(or about the apparent diameter of the sun or moon) to the northward of Venus. It is obvious that there is the same fundamental objection to the acceptance of this theory as in the case of the other conjunction, to which I referred in N. & Q.,' 6th S. vii. 4. How could a conjunction of planets, or any star in the astronomical sense of the word, appear to stand over a particular house, as seen by those who were near it? Nor is it any confirmation of this view (as might seem to be at first sight) that Jupiter and Venus were visible in the eastern heavens about the time of their con junction. For by seeing the "star in the East,' the Magi probably meant that they saw it when they left their home in the East. It is impossible to place the nativity of Christ so early as B.C. 6, consistently with Luke iii. 23; and I must remain of opinion that it occurred in the late autumn of W. T. LYNN. B.C. 5. Blackheath, KILMESTON MANOR HOUSE.-I seek information concerning the old manor house of Kilmeston, Hants, seven miles east of Winchester, four miles south of Alresford, not far from Tichborne, and the battle-field of Cheriton. This was lately the property of Mr. Walter Long, of Preshore, and previously was in the hands of a family called Ridge. The house is apparently Jacobean. Who were the original owners; and what is its history? TAUPE. of sea-gulls which were flying in Chelsea reach STORMY PETREL.-Among the great numbers during the present frost, there was at least one bing up and down over and on the little waves stormy petrel, which, curiously enough, was bobcaused by the easterly wind in the very place where the two whales appeared who came up the Thames at the time of the Naval Exhibition. Is the petrel a frequent visitor to the metropolis? S. P. A. A VIEW OF LIFE.-I found the following graffito on a pavement in the Roman city of Thamugas (mod. Timegad), Algeria, lately exhumed by the French Government: "Uenari lauari lvdere ridere occ est uiuere." I wonder what would-be viveur can have written it. One who was old enough and rich enough to have such experience of high life would scarcely have sat down on the steps of the Forum to give this vent to his enthusiasm with hammer and chisel. Was it a schoolboy emulous of the prowess of big brothers; or some Tittlebat Titmouse out for a holiday, and dreaming himself the possessor of 10,000l. a year? One scarcely dares to suggest that the h-less occ may smack of the City apprentice. Possibly the words are a quotation. Does any one know? C. B. MOUNT. GROTTO AT MARGATE. Could any correspondent give me information about the socalled grotto at Margate? Were not shell grottoes rather a fashionable fancy at the time of Horace Walpole; and were they as elaborate as this specimen? D. TOWNSHend. MORETON FAMILY.-I am desirous of filling up the gaps from William, Ann, and Sarah Moreton to the Visitation. William and Ann stated to my father that they were cousins to the first Lord Ducie, who died in 1735. On the back of an old letter I have a pen-and-ink sketch of the following arms and crest:-On a bend three buckles, and in 51, Marlborough Hill, London, N.W. Z. COZENS.-Can any of your readers give me information respecting Z. Cozens, who is mentioned in the 'Bibliotheca Cantiana' as the author of twelve contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, chiefly on Kentish antiquarian matters, and also of A Tour through the Isle of Thanet, and some of the parts of East Kent,' pp. 507, 4to., Nicholls, London, 1793? Singular to say, there is no account of him in the new Dictionary of National Biography. Of his chief work I am told there are only fourteen copies extant, the rest C. S. F. having been burnt. PORTRAIT MINIATURE.-I have a very beautiful and perfect miniature by Oliver, of a gentleman, anno 1629, with fine lace collar, gold chain, strongly marked features, reddish brown hair, pointed close beard. On his right cheek is the scar of a great sword.cut. Is there any chance of identifying the person represented? J. C. J. MAINWARING'S 'DISCOURSE OF PIRATES.'—I shall gladly learn if the MS. hereunder mentioned has been printed, and whether anything is known of the author or the circumstances which led to its composition. Folio MS. of twenty-four leaves (in contemporary handwriting) entitled A Discourse written by Sr Henrie Mainwaringe knight and by him presented unto Kinge James An D'ni 1618 wherein are discovered the beginninges and proceedinges of Pyrats, wth theire vauall places of aboad at all tymes of the Yeare, together with his advise and direction for surprisinge and suppressinge of them. The pirates alluded to were Englishmen, many of whom hailed from the mouth of the Thames. But Mainwaring says that Ireland was the "nursery and storehouse" of pirates. He gives many suggestions for destroying their traffic, and full particulars of their chief haunts, and deprecates clemency on the king's part when any were H. apprehended. TITHE COMMUTATION AWARDS.-Can any reader of N. & Q.' tell me whether the evidences adduced during the course of commutation, as to prescription, exemption, &c., are still preserved anywhere; and whether they are consultable, on payment of a fee or otherwise? The documents would have, of course, only an historical interest, as having afforded the Commissioners the facts on which they based their definitive apportionment. W. C. W. MEDIEVAL DIPTYCHS OF THE DECALOGUE.