Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/255

 9* S. IV. OCT. 21, "99.] 323 NOTES AND QUERIES. 15. Sonnet on ' Captivity,' M. 208; K. vi. 172:— So joys, remembered without wish or will, Sharpen the keenest edge of present ill. There is no reference to Dante in M. or in K. ; but this couplet seems to glance at the famous passage in 'Inf.,' v. 121, "Nessun maggior dolore," ifcc., and to have a claim to he ailded to the many parallels to it which have already appeared in ' N. & Q.' I may, in fact, have been anticipated. C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A. Bath. (To be continued.) HORACE WALPOLE AND HIS EDITORS. (Continued from p. 284.) IN a letter to George Montagu dated 17 July, 1753 (Cunningham's edition, vol. ii. p. 342), Horace Walpole writes :— " You will, I am sure, be concerned to hear that your favourite, Miss Brown, the pretty Catholic, who lived with Madame d'Acunha, is dead at Paris, by the ignorance of the physician." Neither of these ladies has been identified by Cunningham. Certain notices in the ' Jerningham Letters' (London, 1896) have made it possible to identify Miss Brown. On pp. 399-408 of the second volume a couple of lists are given of the ]>ensirmnaires at the school of the English nuns of the " Holy Order of the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Lady." This convent, which was established "first at Little Bethlehem in St. Jacques, and finally in the suburbs of St. Anthony '" (i.e., in the Rue de Charenton, Faubourg St. Antoine), was for many years a fashionable school for English Roman Catholics. One of the pupils entered on the list (under the year 1736) was the " Hon. Catherine Browne (died at Paris, 1753)." The year 1753 is that in which Horace Walpole's letter was written. It may be presumed, therefore, that Horace Walpole's " Miss Brown " and the " Hon. Catherine Browne " are one and the same person. She may be almost certainly identified with Catherine, the younger daughter of Valen- tine Browne, third (so-called) Viscount Ken- mare (a title conferred by James II. after his abdication). This supposition is confirmed by the fact that the Hon. Catherine Browne's elder sister Helen (afterwards Mrs. Wogan) also figures as a jiensionnaire in the lists mentioned above. Madame d'Acunha was probably the wife of Don Louis d'Acunha, the Portuguese ambassador in Paris. (See D'Argenson, ' Memoires,' ed. 1807, vol. iii. p. 133.) In Horace Walpole's letter to John Chute, dated from Stowe, 4 August, 1753 (Cunning- ham's edition, vol. ii. p. 347), he describes a short tour undertaken with the double pur- pose of visiting George Montagu at Great- worth (in Northamptonshire) and of seeing Stowe. It appeals from the letter that Walpole went first to visit his cousin Henry Conway at Park Place, Henley-on-Thames. From Park Place he went to Oxford, and thence to Greatworth. He mentions two country seats on the way from Oxford into Northamptonshire :— " I passed by Sir James Dashwood's, a vast new house, situated so high that it seems to stand for the county as well as himself. I did look over Lord Jersey's, which was built for a hunting box, and is still little better." This letter to John Chute was first printed in the 4to. edition of Horace Walpole's ' Works' published in 1798, and was annotated by Walpole himself, to whom it was probably returned with other of the Chute letters after the latter's death in 1776. On "Sir James Dashwood's" Horace Walpole notes "At High Wycombe." This note, however, is incorrect. Sir James Dashwood resided, not at High Wycombe, but at Kirtlington Park in Oxford- shire, for which county he was member, and not for Buckinghamshire, as the above note would imply. Walpole, who was annotating more than twenty years after the date of the letter, no doubt confused the two families of Dashwood. The Dashwoods of Kirtlington Park were represented in 1753 by Sir James Dashwood, second baronet, M.P. for Oxford- shire ; the Dashwoods of West Wycombe Park, on the other hand, were represented at this time by the notorious Sir Francis Dash- wood, second baronet, M.P. for Romney, afterwards Lord le Despencer. Kirtlington Park and Lord Jersey's seat at Middleton are both situated on the high road between Oxford and Brackley, which latter place lay in Horace Walpole s route to Greatworth, whereas Wycomoe lay altogether out of his road. Letter 472 (Cunningham's edition, vol. iii. p. 21), addressed to George Montagu (from London) and dated 18 June, without mention of year, is placed by Cunningham amongst the letters of the year 1756. That it belongs to the year 1757 is evident from the follow- ing considerations. 1. Horace Walpole alludes to the "confu- sion about the ministry." The administration of Newcastle and Fox, formed in 1754, lasted till October. 1756, when Fox resigned, his resignation being followed shortly afterwards by that of Newcastle. To them succeeded