Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/486

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. ix. JUNE w, 1002.

similar lines j and one of these is in th.e very same paragraph as the satire. But then Pope would perhaps have said that his lines were not "dull." Still, he might have looked to his own windows before throwing this stone. Churchill, in the 'Rosciad' (1761), seems to have copied Pope in a yet more forcible denunciation and in rougher numbers :

In monosyllables his thunders roll, He, she, it, and, we, you, they, fright the soul,

where we have the same illustrative imitation.

In the introduction to Sharp's * Sonnets of this Century ' may be found a " clever piece

of trifling a sonnet of single-syllable lines,"

i.e., each line consists of one word only, and that a monosyllable, at least in the English sense of " syllable " the sonnet is in French. But I have dwelt quite long enough on this trivial matter, in which we may say chacun a son goilt. C. LAWKENCE FORD, B.A.

Bath.

" CONSERVATIVE " AS A POLITICAL TERM (8 th S. vi. 61, 181 j vii. 356 ; xi. 494 ; 9 th S. iv. 333 ; viii. 489). In MR. OWEN'S communi- cation at the first of these references an extract was given from M. Louis Simond's 'Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the Years 1810 and 1811,' pub- lished at Edinburgh in 1815, in which a French Senat Conservatif is mentioned. But as Littre described this body as Senat conser- vateur, MR. OWEN wrote :

" It would be interesting to get dated references, if such are known, to contemporary writings, where the ' Senat conservateur 3 is loosely described as conservatif."

Such a reference can now be given, and it disposes of the suspicion entertained by MR. OWEN that the word was a mistake on the part of M. Simond, for the Times employed the term on 17 May, 1802, as if it were one in ordinary use at that period, in the following paragraph :

" We again received Paris Journals last night to the 13th instant inclusive. No doubt can be entertained but that Bonaparte will be elected Consul for life, when we consider the means that will be used, and the power which (if necessary) is ready to be employed to carry this question in his favor. What then remains for him but to flatter, or command, for it is one and the same thing, the Conservative Senate, into another question for the popular decision, whether the Consulate should not become an hereditary settlement in his own family ? That arrangement would be concluded with the same facility as the former, and the most powerful Military Government that Europe has ever known will then be established, and most probably with all the titular honours and characteristic insignia

of it.'

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

WILLIAM TOLLEMACHE EDWARDS (9 th S. ix. 308, 398). In the ' English Registry ' for the year 1810, bound with John Watson Stewart's 'Almanac' (Dublin), appears a 'List of the Army ' ; and on p. 176, under majors gazetted 1807, is the name "W. Tol. Edwards of the 86th regiment of Foot," which regiment is stated on p. 190 to be then (1810) serving abroad. J. N. DOWLING.

67, Douglas Road, Handsworth, Birmingham.

BRITISH EPITAPHS IN CATALUNA (9 th S. ix. 326). MR. DODGSON may like to know that " Cacharloch " in the epitaph of the Duke of Wharton is really Catherlough, the old name for county Carlo w. The duke was Marquis of Catherlough, Earl of Rathfarnham (" Rath- aseasnum " in copy of epitaph), and Baron of Trim in Ireland. He had been created Duke of Northumberland by King James III. in 1726, and signs his request to the Inquisition at Madrid for admission into the Catholic Church, now amongst the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum, as Wharton of North- umberland, so that I am rather astonished! that the latter title does not figure on his tombstone at Poblet. It is curious that the- duke, who at one time had been amongst the greatest politicians of his day, had become so completely forgotten before his death that no notice of it occurs in the dispatches of Sir Benjamin Keene, then British envoy in Spain, part of whose duties consisted in keeping a very close watch upon all the Jacobite exiles in the Peninsula, whilst only the briefest mention of it occurs in the Eng- lish newspapers of the day. It is a curious instance of the uncertainty of historic fame that even so able a writer as Mr. Wilkins, in his ' Love of an Uncrowned Queen,' does not mention the fact that it was chiefly owing to Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, the father of the duke, that the name of the Electress Sophia was originally inserted in the Act of Settlement. The Wharton family had become closely connected with Northern Germany during the reign of James II. I find I should have added that the Duke of Wharton was K.G only by the creation of King James III

H.

HERRICK : SILVER-PENCE (9 th S. ix. 49, 178). MR. MATTHEWS'S reference to the survival among the Jews of the use of a sharp fliiit- for performing circumcision is so obscure that it may be read in two senses one of which requires correction. Jews do not nowadays use such rude methods for so- delicate an operation. The "mohel," or practitioner, is a skilled surgical operator,, employing whatever is most efficient among;