QUERIES:-Muncellam Lapideam-James Green - Device Wanted for a Porch-"Mad as a hatter"-Hammonds of Scarthingwell-Gataker-Sir 8. Howe-Initials after Names, 107-Sir H. Killegrew-Gloucestershire Newspapers-Bristol -The Wreck of the Birkenhead-Henry Rainsford-A Passage from Ruskin-" Lincoln was, London is, and Yorke shall be "-Catholic Emancipation Act-Legenda Aurea, 108-Henryson, 109.

REPLIES:-Tom-Cat, 109-H, 110-Petroleum - Sons of Edward III.-G. P. R. James, 111-Additions to Halliwell's 'Dictionary'-'Memoirs of Grammont' - NewspapersFreiburg-Rockall, 112-Pierson Family-N and M in the Marriage Service, 113-Coincidence or Plagiarism, 114Swift to Stella - Spiflicate-Altar Flowers-Steel PensSneap, 115-Standing up at the Lord's Prayer-Primrose Path-Convicts shipped to the Colonies-West ChesterBeaconsfield and the Primrose-Queen Eleanor Crosses, 116 -Epitaph, 117-Hussar Pelisse-Caradoc, or CaractacusMacready-Death of Charles I.-Etruscan City on the Site

of Rome, 118.

NOTES ON BOOKS:-Bowles's 'Madame de Maintenon'

Marzials's 'Life of Victor Hugo.' Notices to Correspondents, &c.

Notes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE GERUSALEMME
CONQUISTATA.'

The poem which won for Tasso the laurel crown he was destined never to wear was not the 'Gerusalemme Liberata,' as is almost universally taken for granted, but the 'Gerusalemme Conquistata,' in which the former work is so expurgated, amplified, and remodelled, as almost entirely to lose its old identity. Tasso's critics, as a rule, have condemned the metamorphosed epic with a vigour and courage which would have been more judiciously applied to the task of reading it. So considerable a poet as Tasso is seldom altogether wrong in his estimate of his own works; and if the unprejudiced reader finds it hard to acquiesce in the author's emphatic preference of the "reformed" "Jerusalem,' he will at least find in it much that is novel to like, and perhaps still more to admire. However this may be, the Conquistata' in any form is interesting as well as rare, and a somewhat more detailed and accurate account than I have been able to find elsewhere of its various early issues as a separate work may not be unacceptable to the readers of 'N. & Q.'

1. Di Gervsalemme | Conquistata del Sig. Torquato Tasso Libri xxiiii, | All' Illmo et Revmo Sigre | Il Signor | Cinthio Aldobrandini, | Card. di San Giorgio. | [Portrait of Tasso] In Roma, M.D.XCIII. Presso à Guglielmo Facciotti. | Con Privilegi di N. S. della Serenissima Republica di Vinetia, & di tutti gli altri Principi d'Italia.

The comma after "Aldobrandini" is accidentally raised about an eighth of an inch above its proper place. The portrait, a three-quarter head, laureated and with a ruff, looking to right, is in a plain wide oval, and fairly engraved on copper. 4to. Exclusive of the title-leaf, there are ten pages, not numbered, of preliminary matter. The text occupies pp. 1-290, and at the end is a leaf containing "Emendationi" on recto, and the licence on verso.

The preliminary matter consists of a dedication of the work, by Angelo Ingegneri, to Cardinal Cinthio Aldobrandini, dated November 10, 1593, with Tasso's canzone on Cinthio's elevation to the cardinalate. The dedication is headed by a woodcut running all across the page, representing Apollo crowning the poet, and commences with a fine woodcut initial. The licence at the end of the volume is dated "Romæ 13. Kal. Novembris, 1592," and signed "Lælius Peregrinus, Doctor Theol. manu propria," on behalf of "F. Bartholomæus de Miranda S.P.M.," i. e., “Sacri Palatii Magistri." Across the top of the first page of the text runs a woodcut of Apollo and the Muses. The poem is printed in double columns, five stanzas to a column, in italic, and the stanzas are not numbered. Each book begins with a woodcut initial, and all except the first are headed by a small woodcut cherub.

In a copy I possess, apparently perfect as it left the original binder's hands, the preliminary matter is wanting. As the text seems to have been in type several months, at least, before Cinthio received the cardinal's hat, it is exceedingly probable that several copies, of which this is one, were in circulation before any dedication had been finally decided on. It is worth note, too, that in the dedication Ingegneri claims to have been the first to publish "questo bellissimo libro l'altra volta ch' egli usci di mano all' Autore," in reference, apparently, to some early edition of the 'Liberata ' I have not been able to identify.