—IS there any medieval diptych known to exist among the art treasures of Jewish synagogues or of Christian churches, upon which the Ten Commandments are inscribed, either in Hebrew or in the Greek or Latin version, to serve as a record of the two talbets given to Moses on Mount Sinai ? Z. "COMMENCED M.A."-What is the meaning of this phrase, which is often used in Cooper's well66 George known Athena Cantabrigienses,' e. g., E. MASON. M. commenced M.A. in 1542?" BLOW FAMILY.-Would you kindly give me some information about the Blow family prior to the year 1694, at which time they came to Belfast to start the printing trade in that town? I believe they came from either Fife or Perthshire. There is a tradition that the name was changed from Johnstone to Blow after one of the old clan fights; if this is so, could you give me the date and place? J. C. M. B. a 501. note and a portrait of Lady Carve. He 'IMITATION OF CHRIST.'-Would some reader 2. "The early education of both was neglected." PROF. TOMLINSON has here the support of Rowe's biography and Ben Jonson's "small Latin and less Greek"; but against them is the preponderating evidence of Shakespeare's own work. Take 'Venus and Adonis,' "the first heire of my invention "; 'Lucrecre,' the Sonnets, and his earlier dramatic of 'N. & Q.' be good enough to give the full title-works-are they the work of bizarre genius, of page of an edition of the above, printed in Dublin, between the years 1843 and 1857? This edition has a short life of Thomas à Kempis, with practical reflections on the text of each chapter, with short prayer, pp. xxiv, 488, 8vo. Dublin. S. H. some clever sciolist? Surely not! He must have accumulated wisely in his adolescent days, or he could never have scattered so exuberantly in his years of labour. His early works are packed with evidences of refined education, of studied restraint, of correct classical information. In bis early manhood he evidently moved among men of learning, VERSES BY WHITTIER.-In which of Whittier's for Meres, M.A., tells how sonnets of baffling poems do the lines occur: A dreary place would be this earth And also the lines : Oh what would the world be to us G. C. S. (8th S. ii. 42, 190, 294, 332, 389, 469.) Parallelism has been, since the days of Plutarch, a favourite device of biographers. Fascinating as the practice is, both to the writer and his readers, a captious critic will have little difficulty in finding occasion to challenge the relevancy or truth of lines or points of resemblance. More especially is this the case with Shakespeare, where so little is definitely known, where so much is purely conjectural. PROF. TOMLINSON has detected fifteen "points of resemblance." Many of these, so far as Shakespeare is concerned, are founded on traditions and assumptions which recent investigation has wholly rejected or dubiously questions. PROF. TOMLINSON'S statements are a little too positive; they give the impression that they are founded on irrefragable biographic data, whereas such does not exist in a life of the Bard of Avon. I have long waited for some of the eminent Shakespearian contributors of 'N. & Q.' to touch on these resemblances. Molière has, up to this, monopolized attention. It is time to attract interrogatory notice to the English poet. subtlety and exquisite beauty were dispersed by 3. "Neither of them was happily married." Molière was married at forty to a girl of eighteen; Shakespeare was wedded at eighteen to a lady nine years his senior. Molière was manifestly unhappy. But was Shakespeare? There is not a tittle of satisfactory evidence to prove that Shakespeare's marriage was a failure. The disparity of ages, the marriage licence, and the "second best bed," prove nothing; while his love of home, his amazingly beautiful characterization of female character, his attitude towards marital alliance, as displayed in his works, rather favour a life of connubial satisfaction. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps remarks on this subject: "Whether the early alliance was a prudent one in a wordly point of view may admit of doubt, but that the married pair continued on affectionate terms, until they were separated by the poet's death, may be gathered from the early local tradition that his wife did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him.' The legacy to her of the second best bed is an evidence which does not negative the later testimony."