Ba

They measure each 3m. 90 height by 4m. 56 width-i.e., about 12 ft. 9 in. by 14 ft. 11 in. They are hung so high that one cannot see much of the details. They appear to be ordinary examples of eighteenth-century battle-pieces. They were exhibited at the Salon of 1771, and were in the collection of the Prince de Condé (d. 1818) in the Galerie du petit palais Bourbon, where he had collected a series of pictures representing the military exploits of le grand Condé. They were given to the Musée by Louis Philippe in 1835.

In Salle I., or Salle La Caze, are two very much smaller paintings by Casanova, viz., 1247 and 1248, each named on the frame Un Cavalier.' The dates of Casanova given on the former are 1730-1803; on the latter 1730-1805. In the current Catalogue they are called respectively Un cuirassier au galop and Groupe de cavaliers.' They are paintings of considerable merit. According to the 1880 and current Catalogues, there are two other pictures-small onesby François Casanova, each called 'Paysage

avec animaux,' from an old collection. These, when I was at the Louvre in November, I could not find.

Presumably the two pictures 1247 and 1248 are held in esteem. They are hung low, and one can buy photographs of them. The collection La Caze is a comparatively modern addition to the Musée du Louvre.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

EPITAPH AT HARRINGTON.-The following, apparently by a gentleman on his first wife, at Harrington, near Spilsby, about seventy years ago, I give from memory:

Reader, pass on: don't idly waste your time
With bad biography and bitter rhyme.
For what I am this cumbrous mound insures,
And what I was is no concern of yours.

W. E. B.

66

6

Bewick, Engraver on Wood' (aid to be by Christopher North," i.e. Prof. John Wilson), in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for July, 1825. As Bewick again issued the cut unaltered and uninked in the (1798) and 1800 editions of vol. i. of the Birds,' I am inclined to doubt that he had the inking done. It seems more likely that the booksellers, finding that some of their customers, "the when ordering copies, objected to rudeness of the design of this cut, had some of them inked, and finally prevailed upon Bewick to alter the cut, which he did in the 1804 demy 8vo edition of vol. i.

In Lewine's 'Bibliography of EighteenthCentury Art and Illustrated Books,' 1898, 1797, it is stated that p. 58, referring to vol. i. of the Birds,' woodcut at p. 285 is immaculate (to please "in the first issue the the Duke of Newcastle, Bewick's patron, it was afterwards inked over)." What is the authority, if any, for this statement ?

and Works of the late T. Bewick, read 2. Atkinson, in his Sketch of the Life 15 June, 1830, and published in the Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastleupon-Tyne, vol. i., 1831, at p. 142 says:

printed by Hodgson, price 128., on octavo, without "In 1800, 500 copies of the Land Birds' were the letterpress, but having the tail-piece which had been affixed to the birds in the previous edition, on sell well, and the second volume was not printed.” the same page below the bird; this edition did not

Bell, in his Catalogue of Bewick's Works,' 1851, p. 32, says this edition "did not at that time meet with a ready sale, in consequence of which many of them were destroyed."

In a letter to Mr. T. Vernon, Liverpool, dated 'Newcastle, 6th January, 1801,' printed in extenso in Robinson's 'Thomas Bewick: his Life and Times,' 1887, pp. 110111, Bewick writes:

"Sir,--I sit down to ansr. your Letter of the 21st ultmo., but when I may meet with an opportunity

of getting your 'Books of Birds' sent by a safe conveyance I know not *** You'l see I have sent 3 Books *** *I have only a few of these Books on hand for my particular Friends, for as soon as Mr. Mawman saw a specimen he ordered the whole Edition. The retail price is half a guinea."

J. Mawman, Poultry, London (who succeeded C. Dilly, one of the London publishers of the first three editions of the

Quadrupeds), is the only publisher besides R. Beilby and T. Bewick named title-page.

on the

Atkinson was evidently mistaken (as he was about the tail-pieces, since in only five instances are the tail-pieces that follow the birds in the previous edition placed in that position in this edition) when he stated that the price of this edition was 128. per volume, and that it did not sell well, at least as far as Bewick was concerned. What is the authority for the statements made by Atkinson and Bell that the edition did not sell well, and that a portion of it was destroyed?

66

ASHFORD FAMILY.-Information is requested respecting the family of Ashford, I am aware of the late Irish artist of that name; also of Mary Ashford, who was murdered by her sweetheart some seventy or eighty years ago, the latter being dealt with in a peculiar manner under an old and almost obsolete law; and of a branch settled at Deptford, co. Kent, and worthily represented by Mr. Frederick Ashford (b. 1829, living 1884), a well-known antiAYXA. quary. South Australia.

Croal Thomson, in his Life and Works of Thomas Bewick,' 1882, p. 42, says the

66 PLUMPE

WATCH.-What is the mean

It the borders? on

6

Robinson, in his Thomas Bewick: his Life and Times,' 1887, p. 292, says the review was written by Thomas Doubleday of Newcastle.) As the edition reviewed is evidently that published by R. E. Bewick, and is dated 1847, how came it to be reviewed in 1845 ?

66

4. According to the catalogue raisonné of the works of S. Leclerc by C. A. Jombert, Paris, 1774, the illustrations of Esop (22 small ovals, without title) were engraved in 1681, but have not been used in any edition of the text." In Jackson's Treatise

on Wood Engraving,' 1839, p. 534, it is stated that many of the cuts in Croxall are merely reversed copies of engravings on copper by S. Le Clerc, illustrative of a French edition of Esop's Fables published about 1694." If Jackson is correct, a copy of the title of the edition referred to would be of interest.

66

WHITE LINE.

