2nd s. X. Nov. 17. 'GO.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



381 



LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17. 1860. 



N". 255.— CONTENTS. 



NOTES: —Bowles v. fioscoe, 381 — The late Mr. Mathews, 

 Comedian, 382 — "Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, cleared 

 from a Mistake of Mr. Forster's, iS. — laedited Letter of 

 Cromwell, 383. 



MiNOK Notes: — John Taylor, the Water Poet — Temple 

 Bar— "New Whig Guide " — Skull-caps — The Queen's 

 Birthday in Dublin, 1706-7 — Liver and Crow, 383. 



QUEEIES : — Synod of Kilkenny, 384 — Market and Way- 

 side Crosses — Hogarth's Gold Ticket of Admission to 

 Vauxhall Gardens — Hume of Castle Hume— Greene — 

 Allusion to Habakkuk — Watson Family — Christopher 

 Carleton, Esq. — Sawney Bean — Daughter of Lord De 

 Wolfo: ViscountessFitzwilliams — The Priory of Knights 

 Hospitallers at Harefleld — Old Donnybrook Church, near 

 Dublin —Armorial Bearings — "Lord Pembroke's Port 

 Wine " — Armorial Queries — Council of Ireland— Blakis- 

 ton Family — Antigallican Backstays, &c., 384. 



QiTEEiES WITH ANSWERS :— Furmety — Beasts tumbling 

 over their Heads — " Pen and Ink Sketches," by Cosmopo- 

 litan— Death of Sir Erasmus Philipps— J. C. Pilkington 



— Henry K. White— Anonymous — " Slaughterhouse : " 

 " Translator," 388. 



REPLIES: — Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, &c.. 389 — 

 Ride V. Drive, 390— Stone Coffins, 391 — Vulgar Errors in 

 Law: Search Warrants, how executed— "How are you off 

 for Soap " — " Scottish Dictionary " — Fireplaces in Church 

 Towers— Chancels — Bull of Paul IV. — "Missa Trium- 

 phans " — Captain Rich — Swan Upping — Bishop Aylmer 

 —The Battle of Baug6 — Charter of Charles II. — Jonathan 

 Gouldsmith, M.D. — Maurice Greene, Mus. Doc, his Fa- 

 mily—Armorial Queries — Weston Family — Sacheverell 



— Ancient Stained Glass from Cologne — Archbishop 

 Cranmer and Church Lands— Washing the Lions in the 

 Tower— Authorised Version— Upright Burial, &c., 391. 



Monthly Feuilleton of French Books. 



BOWLES V. ROSCOE. 

 Some of' your readers -will remember, and most 

 of them will have heard of, the controversy which 

 raged some thirty years since — Wm. Lisle Bowles 

 against Byron, Campbell, and others, on the sub- 

 ject of Nature and Art, and the rank of Pope as a 

 poet. I do not mean to revive that discussion. 

 Incidentally, however, a question arose which was 

 thought, and not without apparent reason, to affect 

 the moral character of Bowles. Bowles, in an in- 

 troductory note to the correspondence of Pope, 

 said, with reference to the first publication of 

 Pope's Letters : — 



" In the Appendix to this volume will be seen the 

 statement of the transaction as first published, when the 

 unauthorized edition came out that the reader may form 

 his opinion." 



On reference to the Appendix it appeared that 

 Bowles gave only extracts from the statement — 

 the "Narrative" — observing that : — 



" It would be trifling with the reader's patience to 

 carry him through the whole of the correspondence, but 

 the following letter is too singular to be omitted." 



On this Gilchrist charged Bowles with disin- 

 genuousness and duplicity ; and Gilchrist was 

 followed by Roscoe, who asserted that even Mr. 



Gilchrist was not aware of the injustice done by 

 Bowles to Pope : — 



" It consists, not merely in withholding the narrative 

 which he had promised to lay before the reader, but in 

 substituting for the part so omitted other pieces not found 

 in the original : the two first of the three letters given by 

 Mr. Bowles, which appear to the reader as documents 

 adduced by Pope, being in fact extracted from the 

 counter-narrative of Curll." 



Bowles, not unnaturally, was in a fever of in- 

 dignation : " I have been charged," he writes, 

 "with a most base and dishonorable act," with 

 *' substituting something which Mr. Roscoe says 

 is taken from the counter-narrative of Curll;" 

 and he rushed on with comment and extract 

 through fourteen pages in proof that he had found 

 the letters in the "Narrative" from which he 

 quoted and in an edition of Pope's Letters of 

 which he gave the title-page. Roscoe replied, 

 and asserted that Bowles "hath not ventured to 

 deny " that he did absolutely " substitute one do- 

 cument for another." Bowles, therefore, did in- 

 dignantly deny the charge, and offered to make 

 oath on the subject, if required. All this is 

 strange, and very painful. Here are two ami- 

 able and excellent men charging each other with 

 positive fraud, for if Bowles be innocent, Roscoe 

 must be guilty, and yet neither party takes the 

 decent trouble to determine the fact ; but both 

 rest content on the single authority which happens 

 by accident to be on his table. Most strange of 

 all, it was Roscoe whose statement was " extracted 

 from the counter-narrative of Curll." 



I have before me not only the " Narrative " as 

 originally published by Cooper — Pope's " Narra- 

 tive " as it may be called, — but two editions of 

 the letters published by Cooper to which the 

 "Narrative" was prefixed, and three other edi- 

 tions, all published in 1735, and they all include 

 the two letters quoted by Bowles. What, then, it 

 will be said, could have misled Roscoe ? Simply 

 the fact that he had seen no other copy of the 

 " Narrative " than that published by Curll in the 

 second volume of the Pope Correspondence. Curll 

 announced on the 21st May his intention of pub- 

 lishing an edition of the Letters with a Supplement 

 containing all the letters received from P. T., R. 

 S., &c., the Initial Correspondence as it is called. 

 There is no doubt in my mind, and the fact I am 

 about to relate tends to prove it, that the Initial 

 Correspondence was at that time printed, and the 

 two letters referred to by Roscoe were, of course,. 

 Included. But Curll's intention having been thus 

 made known, an announcement appeared on the 

 24th that " the Clergyman," the R. Smythe of the 

 Correspondence, had discovered the whole trans- 

 action, and that a " Narrative " of the same would 

 be speedily published. Curll thought it good 

 policy not to publish the Initial Correspondence 

 until he had seen this " Narrative." He there- 

 fore issued the edition of Pope's Letters without: 