-'Outlines,' fifth edition, p. 56. In 6. "Each was careless about publishing his works; or rather, objected to do so, lest they should be acted by rival dramatic companies." the first version of the 1609 edition of Troylus and Cresseid' there is this advertisement: "Eternall reader, you have heere a new play, never stal'd with the stage, never clapper-claw'd with the palmes of the vulger." This is an instance of a play published before it was produced on the stage. It has been estimated that there were sixty-five editions of Shakespeare's works published before his death. The dedication to 'Venus and Adonis ' and the typographical excellence of the work have led commentators almost unanimously to believe that Shakespeare himself saw this work through the press. In the 1598 edition of 'Love's Labour's Lost' we find the words, "Newly corrected and augmented," in the 1604 quarto of Hamlet,' "Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie." The almost inevitable conclusion is that this studied revision, this laboured overhauling, was done solely with a view to publication. So thought Mr. Swinburne, in his fine 'Study of Shakespeare': "Scene by scene, line for line, stroke upon stroke, and touch after touch, he went over all the old laboured ground again, and not to ensure success in his own day, and fill his pockets with contemporary pence, but merely and wholly with a purpose to make it worthy of himself and his future students...... Not one single alteration in the whole play (Hamlet') can possibly have been made with a view to stage effect, or to present popularity and profit......Every change in the text of Hamlet' has impaired its fitness for the stage, and increased its value for the closet in exact and perfect proportion."Pp. 163, 164. Mr Theodore Watts also refers to this in his obituary notice of Lord Tennyson': "That he was not an improvisatore, however, any one can see who will take the trouble to compare the first edition of Romeo and Juliet' with the received text, the first sketch of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor with the play as we now have it, and the Hamlet' of 1603 with the Hamlet' of 1604, and with the still further varied version of the play given by Heminge and Condell in the Folio of 1623. If we take into account, moreover, that it is only by the lucky chapter of accidents that we now possess the earlier forms of the three plays mentioned above, and that most likely the other plays were once in a like condition, we shall come to the conclusion that there was no more vigilant worker with Dante's sieve than Shakspeare." Athenæum, 3389, p. 483. 10. "Each disliked his profession." In support of this PROF. TOMLINSON proffers three oftquoted lines of Sonnet cxi. This is not sufficient. Admitting that Shakespeare referred to himself, it could only be true of the mood, or time, or condition under which it was written. Again and again in the sonnets we stumble across passages which triumphantly prove that Shakespeare knew his work to be immortal and took honest pride in it, "desiring this man's art, and that man's scope' that he might excel : Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme. Sonnet lv. genius are enshrined in these works. I do not know whether students have ever remarked the innate modesty of the man as displayed in his epilogues. He over and over again expresses his desire to please, and his hope that the work may give satisfaction; he pleads for forbearance and promises improvement. None but a writer deeply concerned could have written such epilogues. In 1597 Shakespeare purchased New Place, and in 1598 he is written down "William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gentleman," and is returned as the holder of ten quarters of corn. Necessity has ever been the hard law that binds men to obnoxious pursuits; he was now sufficiently independent to have renounced his profession if it was distasteful. Yet it was in these years of comparative affluence that he produced his noblest works. 13. "Each preferred the idea or matter, to the comparative disregard of the manner." Ben Jon son did not think so : Shakespeare must enjoy a part. For though the poet's "Yet must I not give Nature all, thy art my gentle matter, nature be. His art doth give the fashion." And he goes on to point out that Shakespeare's "mind and manners brightly shine in his wellturned and true-filed lines." When we examine the matchless beadroll of proverb and idiom, those exquisite snatches of song, those "sugʼred sonnets," those glorious specimens of dramatic art, we find it difficult to decide whether he was more concerned for the idea or for the form in which he should present it. Shakespeare's art has been so long the wonder, the admiration of the worldso often praised in volumes of eulogy-that I was simply amazed when I learned Shakespeare was classed with those who disregarded manner. There are one or two points to which I might refer, but space compels me to refrain. PROF. TOMLINSON does not carry his survey to the end. Will he allow me to do so? Here at least a striking contrast presents itself. Poor Molière! how pitiful His means of death, his obscure burial-no noble is the last page of his strange eventful history." rite, nor formal ostentation," huddled when the "night was darkest into a begrudged grave, with maimed rites and a small funeral cortège. We turn to Shakespeare's demise. Buried honourably in the chancel of his own country church, attended by friends and mourned for by his family, his affairs in order, with faith expressed in his 'Pilot,' when he had crossed the Bar," while those who knew felt that a prince and a great man had fallen in Britain. This is gratifying, and redounds to the credit of our own beloved country. