Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/290

 282

NOTES AND QUERIES. [*> s. v. APRIL u, 1900.

regulating Easter, and take it as the second Sunday in April, which would correspond with the probable date of the first Easter. But before that consummation is reached (and an alteration requiring international agreement could not be effected without some delay) it would surely be possible to omit the various tables for finding Easter from the Prayer Book (of which they form no real part), and simply give the Easter dates for the twentieth cen- tury, or such part of it as may from time to time seem desirable. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

HORACE WALPOLE AND HIS EDITORS.

( Continued from p. 124. )

LETTER 514 (Cunningham's ed., vol. iii. p. 90), addressed to George Montagu, and dated " Thursday, 17," without mention of month or year, is placed by Cunningham amongst letters of the year 1757. This is impossible, because Miss Harriet Montagu (invited in the letter to accompany her brothers to Straw- berry Hill and the Vine) died in October, 1755. (See letter to Montagu of 7 October, 1755, vol. ii. p. 474.) The letter belongs to October, 1754, when George Montagu and his brother the colonel visited Strawberry Hill and the Vine (See letter to Conway, 24 October, 1754, vol. ii. p. 400.) Finally, as to the date of the letter ''Thursday, 17" ; 17 October, 1754, fell on a Thursday.

In the 'Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry' (vol. ii. p. 63) a letter of Horace Walpole to General Conway is printed with the date "February, 1758." This date, how- ever, must be wrong. Walpole writes en- closing some laudatory stanzas on Conway, which he says he had just composed on his way to town. These stanzas, which were written at the time of the inquiry into the failure of the expedition to Rochefort, in which Conway took part, were printed in the Public Advertiser of 28 November, 1757. (See Cunningham's note on Walpole's letter to Grosvenor Bedford, vol. iii. p. 118.) It is obvious, therefore, that this letter belongs not to February, 1758, but to the previous November.

Letter 1,454, addressed to the Rev. William Mason (Cunningham's ed., vol. vi. p. 119) with out date of place, month, or year, is pu by Mitford among letters of September, 1774 It seems, however, to belong to October o that year. Horace Walpole writes of the general election then in progress, and men tions the return of three candidates Lore John Cavendish, returned for the city o York on 10 October ("Lord John has beer hard run, though he has got the plate")

lobert Macreth (formerly a waiter at White's Jlub) ; and Alexander Wedderburn. The two atter were returned for Castle Rising on

October. This letter cannot have been written until after the news of the York lection reached London. It may therefore >e placed between Nos. 1,459 (11 October) nd 1,460 (15 October) in vol. vi.

Letter 1,488 (Cunningham's ed., vol. vi. . 184), addressed to the Countess of Ossory, nd dated "Saturday evening," appears to >e misplaced and wrongly treated as a eparate letter. Horace Walpole here men- ions Lord Chatham's motion to address the dng for a recall of the troops from Boston. This motion was made in the House of Lords n Friday, 20 January. In reference to it Walpole remarks, "If Lord Chatham said checkmated." " Yesterday " being 20 January, Walpole must have been writing on "Saturday evening," 21 January. He adds, " I will only say now that I am becoptied at last, enlisted n Mrs. Weesey's academy." Lady Ossory apparently inquired as to the meaning of
 * rue yesterday, the ministers are already
 * his remark, which is explained in Walpole's

'etter to her of 24 January, 1775: "The Jophti were an Egyptian race, of whom lobody knows anything but the learned, and thence I gave Mrs. Montagu's 'academics' the name of Coptic, a derivation not worth repeating or explaining." The passage in which Horace Walpole uses the term becoptied must naturally precede the letter containing the explanation of it.

It appears that what Cunningham prints as a separate letter, under the date " Saturday evening," forms part of that to Lady Ossory dated 21 January, 1775 (No. 1,484). We have it on Horace Walpole's own authority that the letter to Lady Ossory dated 21 January was written on Thursday, 19 January : " I have written this since I came home to-night, Thursday, on my way towards Saturday's post, that I might not forget the bon mots I had collected for my gazette." Walpole's letters to Lady Ossory often took the form of a sort of diary covering several days. He subsequently says, " To-morrow is to happen a great event I will not tell you what." This is evidently an allusion to Lord Chatham's intention of speaking in the House of Lords on American affairs on Friday, 20 January. It will be noticed that at the beginning of the portion dated "Saturday evening " Walpole again mentions the "great event," and after a digression he goes on to give a report of Lord Chatham's speech. The portion dated " Saturday even- ing," and printed by Cunningham as