Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/103

 vi. AUG. 4, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 81 LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 1900. CONTENTS.-No. 136. NOTES:—Walpole and hl> Editors, 81—Catalogues of Book Sales, 83—Charles Lamb's Hoaxes—Enigma on Letter H, 86— Bmmaus—" Journalier Papers "—Catalogue of First Book Auction, 86—"Hazy "—Literature, 87. QUBRIBS:-"To lug the coif —Dick Kltcat — Tea — F. G. M. Desanges—John D'Arcy—John Dawes—Mary- land — BeauUVu, 87 — Southey on Cowper — Governor Haynes's Grandfather — Wem — Cyclometer — Dryden's •Absalom and Achitopb.nl,' 88. RBFLIBS:—Early Evening Newspaper, 89 — Picts and Soots, 90 — Hountflchet Castle, 91 — Boundary Stones— "Lakoo"—" Ivers," 92—Katherine, Lady Ogle—Cutting Babies' Nails—Johnson's Father and Elizabeth Blaney— Largest First Issue — Dominican Order, 93—The [Log— The Bnglish Mile— Kingdom of Kazar—Brigham, 94— Hulsh—" Pineapple "—Pediment, 95—Pressgang Songs— St. Thomas's Day Custom—Poem by Ben Jonson, 96— ' Spectator'—" Lazy Laurence "—" Plain living and high thinking" —Town Gates outside London, 97-Stafford Family—" Coming out of the little end of the horn," 98. NOTBS ON BOOKS :—Feret's ' Fulham Old and New '— Round's 'Calendar of Documents.' Notices to Correspondents. HORACE WALPOLE AND HIS EDITORS. (Continued from p. 4.) LETTER 646 (Cunningham's ed., vol. iii. p. 274), addressed to George Montagu, and dated 7 Jan., 1760, is wrongly dated. It belongs to the ensuing year, as is evident from the following considerations :— 1. Horace Walpole mentions "my friend the Duke of York." Prince Edward Augustus, brother of George III., here in question, was not created Duke of York until April, 1760. Walpole, therefore, could not have spoken of him as Duke of York in the preceding January. 2. Horace Walpole mentions the recent deaths of Lord Harry Beauclerc and Lady Jane Coke, and the hourly expected death oi Admiral Boscawen. The Gentleman's Maga- zine of January, 1761, records that Lady Jane Coke died on 3 Jan., Lord Harry Beauclerc on 5 Jan., and Admiral Boscawen on 10 Jan. of that year. It is obvious that Walpole could not in a letter of January, 1760, have mentioned deaths which did not take place till the following year. Wright, who, in common with other editors, accepts the date of this letter as 1760, remarks in a note that Admiral Boscawen survived until 1761. He apparently had not the curiosity to examine nto the dates of the other deaths mentioned jy Walpole. 3. In this same letter Walpole refers to the .mminent publication of his edition of Lucan. 3e says, My Lucan appears to-morrow," i.e., 8 Jan., 1761. In a letter to Zouch dated 23 Dec., 1759 (vol. iii. p. 274), he writes, Lucan is in poor forwardness It will scarce appear before next winter." It is evident that the Lucan could not have been completed and published between 23 Dec. [the date of the letter to Zouch quoted above) and 8 Jan. following, that is, in the space of a fortnight, as would be implied by the present date of this letter to Montagu. It has been proved that this letter was written in January, 1761 : the Lucan must therefore have been published in that month and year, although the date on the title-page of the book is 1760. Walpole also refers to the publication of the Lucan in two other letters written in January, 1761. In the first (to Zouch on 3 Jan., to whom, on the previous 27 Nov., he had written, " My Lucan is finished, but will not be published till after Christmas") he writes, I stayed till I had the Lucan ready to send you"; and in the second (to Mann, on 27 Jan.) he says, "I have delivered to your brother a Lucan printed at Strawberry, which, I trust, you will think a handsome edition." From the above considerations it appears that the letter belongs to the year 1761, and should be inserted between Nos. 703 and 704 in vol. iii. of Cunningham's ed.; and further, that the Lucau was published not in 1760, but in 1761. It is quite probable that the date 1760 for 1761 was inadvertently written by Horace Walpole himself, as the new year had but recently begun. In Horace Walpole's letter to the Countess of Ossory of 25 June, 1776 (Cunningham's ed., vol. vi. p. 351), he writes, after relating an anecdote of the Duchess of Queensberry. "I enclose a letter of another Duchess I believe you may trust to its being genuine, for I received it from Italy." The other duchess was Elizabeth Chualeigh, Duchess of Kingston (or more properly Countess of Bristol), who had recently teen tried before the House of Lords for bigamy. She was found guilty, and at once left England for Paris. Vernon Smith, the editor of Horace Walpole's letters to Lady Ossory, states in a note on this passage that the duchess's letter was "not with the papers." He prints separately .however (among Horace Walpole's letters to Lady Ossory), under April, 1776, a letter written in French, dated at " Calais,