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Sonnet lxxxi. Shakespeare's profession was dramatist. Now I hold he could not have produced the works he did had he disliked his calling. He who reads may note that the whole soul and head and energy of a 66 Dublin. W. A. HENDERSON. In regard to the earliest collected editions of Molière's works, I have a volume of the 1682 edition which contains the "Privilege du Roy," granted by Louis XIV. to Denis Thierry, "Marchand Libraire Imprimeur," for an extension of the nine years granted to Molière, on March 18, 1671, in which he was to have the sole right of printing, "toutes les Pièces de Théâtre, composées pour nostre divertissement "by him. Denis Thierry humbly represents that by the terms of the original "permission," as only one edition of the works had been published, finished in 1675, the "Privilege" did not expire until 1684. This, however, seems to have been disputed by other "Libraires et Imprimeurs," and in consequence, on Feb. 15, 1680, George Cruikshank, G. M. Greig, Andrew Geddes, R.A., Sir John Gilbert, R. Herdman, D. O. Hill, R.S.A., Sir George Harvey, P.R.S.A., William Kidd, R.S.A., Sir Edwin Landseer, R. A., Thomas Landseer, W. H. Lizars, E. H. Miller (New York), R. C. Lucas, W. H. Paton, David Scott, R.S.A., John Moyr Smith, J. S. Storer, Thomas Stothard, R.A., Rev. M. W. Peters, R.A., John Thurston, J. McWhirter, J. M. Wright. This last artist must not be confounded with another Wright ("Scotus") of the same initials. The illustrator of Cunningham's quarto, born in London, was a pupil of Stothard, and these very beautiful transcripts have, I think, never been excelled as subject illustrations to Burns's poems, and I am glad to find, from MR. VIRTUE's reply, that they are still intact and in safe custody. The picture of 'Tam O'Shanter,' by Abraham Cooper, R. A., engraved in the same edition, was originally exhibited at the British Institution in 1814. Burns was himself a landscape painter-in words. His poems, when describing the scenery of his I suppose that the extended "Privilege" would David Octavius Hill must be awarded the laurels much-loved country, are pictures; and to the late "En consideration des grandes sommes qu'il a payées, pour achepter la Cession dudit Privilege, et des frais et dépences qu'il luy a convenu faire pour ladite impres sion," Denis Thierry was permitted, "d'imprimer, vendre et debiter les Pièces de Théâtre et autres Euvres dudit de Molière, durant le temps et espace de six années; à compter du jour que ledit Privilege par nous accordé audit de Molière, en datte du 18 Mars 1671, sera expiré." end in 1690. Liverpool. J. F. MANSERGH. for perpetuating with his pencil these word pictures on canvas. Sixty beautiful landscapes, each and all painted on the spots suggested by the references in the poems, worthily illustrate the "land of Burns," under which title they were When, as DR. BREWER reminds us, François de Harlay de Chanvallon, that gay archbishop, refused Molière the rites of sepulture, Chapelle, an Abbé as gay but not as bigoted, put about the follow-collectively engraved. The original paintings ing Puisqu'à Paris en dénie A ceux qui, pendant la vie, were publicly exhibited at Edinburgh in 1841, and an octavo catalogue of the collection was printed. I have lately seen a series of oil pictures by Thomas Stothard, R. A., illustrative of Burns s poems; but as my reply is already too long and discursive, I will defer further reference to them until a future occasion. Chelsea, S. W., EDWARD BARRINGTON NASH. BURNS IN ART (8th S. ii. 428, 451, 472).—Your Permit me to refer your correspondent to some correspondent's surprise at the few exhibited pic- excellent engravings from paintings by well-known tures during recent years deriving inspiration Scotch artists, published for the members of the from the verse of Scotia's bard applies equally, I Royal Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts think, to other poets. Apparently very material in Scotland, illustrative of Burns's poems. Three subjects at the present time attract the bawbees of them are in my possession (1) 'The Soldier's in preference to the super-mundane breathings of a Return,' 1857; (2)'Auld Lang Syne,' 1859; (3) poet's soul. Still, from the time of David Allan'Illustrated Songs of Robert Burns,' 1861, each of down to Charles Martin Hardie a large number of them containing half a dozen well-executed eminent artists have devoted their pencils to depict-engravings, and procurable, no doubt, for a small ing both people and places immortalized by the sum. The original pictures from which they were verse of Burns. My Burnsiana notes yield the taken are probably in private collections in Scotfollowing list, which may be of some assistance to land. MR. SHELLEY; but it is far from being complete. As many of the paintings and drawings have been engraved as illustrations to the poems, I shall be pleased to supply the references should your correspondent require them: David Allan, Sir William Allan, P.R.S.A., T. Allom, W. H. Bartlett, J. Burnet, A. Carse, Sam Bough, Abraham Cooper, R.A., F. A. Chapman (New York), John Faed, I can remember to have seen many years ago one of them from No. 3, "Last May a braw wooer," painted by Erskine Nicol, R.S.A., in which the figures were remarkably well executed, at "the tryst o' Dalgarnock." The " braw wooer was looking at Jean, who is also casting a sly glance at him over her left shoulder. She was dressed in the homely attire of bed-gown, short fustian |