2°'i S. No 104, Dec. 26. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



509 



ditions," the objection seems to be of more than 

 usual force. Farther ; I have four volumes of the 

 London Museum, 1770, 1771, and they do not 

 contain one either of the poems or letters which 

 appear in the " Additions." Whether the London 

 Museum was continued beyond these four volumes, 

 I know not. Some years since, when I was anxious 

 to examine the work, the only copy to be found 

 in any of our public libraries was a single volume 

 in the London Institution. Here I would ask, can 

 any of your readers say when the London Mu- 

 seum was discontinued ? A. T. T. 



Mrs. Corbet. — According to Mr. Hunter, 

 Brooke, the herald, whose mother was a Mawhood, 

 and who wrote from the information of the elders 

 of his family, said that one of Turner's daughters, 

 — a sister, therefore, of his mother and of Pope's 

 mother, — was married to a Mr. Corbet, on which 

 Mr. Hunter observes : " who was, I conceive, the 

 Mrs. Corbet on whom Pope wrote what pleased 

 Dr. Johnson most of all his epitaphs." This is 

 strange. Whether Pope really wrote that epitaph 

 on Mrs. Corbet, or only applied it to her, has been 

 questioned ; but the Mrs. Corbet on whose monu- 

 ment it appears in St. Margaret's church, West- 

 minster, is there declared to be a daughter of Sir 

 Uvedale Corbet, and the Lady Mildred Cecil, 

 daughter of the Earl of Salisbury. M. C. A. 



Pope and Sioift. — In Mr. Carruthers' Life of 

 Pope (2nd edit., p. 365.), is a letter from Pope to 

 Swift, dated " Duke S*, Westminster, March 22, 

 1740." I do not find this in any edition of Pope's 

 or Swift's Works. Perhaps when your correspon- 

 dent Mr. Carbutheks is writing to " N. & Q.," he 

 will kindly say what is the authority for this let- 

 ter, or where it first appeared. T. 



Burgen (2"* S. iv. 341.)— D. P. S. desires to 

 know the meaning of this title. " Durgen (Saxon), 

 a dwarf, a little thick short person." — Bailey s 

 Dictionary. 



Of course this was in allusion to Pope's figure. 



H..M. 



Pope's '■'Iliad'' (2"'' S. iv. 367.)— Perhaps the 

 criticism on the concluding lines of the 8th book 

 of the Iliad, referred to by your correspondent 

 Lesby, is that contained in an article on Homer 

 and his translators, which appeared in the Quar- 

 terly Review, October, 1814. The remarks are as 

 follows : 



" In Rees's Cyclopcedia, under the article ' Poetry,' we 

 are told that Pope has translated the description of Night 

 in the eighth book of the Iliad with singular felicity : 

 perhaps no passage in the whole translation has been 

 more frequently quoted and admired : 



' As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,' &c. 

 Here are the planets rolling round the moon ; here is the 



pole gilt and glowing with stars; here are trees made 

 yellow and mountains tipt with silver by the moonlight ; 

 and here is the whole sky in a flood of glory ; — appear- 

 ances not to be found either in Homer or in nature; — 

 finally, these gilt and glowing skies, at the very time 

 when they are thus pouring forth a flood of glory, are 

 represented as a blue vault! The astronomy in these 

 lines would not appear more extraordinary to Dr. Her- 

 schel than the imagery to every person who has observed 

 moonlight scenes." 



J. Pennycook Brown. 



DIFFICULTIES OP CHAUCER. — NO. Ill, 



[I have now the pleasure of forwarding a ievi 

 more notes on the " Difficulties of Chaucer," 

 hoping to follow them up by one or two additional 

 communications, as brief as possible. The real 

 difficulties of Chaucer will not, on examination, 

 be found ntmierous. Tyrwhitt has closed his 

 Glossary to the Cant. Tales by a list of " Words 

 and Phrases not Understood," in number 53. 

 Of these 53, some are partly cleared by the valu- 

 able labours of Tyrwhitt himself, though not in a 

 way to satisfy his own acute and critical judg- 

 ment ; while others have been ably elucidated by 

 subsequent commentators and etymologists. The 

 present attempts, some of them purely conjec- 

 tural, to " rub out," one by one, the " difficul- 

 ties " yet remaining on the list, are respectfully 

 offered to " N. & Q.," in the hope that others, far 

 better qualified, will contribute their aid for the 

 accomplishment of the same desirable object.— 

 T.B.] 



" Rewel-Bone." — " What kind of material this 

 was, I profess myself quite ignorant," says Tjrr- 

 whitt. 



In the " Tournament of Tottenham," Tihbe 

 appears with " a garland on her head full of 

 ruelle hones." And when Sir Thopas armed 

 himself for the fight, 



" His sadel was of rewtl bone, 

 His bridel as the sonne shone." 



Cant. Tales, 13807, 8. 



Now what description of bone could this be, 

 equally available for the construction of a knight's 

 saddle and of a lady's garland ? 



Might it not be whcdehonef 



Reivel bone appears to be Revel bone, bone from 

 Revel. Revel in German is sometimes spelt Rewel. 

 (See Gaspari's Erdbeschreibung, vol. xi. p. 726. 

 and Index.) 



But even supposing that Revel was the only 

 form known to Chaucer, he would as a matter of 

 course write it Reuel — though still with the pro- 

 nunciation Revel — employing a ?i for a v. Just 

 so we find in the " Geogr. and Anthol. Descrip- 

 tion" Siuill for Seville, and in Hakluyt Nouogrode 

 for Novgorod. — Reuel., however, by copyists of 

 after times, might very naturally be both pro- 

 nounced and written Rewel. Hence, Reivel bone. 



