Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/26

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

ix. JAN. 4, 1902.

' Ducks and Green Peas ; or, the Newcastle Rider/ in \vhich the bagman, waiting for his dinner at a Harrogate inn, sings 'Tis Riders only life enjoy,

They travel through the land ; Variety can never cloy, All pleasures they command.

Tol lol de rol.

Then who would not a Rider be,

To lead a life like this ; From every care and trouble free,

Enjoying earthly bliss.

Tol lol de rol.

And then soliloquizes in the following fashion :

"There's for you, ye parchment-bound 'prentices, ye hen-peck'd husbands, ye gouty-footed drones ! Get a horse like me, and travel from place to place, live like kings, and' sup upon ducks and green peas, as I am going to do ! "

RICHARD WELFORD.

Upwards of a quarter of a century ago the representatives of brewers, grocers, drapers, &c., who drove into this village from the neighbouring towns of Northampton and Rugby, soliciting orders from the local shop- keepers, were always spoken of as "out- rides." This designation has now fallen largely into disuse, the gentlemen in ques- tion being invariably alluded to as " travel- lers." JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

DISSINGTON FAMILY (9 th S. viii. 365). In answer to MR. HERBERT SOUTIIAM'S inquiry I may say that I find it stated by Jan Brouwer in his pocket encyclopaedia that Elden is a village in Gelderland, three-quarters of an hour's distance _ N.N.E. from Elst (another Dutch village in the same province) for that is the quaint way in which Brouwer indicates position meaning, I take it, that if a man, walking at an ordinary pace, were to start from Elst in a N. N.E. direction, he would arrive at Elden in three-quarters of an hour - H. G. K.

Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 1., for the year 1780, p. 494, amongst deaths has "Sept. 27 Am r. Dishington, esq., aged 66. He was one ot the oldest lieutenants in the royal navy "

H. J. B.

There is a place named Elden in Gelder land, Netherlands, latitude 51 57' N loni tude 5 52' E. ; also a village in Suffolk (Eng- land) about four miles from Thetford, which has also been known under the names of Llvedon and Elveden.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

BOTTLED ALE: ITS INVENTION (9 th S vii 287, 412, 514).-The following extract fron

Cavalier and Puritan,' on p. 327, is interest- ng, in that it shows that English bottled ale jould be purchased in Paris in 1699. The liary of Sir Richard Newdigate : " Bought English bottled Ale at sixteen pence a quart." HERBERT SOUTHAM.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Caroline the Illustrious. By W. H. Wilkins, M.A.

2 vols. (Longmans & Co.)

' ILLTJSTRIOUS " is a strong term to apply to the ]ueen consort of George II. and the four times jueen regent of England. In that Hanoverian nvasion to which England was subjected after ,he death of Queen Anne she is, however, DC said the only pleasing and attractive figure. Mr. Wilkins, who holds a brief for her, has vritten, from sources many of them now first employed, a life which is to some extent a continuation of his ' Love of an Uncrowned ^ueen,' in which he told, practically for the first time, the story of Sophia Dorothea, the ill-starred consort of C4eorge I. The book thus constituted is "nteresting and stimulating, though the picture it presents of life in Hanover and subsequently in England is necessarily saddening. At no period 'n English history was the Court more coarse, mmoral, corrupt, and depraved than during the reigns of the early Georges. No whit more refined were the Courts of Saxony and Hanover, and the examples set before the young princess were
 * he most pleasing and attractive it might almost
 * he least edifying that could easily be conceived.

No breath of scandal attaches to her life ; and though she had in England periods of extreme unpopularity, and was even burnt in effigy by a London mob, she enjoyed general respect and admiration, and she certainly was, as Mr. Wilkins says, " by far the greatest of our Queens Consort, and wielded more authority over political affairs than any of our Queens-Regnant, with the excep- tion of Elizabeth and, in quite another sense, Vic- toria." As woman and as wife she is no less remarkable than as monarch, and it is singular that she has had to wait so long for her historian. Much information concerning her and her environ- ment is obtainable from books with which most are now familiar. Some of this, however, has but recently become accessible, and Mr. Wilkins's book brings her almost, if not quite, for the first time before the public as a recogni/able being. It is a good book in the main, hurried in parts, in need of some labor _ lim j, and marred by some sloven- linesses or inaccuracies of diction. These are of no great significance, and history is seldom more picturesque, attractive, and pleasurable than herein it appears. In depicting her early life both in Ger- many and England Mr. Wilkins has had access to documents previously unused. The Hanoverian archives have for the first time been consulted with regard to the betrothal and marriage of the princess, and dispatches not hitherto published of Poley, Howe, and D'Alais, English envoys at Hanover

ljOo-14, have been employed. Less interesting and

less important than the proceedings when, in con- cert with Walpole, Queen Caroline led her brutal

husband by a silken thread are those of her early