One copy of this edition in the British Museum is of singular interest as containing a stanza on the fly-leaf in Tasso's own handwriting, hitherto, I believe, unpublished. A note, however, by Panizzi intimates that the volume was purchased for the Museum at the Bright sale in 1845, so that the existence of the lines has been long known, and is probably somewhere recorded. As far as I am able to decipher them, for the hand is pathetically blurred and shaky, they run as follows:

Il Poema al Sigr Stanslao Rescio, Nuntio Illmo.
Rescio, s'io passerò l'alpestre monte
Portato a volo da Toscani carmi,
Quanto dirò con vergognosa fronte
Dove ha tanti il tuo Re cavalli et armi?
Altri di voi gia scrive, altri racconte
L'antiche imprese e le scolpisce in marmi.
Ne taccia a tanti Regi onde rimbomba
Non minor fama ma gia stanca tromba
Torqto Tasso con propria mano.

"That need not trouble you," said the girl. "If you but promise to have me for your wife you will become rich."

The boy promised to do so, and so they lived together on the island till spring, when people came to the island again, with whom they went to the mainland.

"Where shall we go now?" said the girl.

"I don't know," replied the boy; "but what do you think about it?" The girl said she would like to live in the same place as her parents, if he did not object. "Why not?" said the boy; and so they set off together and looked for a suitable dwelling-place. "Mark out a place for the house," said his wife, "large or small as you wish it to be." And the boy drew it.

When night fell the girl said, "If you hear any noise during the night you must not get up or look to see what it is."

In the night he heard a terrible noise of building and hammering, but he did not move. In the morning when he and his wife got up they saw that the house stood all ready from roof to threshold.

"Now you can draw out the plan for a cow house,” said the girl; "but do not make it too large or too small." The boy did so, and during the night he heard the noise of building again; and in the morning the building stood complete, with stalls, pails, and collars, but there were no cows.

Then she told him to draw the plan of a storehouse as large as he wished it to be. When this was ready the girl asked him to go with her to her parents, and so they went together and stayed for some time there. When they were about to return his wife said to him, "When we have said 'Good bye' and are all ready to set off take care and step over the thresholdt as quickly as possible." The boy did so, and scarcely had stepped over it before the girl's father threw a large hammer after him;

and if he had not been over both of his legs would have been knocked off in the twinkling of an eye. When they had gone a short way the girl said, "You must not on any account look behind you,* till we get home, whatever you hear or feel."

The boy promised not to do so, but when they came to the house door he could resist no longer, and so turned round; and lo! a great herd of cows was coming, which his father and mother inlaw had sent after him, and only half of them were inside the gate, and in a moment all those which were outside vanished. They then went to the priest and got married, had children, and lived happily and well. The only thing the man did not like was that his wife sometimes disappeared without his knowing whither she went. One day, as he was bewailing over it, his wife (who loved him) said, "Dear husband, if you do not like me going away you must knock a nail into the threshold,+ and then I cannot go out or in unless you like." W. HENRY JONES.

Mumby Vicarage, Alford.

'LIFE OF O'CONNELL.'-As it is always well editions of Mr. J. A. Hamilton's recent and readto be accurate, I would suggest that in future able Life of O'Connell' ("Statesmen Series," W. H. Allen & Co.) a few things might be corrected. At pp. 6 and 77 Sheil's name is spelt "Shiel."

P. 114. "He wrote on December 3, 1830, to his correspondent Dr. MacHale, R.C. Archbishop of Tuam." Dr. MacHale did not become Archbishop of Tuam until four years later.

P. 115. O'Connell did not seek to avert his

prosecution in 1831 by offering to abandon "Repeal," as letters before me show.

P. 144. Mr. Hamilton quotes from Macmillan, O'Connell by John Ball. I have searched Macvol. xxiii. p. 222, an important anecdote of

&c.

Cf. also the Lapp stories 'Jaetten og Veslegutten' and Bondesönnen, Kongesönnen og Solens Söster,' Friis, Nos. 18 and 44; also Rink, 'Tales of the Esquimaux,' The Revived who came to the Underground People,' p. 300; Gregor., Folk-lore of North-East Scotland,' Folk-lore Society, 1881, p. 91; Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales,' The Bel Princess,' p. 140 and note p. 283; and Hofberg, Svenska Sägner, Soasa-frun.' I have heard the same in the folk-lore of the inhabitants of Holderness, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, Algeria, and this in my own parish.

the Polish). According to a Magyar superstition a knife stuck into a slice of garlic and placed under the pillow of a woman in child-bed is an effective remedy against the baby being exchanged by the witches. See Varga János, 'A Babonák Könyve.'

millan, vol. xxiii., page by page, but no such anecdote appears in that volume.

P. 199. It was not Maurice, but Morgan, O'Connell who received the appointment of Registrar of Deeds.

P. 204. Mrs. O'Connell did not die in 1826, nor

until ten years later.

