Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/469

 9 s. vii. JFK is, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

461

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1901.

CONTENTS. No. 181.

NOTBR :' Burial of Sir John Moore/ 461 Ecclesiastical "Peculiars," 43 St. George and the Dragon Voltaire's Church Michael Bruce and Burns A Female Worker in Iron S. Burton, 466 A Ladle Samplers Scotch Death Superstition, 467.

QUERIES : Motto on Sundial Hammer-Ponds : Mussels and Pearls Napoleon and a Coat of Mail, 467 Dowager Peeress Leadbeater MS. Sir R. Verney John Scott Salter-" Gentlier " Phillippo-Flag of East India Com- panyCape Guardafui Thompsons of York "-itis," 48 Prisoners of War in Literature Battledore " Makau " Bronte Topography " The Bible, Crown, and Con- stitution " Haydon Family, 469.

REPLIES : Fainted and Engraved Portraits, 470 'The Two Duchesses' Cluny and Clunie Roman Catholic Records Bishop's Head and Foot England and Scotland reproduced in America, 471 " Lyngell " Lotus Flowers and Lotahs Joan of Arc Adam Buck "Gone to Jericho," 472 The Halberts Ipplepen, co. Devon Stan- bury Powdering Gowns, 473 Flower Game " Atte" Shakespeare the " Knavish " Book of Common Prayer in Latin, 474 Rood Well, Edinburgh Byron on Greece, 475 Continual Burnt Offering Ugo Foscolo in London Baron Grivignce " Bandy-legged " = " Knock-kneed " -"C*rrick," 476 Dendritic Markings in Paper " Shuttles " Plough Monday Mummeries Bernardus and Bayard Serjeant Hawkins, 477 " Personate "= Resound "A hago" Wall Calendars with Quotations from Shakespeare 'Captain Clutterbuck's Champagne ' Delagoa Bay "Porte-manteau" Latin Motto, 478.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Dasent's ' Acts of the Privy Council of England ' Hall's ' Beowulf, and the Fight at Finns- burgh ' Arber's ' Dunbar Anthology ' and ' Cowper Anthology.'

Sir Walter Besant.

Notices to Correspondents.

gtottf.

'THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.' ADMIRERS of the Rev. Charles Wolfe, B.A., must have often regretted that no attempt has ever been made to offer a formal state- ment of the evidence adducible on behalf of his frequently disputed claim to the author- ship of the immortal poem * The Burial of Sir John Moore.' To supply this deficiency is the object of the present lucubration, which is based entirely upon research among original sources. The evidence gathered may be thus presented.

I. Wolfe's own testimony to his authorship of the poem. On 26 April, 1841, Dr. John Anster read before the Royal Irish Academy a letter bearing on its surface the postmark 6 September, 1816, written in the handwriting and signed with the signature of Wolfe, and duly addressed to Mr. John Taylor, a college friend of his and of Mr. Luby, brother of Dr. Luby, sometime Vice-Provost of Trinity Col- lege, Dublin, who had discovered it among the papers left by the said brother on his decease. On 24 May, 1841, this letter was presented by Dr. Luby through Dr. Anster to the afore-named Academy, and a facsimile thereof was reproduced in the Proceedings of the Academy for the year 1841, No. 29.

The letter thus read and presented is on a single folded sheet of paper, 9 in. by 7 in. in size. The under side contains the following : "I have completed 'The Burial of Sir John Moore,' and will here inflict it upon you ; you have no one but yourself to blame for praising the two Stanzas that I told you so much."

The first seven stanzas of the poem then follow, and extend to the bottom of the page. On turning to the upper side of the sheet, we find at the top :

"Pray write soon; you may direct as usual to college, and it will follow me to the country. Give my love to Armstrong, and believe me, my dear John, ever yours, Charles Wolfe.

" I again say Remember [two words illegible] is to be drawn among them. You will pardon me for being particular about my message from that quarter."

Then lengthwise, in centre of sheet, stands the address: "John Taylor, Esq., at the Reverend H. Armstrong's, Clonoulty,fCashell," and just above it the postmark, 6 September, 1816, whilst in lines breadthwise, and parallel with those at the top of the page, the last stanza of the poem is given at the bottom.

In the above-quoted letter we have Wolfe's own assertion that he wrote the poem, and that Mr. John Taylor knew from him it had been begun.

II. Mr. John Sidney Taylor's evidence. In a long letter in the Morning Chronicle, 29 October, 1824, addressed from 1, Garden Court, Middle Temple, and dated 27 October, 1824, Mr. Taylor says :

" He [Wolfe] was one of my earliest and dearest friends. We were contemporaries of equal standing in the University of Dublin. Similarity of pursuits created intimacy. Though sometimes competitors for the same academic honours, ("nothing] impaired our sense of mutual esteem. Wolfe was equally distinguished in the severe sciences and in polite lite- rature. Emulation, I believe, led him to excel in the former, but the latter had all his intellectual affec- tion. I well recollect the expression of mingled diffi- dence and enthusiasm with which he communicated to me his tribute to the memory of Sir John Moore. He had then written but the first and last verses, and had no intention of adding any others. The thought was inspired while reading an account of the death of the Marcellus of Corunna in some peri- odical work ; the approbation which these two verses received from the few fellow-students to whom he showed them, among whom were the Rev. S. O'Sullivan. now vicar of St. Catherine's. Dublin, the Rev. M. Dickinson, and, I believe, Mr. Grierson, of the Irish Bar, and one or two more, induced him to extend the design and finish the ode in the form, though not exactly worded as it came into Lord Byron's hands. When he showed it to me com- pleted, which I think was some time in the year 1814, I did not take a copy of it, but the verses' im- pressed themselves indelibly on my recollection. 1 heard a few years afterwards, when we separated for different pursuits in life, that a copy of them,