Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/66

 46 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9th s. iv. July is, w. opinion on Dante. There are several other references to Dante which clearly show that Goethe, far from disdaining Dante, expressed his profound sympathy for and admiration of Dante's immortal work. Let me briefly quote a few of them :— "Those verses including the death of TJgolino and his children by starvation belong to the sublimest creations of poetic art."—Vol. xxxiii. p. 205. " I praise our Dante, indeed, who teaches us how to love Nature and Art as divine daughters " (with regard to ' Inferno,' xi. 98).—Vol. xlv. pp. 291-2. "A poem like Dante's 'Inferno' cannot be con- ceived of, unless we bear constantly in mind that a great genius, and worthy citizen of one of the most prominent cities of that time, together with the fellow-citizens of his party, were deprived of all privileges and rights, and driven into exile." "To enable us to estimate justly the eminent power of Dante's imagination and spirit, it is im- portant to remember that just in his age, when Giotto flourished, plastic art had arisen again to its natural vigour. Dante was filled and inspired by the same plastic mind and symbolic genius. He perceived the objects with such a clearness that he could present them most distinctly as if they were drawn from nature." These brief utterances may suffice, I believe, to substantiate Goethe's real consideration and love for Dante. H. Keebs. Oxford. " Congeries." — Some correspondence re- specting this word appeared in 'N. & Q.' a few years ago, but I have mislaid the exact dates. The following book, printed at Frank- fort in 1581, carries on its title what I pre- sume to be a very early employment of the term:— "Congeries Paracelsicae Chemise de Transmuta- tionibus Metallorum Accessit Genealogia Mine- ralium atque metallorum omnium eiusdem autoris. G. Dorneo interprete." w. roberts. The Bells of Old Flaunden Church, Herts.—Through the courtesy of the vicar, the Rev. A. D. Hilton, and with the kind assistance of Mr. Sergeant, I was enabled, some two years ago, to see a very interesting old bell, now in the belfry of St. John's Church, Uxbridge Moor, on which was the follow- ing inscription, showing it to be a " saint's bell": " Sancte Johanne, Ora Pro Nobis a.d. 1578." This bell, which strikes the note A in beautiful tones, is about 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and was cast in a foundry at Reading. It was presented to the new church at Uxbridge Moor by Dr. Beazley, the then head master of the Grammar School; but through whom it came into his possession aftei-the dismant- ling of old Flaunden Church, about 1830, seems doubtful. This little cruciform ivy- mantled ruin stands in the green valley on the banks of the river Chess, midway between Latimer village and Chenies Mill, a most picturesque object. Its tower formerly con- tained three bells. Can your correspondents give any information as to what became of the other two, after the building of the new church in the village of Flaunden, one and a half miles distant, and the unroofing and partial demolition of this interesting old building? W. Arnold Burgess. Brick dated 1393.—In his contribution to the June number of Longman's Magazine Mr. Rider Haggard refers to the discovery, on pulling down some old cottages at or near Ditchingham, of a brick stamped with the date 1393. Is it quite certain that the supposed 3 is not a 5 partially reversed 1—a blunder by- no means unprecedented in sixteenth-century inscriptions. Thomas Wright, in ' Essays on Archaeological Subiects,' p. 76, asserts that Arabic numerals did not come into use in this country before the fifteenth century, and that the earliest authentic date in Eng- land inscribed in Arabics is 1445. An inter- esting assortment of early forms of these figures illustrates the subject. At West Wyke, near South Tawton, Devon, I remember being puzzled by a tablet set in the front, carved with the date 1383 (straight- topped 3's), in characters of sixteenth or seventeenth century style, as I thought. I should be very pleased if I could believe that these figures really meant what they read, for West Wyke belonged to the Wykes of North Wyke until it was sold to the Battis- hulk about 1464. The house—which, by-the- by, is the scene of Mr. Baring-Gould's romance ' John Herring '—has, of course, been altered since that period, and the corbels over all the windows, bearing the initials I. B. and W., point to its having been rebuilt by the John Battishull who married Joane Wood (daughter and heir of Walter Wood, of Bristowe), and died 1564, so that the date 1585 would still seem a little irrelevant. On p. 123 of 'Old South-East Lancashire' is shown an inscription on a bell intended for 1587, but the 5 is quite as much like a 2 ; and in ' The Leigh Chronicle,' edited by Rose, there is as frontispiece a (seventeenth-cen- tury?) woodcut of armorial bearings, in which the year 1557 has decided 3's with square heads, as at West Wyke. Ethel Lega-Weekes. Cromwell and his War Bible. — In the Central Hall of the Academy Exhibition is a gigantic bronze statue of Cromwell. He is in campaigning dress — jackboots,_ spurs, drawn sword, and so forth ; and in his hand