PRIOR BOLTON'S WINDOW IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT CHURCH.-It is said that Ben Jonson refers to Bolton with his bolt-in-tun." Can any one tell me where this occurs in Ben Jonson's writings? E. A. WEBB.

That every tenante come to the plumpe watch, being warned, upon paine to forfeit 28. 6d. watch in horse armoure and weapon in every "That every tenante come to the plumpe respecte as he is appointed to keepe. And what tenante as cometh to the plumpe watch and

leaveth either horse or armoure behinde him, or beare, that tenante to forfeit 12d." bringeth not the weapon that he is appointed to

Replies.

DESCENT OF DARNLEY.

(11 S. vi. 488.)

MATTHEW STEWART, fourth (or twelfth) Earl of Lennox (1516-71), Regent of Scotland, was son of John, third Earl, by Anne, eighth daughter of John Stewart, first Earl of Atholl, half-brother of James II.

John Stewart, third (or eleventh) Earl of Lennox (d. 1526), was son of Matthew, second (or tenth) Earl, by Elizabeth, daughter of James, first Lord Hamilton, and a niece on the spindle-side of James III.

Matthew Stewart, second (or tenth) Earl of Lennox (d. 1513), was son of Sir John Stewart or Stuart, Lord Darnley and first (or ninth) Earl, by Margaret, eldest daughter of Alexander Montgomerie, Knight, Lord of Ardrossan.

Sir John Stewart, Lord Darnley and first (or ninth) Earl of Lennox (d. 1495) of the Stewart line, was son of Sir Alan Stewart by Catherine Seton, probably a daughter of Sir William Seton, killed at Verneuil in 1424. Sir Alan Stewart (slain at Linlithgow in 1439) was second son of Sir John Stuart of Darnley, first Seigneur of Aubigny, by Elizabeth, daughter of Duncan, Earl of Lennox.

Sir John Stuart or Stewart of Darnley, Seigneur of Aubigny (1365 ?-1429), was son of Alexander Stewart of Darnley by Janet, daughter and heiress of Sir William Keith of Galston.

Sir Alexander Stewart of Darnley was son of Sir Alexander Stewart of Derneley.

Sir Alexander Stewart of Derneley was youngest son of Sir Alan Stewart of Dreghorn.

Sir Alan Stewart of Dreghorn was second son of Sir John Stewart of Bonkyl by Margaret, only daughter and heiress of Sir Alexander Bonkyl of that ilk.

Sir John Stewart of Bonkyl was second son of Alexander, High Steward of Scotland, by Jean, daughter and heiress of Angus Macrory, or Roderick, Lord of Bute. John's elder brother, James the High Steward, was grandfather of Robert II. A. R. BAYLEY.

Sir

There is a genealogical table in Some Account of the Stuarts of Aubigny in France,' by Lady Elizabeth Cust.

The pedigree commences with Alexander, High Steward of Scotland, great-grandfather

FOURIER SOCIETY (11 S. vi. 250, 418, 431). -It was a society formed to carry out the elaborate, but impracticable communistic scheme formulated by François Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837), a French Socialist, whose views differed in certain particulars from those of Saint-Simon and Robert Owen. He believed that while man was still ignorant of the laws that ought to govern society, he would eventually, through reason, discover and perfect a true method of organization, which he maintained would be found to have a mathematical or scientific basis. His most important work is his 'Théorie de l'Unité Universelle.' After his death several societies in France adopted his principles, but those that followed them exclusively proved unsuccessful. In the United States between 1840 and 1850 he had many advocates, who founded upwards of thirty institutions, of which the most notable was that of Brook Farm, at West Roxbury, Mass. None of them, however, was destined to take root in the country. See the article on Fourierism' in the New International Encyclopædia' (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York). N. W. HILL. San Francisco.

THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS CXXV. AND CXXVI. (11 S. vi. 446).—I find no reference to jealousy in Sonnet CXXV. In this, as in the Sonnet immediately preceding it, Shakespeare is protesting the disinterestedness of his affection, its freedom from all worldly or selfish motives; it is not the child of state," not "mix'd with seconds." And clearly he is defending himself from some charge of that kind, either originating with the object of his love or suggested to him by a third person. The last couplet of the Sonnet, as usually interpreted, forces us to accept the latter theory, which is on all accounts the more likely one. The slanderer may have been moved by jealousy of Shakespeare's hold on Mr. W. H., but it is the man himself, not his motive, that is the " suborn'd informer." Indeed, I do not see how jealousy could be

said to be "suborned."

In Sonnet CXXVI. all that is needed to make the second line perfectly clear is to print it as it appears in most of the modern editions I know:

who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour. "Fickle" evidently refers, not to the glass itself, but to the shifting sand in it. The "brittleness" of the glass has no significance in this connexion. C. C. B.

Author and Publisher of this Book at the Stationers "They are also to be sold by Benjamin Harris Arms in the Piazza of the Royal Exchange and at his shop against the Kings Bench in Southwark."

In addition to the facts given in the 40,000th number of The Times, it may be stated that the Stationers' Company received a search warrant, issued by Earl Middleton on 11 Nov., 1685,

"to damask English Liberties or Freeborn Subjects Inheritance' and deface a copper-plate for printing off seditious figures or emblems entituled A scheme of Popish Cruelties, or a prospect of what we must expect under a Popish Successor,' which were issued at the house of Benjamin Harris near the Royal Exchange, London, Victualler."Arber's Stationers' Registers,' v. lv.

At a period of bitter religious and political animosities and violent language, hasty judgments were formed and often expressed in harsh terms. John Dunton, a rival bookseller at the sign of "The Black Raven " opposite to the Poultry compter, writing in his wrath, said :—

"I should have been much concerned if Ben Harris had given me a good word, for his commendation is the greatest reproach that an honest