P. 207. For "Romayne" read Ronayne.

P. 212. The alleged fight with a fishfag in the street happened not to O'Connell, but has been attributed to Curran. Madden, in the 'Revelations of Ireland,' was the first writer who fell into this mistake. That O'Connell has been wronged is made clear by a "mem." in the autograph of his daughter, the late Mrs. FitzSimon, and which can be furnished if desired :

"A statesman and an orator [writes Mr. Hamilton], a King's Counsel learned in the law, and the leader of his people, who could publicly, and without any sense of reserve, engage in a duel of abuse with a fishfag in the streets of Dublin,* and enjoy his own and his friends' congratulations upon the happy epithets Whiskey-drinking parallelogram' and 'Porter-swiping similitude,' &c., was to them an unintelligible paradox."

As well it might be.

P. 191. "Her persistent refusals to marry him [O'Connell] allayed neither his passion or his disturbance of mind." Is Mr. Hamilton quite sure that she ever was asked? The lady still lives. O'Connell's family have always denied that any truth whatever nestled in this love story. O'Connell's age was seventy-one at the time.

P. 195. "Maurice (his uncle) was at first deeply offended at the match, but presently became reconciled to it." This refers to his love "match" in 1802. The uncle lived near a quarter of a century after Dan's marriage, and left away from him a large share of property which otherwise

should have been his.

P. 201. "He also sat to Duval and Wilkie." Query Hayden, who describes the sitting in his 'Diary.'

P. 211. "Theodore Grenville ceased to visit the house of a friend because he dreaded meeting O'Connell there." The authority for this is an oral statement from Lord Lansdowne, printed in 'Melbourne's Life' (vol. ii. p. 119), and Lord Lansdowne calls him Thomas Grenville.

P. vii. Cloncurry's 'Personal Reminiscences,' which is quoted, should be 'Personal Recollec

tions.'

A large array of authorities are honestly acknowledged by Mr. Hamilton. He might, perhaps, add that the curious anecdote about O'Connell at the period of the Irish Rebellion (p. 11) has been derived from 'The Informers of 1798, p. 307, Dublin, 1865; and Grenville ceasing to visit Lansdowne House from a dread of meeting * In Cork, according to the published account, such as

it is.

O'Connell should be acknowledged as from Melbourne's 'Life,' vol. ii. p. 119. W. Ĵ. FITZPATRICK, F.S.A.

SIR THOMAS ABNEY'S EPITAPH.-Sir Thomas Abney deserves honourable remembrance as a man of uprightness and decision and as a City functionary,

as well as in connexion with the name of Dr. Isaac Watts. Through his marriage with Mary Gunston Sir Thomas became possessed of the mansion at Stoke Newington, which was pulled down on the formation of the Abney Park Cemetery, and it is generally known that in the same house Dr. Watts was for many years the welcome guest and friend of the Abney family. There are notices of the worthy knight in many books, but I have not met with any printed record of his burial or epitaph. There is, however, among some MS. relics which have come to my hands, a rough draft (Dr. Watts's autograph) of the following, with a note that it was "written to be inscribed near the grave of Sir Thomas Abney in the corner of St. Mich. [sic] Cornhill":

"Near this place lye ye Remains of St Thomas Abney Knt, who was chosen by his fellow-citizens Sheriff and Alderman of London 1693, Lord Mayor 1700, Representative in Parliamt 1701. In all which posts of Trust & Honor he ever approv'd himself a strenuous assertor and support of the Protestant Religion, the Liberties of his Country, and the Reformation of Manners. His public & private Vertues, too numerous to be included in this narrow Monument of his Death, are represented to y world in the Memoirs of his Life. He departed Feb. 6th 1721/2, a generall Loss to his Countrey & a grief to all good men, even in the 83rd year of his age."

Possibly there may have been some objection to placing such an epitaph for a Nonconformist in a parish church; for together with the above I find, in the handwriting of Watts's "trusty and diligent" amanuensis, Joseph Parker, the subjoined more colourless inscription :

"In Memory of Sr Thomas Abney Kt and Alderman of London, who died 6th Febry 1721/2. Also of his and Mrs Mary Pickard, who died 12th Febry 1737 [sic].” Daughters, Mrs Sarah Abney, who died 19 March 1731/2 Annexed are a careful plan and memorandum by the same hand, headed "St. Peter's, Cornhill, 17 & 18 Sept., 1772," and setting forth that "the leaden coffins of Sir Thomas Abney, Mrs. Sarah Abney, and Mrs. Pickard are placed one upon another according to this description, the top of Mrs. Pickard's coffin 3 ft. 8 in. deep from the surface." The interments are shown to be near the south wall, and 7 ft. 6 in. from the east wall of the church.

Sarah Abney, preached at Theobalds April 2. Dr. Watts published a funeral sermon for "Mrs. 1732." It is dedicated "to the Lady Abney, mother of the deceased, and to Mrs. Mary Abney and Mrs. Elizabeth Abney, her two surviving sisters." Mrs. Pickard was the wife of Jocelyn Pickard, Esq. Their marriage, in July, 1737, is