Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/396

 326 vi. OCT. 27, 1900. NOTES AND QUERIES. ing to know the actual cost and loss or profit on each book. A few years ago one of the manuals on engineering was out of print for some time, and yet it was a book officers were expected to study and pass in for their promotions. There always see_ms to me a g_reat delay in supplying and distributing official books in India; the booksellers seem to have no diffi- culty in getting them to Calcutta or Bombay on private demand. I do not pretend to know who is responsible for these matters, but I think if the House of Commons could entrust the Secretary of State for India with an impress of public money, so that without undue red tape or loss of time these books could be supplied to the army, it would be a great benefit. I can remember an Army Act (that I think for 1879) coming into force, at a place I was in, before the official copies had arrived, and a. conviction by court-martial rendered illegal in consequence of a change in the law unknown to the court. SOLDIER. THE B.A. DEGREE AT GLASGOW. (See ante, p. 165, col. 2,1. 21.)—The B.A. degree used to be conferred at Glasgow, but a number of years ago it was discontinued. THOMAS BAYNE. UGO FOSCOLO IN LONDON. — When the Society of Arts, or what other authority has thematter in hand, has done with the promised tablet on the house in Hunter Street, Bruns- wick Square, where Ruskin first saw the light and passed his earliest years, it might perhaps, wnilst in the neighbourhood, go a little further to the northward and mark the house No. 19, Handel Street (formerly Henrietta Street), at the corner of Kenton Street, where that erratic genius Ugo Foscolo, poet and patriot, hid himself at the close of his chequered career. The street is a squalid one, and a commemorative tablet might do something to brighten its aspect and to recall the memory of an exile who was the friend of Brougham, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Lord Holland, Lady Dacre, and others of the brilliantcircle which surrounded Lady Holland at Holland House. Foscolo arrived in London on 11 September, 1816, and appears to have first resided at Kensington, probably to be near his patroness, Lady Holland, but the exact locality is not known. In March, 1818, he informs the " Gentile Donna" Signora Maggioti that he is living in two furnished rooms in Wood- stock Street, which formerly only served him as an occasional sleeping place, and speaks of a certain Q., from whom he had expectations of assistance, as having spent 50,0001. sterling in fifteen days, contesting an election, which he lost. In September of the same year he writes to the same lady from East Moulsey in a more cheerful strain, and speaks of his cottage and his grapes. In March, ]823, by the exertions of Lady Dacre, Foscolo obtained a sum of 1.000?. as a subscription for a series of readings from the poets, and about the same time he received a further sum of 3,000£. from the grandmother of his natural daughter Flpriana, as a dowry for the child. With this money he proceeded to build himself a house at North, Bank, Regent's Park, on the banks of the Regent's Canal, which he furnished in a sumptuous manner and named Digamma Cottage, in allusion to an article on the Greek digamina contributed by him to the Edinburgh Review. Foscolo was, it appears, his own architect, and his house, according to Mr. H. B. Wheatley, suggested the names Alpha Road and Beta Place, St. John's Wood. Another exile, Count Giuseppe Pecchio. condemned to death in contumaciam by the Austrian Government, was Foscolo's neighbour, and wrote to Panizzi from West Cottage, South Bank. Pecchio [see ante, p. 308] married an English lady of mature age with a fortune, wnose name his biographer professes to be unable to decipher. Foscolo's period of prosperity was of short duration ; his creditors became clamorous, and in the beginning of 1824 he left his house never to return, to hide himself, as one of his biographers, C. Antona-Traversi, says, "in the second floor of one of the hundred thousand houses of which London is composed" (' Ugo Foscolo in Famiglia,' p. 240, note). This house, as has been noted by Mr. Wheatley in 'London Past and Present,' was No. 19, Handel Street, and here he lived from the latter part of the year 1826 to about the middle of the year 1827. His anxiety to conceal his whereabouts is very pathetic. On 2 March, 1826, he writes to Antonio Panizzi : " Fratanto ella non mi diriga piii lettera, nem- meno per la via del libraio Pickering; bens) so porra il sopra-scritto, cosl: Charles Sinclair Cutten, Esq., 1, Cloister Temple [tie], caro of Mr. Emerytt, London." Emerytt was his daughter's name, her mother having been an Englishwoman. On 27 July, 1826, he writes to Panizzi that he will be at Mr. Emery tt's, 19, Henrietta Street, "dov' io dormir6 martedl prossimo, giorno pritno d' agosto, e vi star6 per sei inesi." Foscolo died at Turnham Green, I do not know where, 10 September, 1827, and was buried in Chiswick Churchyard; but his body