wilkie was not consistent. We find rock, broke ; and again rocks, oaks ; withdrew, bough ; drew, flew ; ear, hear ; tear, bear ; tow' rs, pours ; pow'rs,tow'rs. Such inconsistencies abound, but they do so also in Addison, Pope, and Dryden. In this verse,

Woven thick with complicated feet and wings, the rhythm requires woven to be a mono- syllable, which to me is new.

THOMAS AULD.

PAPAL BULL AGAINST A COMET (4 th S. iv. 437, 523 ; v. 213 ; 9 th S. ii. 477, 517 ; iii. 153). The bull referred to by MR. ARMSTRONG is dated 29 June, 1456. Dr. Ludwig Pastor in his 'History of the Popes,' vol. ii. p. 400, edited by F. Antrobus, calls the story re- peated by Draper and Arago, that Calix- tus III. caused the bells to be rung against the comet and excommunicated it, a foolish story and not worthy of refutation.

HARTWELL D. GRISSELL, F.S.A.

Oxford.

People who believe in such books as Draper's 'Intellectual Development' will believe in anything. In Kobertson's valu- able 'History of the Christian Church' the matter is represented somewhat differently :

" A comet appeared, and was supposed to portend calamity. The Pope directed that prayers should be made for turning its effects against the Turks (Platina, 318)." Vol. viii. p. 157n.

Hastings.

EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

" WRITER OP SORTS " (9 th S. iii. 167)." Of sorts " is Anglo-Indian slang. It was the fashion a few years ago in India to add the words "of sorts" to almost every general description, such as "niggers," "soldiers," "natives," "tribesmen," "parsons," and nouns of multitude generally. The effect was