Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/458

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. JUNE 10, '99.

can the housekeeper show the house but by a written ticket."

Eliot Warburton, in * Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries' (vol. ii. pp. 548-9), also prints this letter under date 1785, and states that, in consequence of this rebuff, "Mr. Hardinge never troubled Strawberry Hill again." From whatever source Warburton's statement relative to a breach between Horace Walpole and George Hardinge may have been derived, the breach, at any rate, did not take place in the year 1785. This is apparent from a letter of Walpole to Hardinge printed in Nichols's 'Literary Anecdotes' (vol. viii. p. 529). This letter, which is not dated, appears from internal evidence to belong to the year 1785. After touching on Lady Di Beauclerc, a balloon, and his gout, Walpole writes :

"I send you a new Strawberry Edition, which you will find extraordinary not only as a most accurate translation, but as a piece of genuine French not metaphysicked by La Harpe, by Thomas, &c., and with versions even of Milton into poetry, though in the French language. The Due has had 100 copies, and I myself as many for presents ; none will be sold, so their imaginary value will rise."

George Hardinge in a note appended to the letter states that " the book which he gave me was the Due de Nivernois' translation of Mr. Walpole's ' Essay upon Garden Land- scape.' " The Strawberry Hill issue of Nivernois's translation is again referred to by Horace Walpole in a letter to Lady Ossory dated 17 Sept.. 1785 (Cunningham's edition, vol. ix. pp. 12, 13). He asks how he

"may send a new book printed here It is

the translation of my ' Essay on Modern Gardens ' by the Due de Nivernois. I believe I mentioned it to your Ladyship. You will find it a most beautiful piece of French, of the genuine French spoken by the Due de la Rochefoucauld and Madame de Sevigne, and not the metaphysical galimatias of La Harpe and Thomas, &c., which Madame du Deffand protested she did not understand. The versions of Milton and Pope are wonderfully exact and poetic and elegant, and the fidelity of the whole translation is extraordinary."

The fact of the publication of Nivernois's translation in 1785 (see Dobson's bibliography in his ' Memoir of Horace Walpole,' p. 313), and the identity of the names and expres- sions used in the two letters, serve to place that to Hardinge at practically the same date as that to Lady Ossory of 17 September, 1785. As, therefore, Horace Walpole was in friendly communication with George Hardinge in September, 1785, it is obvious that the final breach referred to by War- burton, and supposed to have been the consequence of the letter quoted above,

could not have taken place in the previous May. HELEN TOYNBEE.

Dorney Wood, Burnham, Bucks.

P.S. I am much obliged to MR. ST. CLAIII BADDELEY for pointing out my mistake with egard to Painshill, which was a slip of the pen for Painswick.

" NEITHIOR " on " BIDDING " (9 th S. iii. 328). "Bidding letters," sometimes called "bid- ding forms," are so common in Wales that the printers keep them in stock. The same form, with very trifling variations, will be found in ' N. & Q.,' 1 st S. iii. 114, 207 ; 7 th S. vi. 406, 477 ; 8 th S. ii. 245, bearing dates in the years 1800, 1806, 1838, 1850. I have one which I received twenty years ago. Brand, in his 'Popular Antiquities,' refers to the custom, and gives a copy of the "bidding" from the Gentleman's Magazine of 1789, similar to that quoted by ME. HEBB.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

BLACK IMAGES OF THE MADONNA (9 th S. ii. 367, 397, 449, 475, 537; iii. 190, 376). There is a black image of the Madonna in the Cathe- dral El Pilar at Zaragoza, of which Ford, in his 'Handbook for Spain' (p. 961, first edition), writes as follows :

"The holy image itself is small, and graven out of a resinous, almost black wood ; but the most sacred representations of the Virgin, and especially those carved by St. Luke, are very dark-coloured, ' black but comely ' (Sol. Song, i. 3), and are said to have been designed when she was tanned during the flight into Egypt."

HENRY DRAKE.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGES OF RESIDENCE (9 th S. i. 448 ; iii. 337). Perhaps I have not grasped the point of this inquiry, but I do not see why a college in the University of Durham should be set in a category by itself. University College in the University of Dur- ham is to its own university what University College in the University of Oxford is to that university. It has nothing in common with the various so - called (foolishly so - called) "University Colleges" which it is now the fashion to create up and down the country.

W. C. B.

HERALDIC (9 th S. ii. 490 ; iii. 370). I would suggest to ORIEL that the science of heraldry is of too exact a nature to bear such a very sketchy interpretation as he gives of the arms of Snocle. The fact of his armorial plate being of fine quality and the painting executed in a superior manner is no reason for the supposititious accuracy of the arras. False heraldry may be engraved on a cup of precious metal, but the material of the