30 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 245. 



Minor Nineties tiitb ^n^iatx^, 



Milton's Amour. — Is the name and family of 

 the lady of wit and beauty, to whom Milton paid 

 attentions of a tender nature, during his temporary 

 separation from his first wife, known ? 



Garlichithe. 



[Mr. Mitford, in his " Life of Milton," prefixed to 

 liis Works, vol. i. p. Iviii., notices the poet's attentions 

 to the fair sex at this period: — "The golden reins 

 of discipline and government in the Church being now 

 let loose, Milton proceeded to put in practice the doc- 

 trine which he advocated, and seriously paid his ad- 

 dresses to a very accomplished and beautiful young 

 lady, the daughter of Dr. Davis ; the lady, however, 

 hesitated, and was not easily to be persuaded into the 

 lawfulness of the proposal, which fortunately termi- 

 nated in effecting a happy reconciliation with the 

 offending and discarded wife," In a note, Mr, Mit- 

 ford farther states that " during the desertion of his 

 wife, Milton frequented the society of the Lady Mar- 

 garet Leigh, a person of distinction and accomplish- 

 ment. To Lady Ranelagh, the favourite sister of the 

 illustrious Boyle, in his later years he was gratefully 

 attached. He says of her to her son, who had been 

 his pupil, ' Nam et mihi omnium necessitudinum loco 

 fuit,' The reader will be referred with pleasure, on 

 the mention of this illustrious lady, to Mr. Crossley's 

 learned and interesting Diary of Dr. Worthington, 

 p. 124. &c."] 



President of St. Johns. — Who was President 

 of St. John's, Oxford, in 1721 ? And is any 

 printed sermon by him extant, in which the fol- 

 lowing passage occurs ? 



" And the Church of England has the peculiar mis- 

 fortune, under the profession of the purest faith, to see 

 them made teachers and governors in her communion, 

 who either deny or betray all the great articles of the 

 Christian religion. But it is to be remembered that 

 these men, though at present vitally united to it, as 

 extraneous adventitious particles to the human body, 

 we have been speaking of, yet are not of the essence of 

 it, nor enter into its identity ; and when at last they 

 are dropt from it, it may be hoped there may be a glorious 

 resurrection without them ! " 



T.A.T. 

 Florence. 



[Dr. William Delaune was President of St. John's 

 College, Oxford, in 1721 ; and during that year pub- 

 lished a sermon on Original Sin. We have glanced 

 through that sermon, as well as twelve others published 

 by him, but cannot discover the passage quoted above.] 



John Buncle. — Who wrote the Autobiography 

 of John Buncle, Esq., in two vols., London, 1766 ? 

 I presume the name to be a fictitious one. If not, 

 who was John Buncle, and what particulars about 

 him are known ? The book in question is an ex- 

 ceedingly strange one in many ways. A more or 

 less connected narrative is made the thread on 

 •which are strung a variety of theological discus- 



sions, by no means remarkable for good taste in 

 their manner, or orthodoxy in their matter. 

 Mingled with these are a suite of the most auda- 

 ciously improbable adventures, all related in the 

 most simple matter-of-fact manner ; the principal 

 scene of which is represented to have been that 

 part of Yorkshire called llichmondshire. Among 

 a variety of strange and unaccountable statements, 

 the following struck me as remarkable — as a re- 

 markable fact that is, or as a remarkable lie. He 

 speaks of the "grandson of the great primate 

 Usher, and the only remaining person of the 

 archbishop's family," as " the most violent papist 

 I ever saw. I knew the man," he proceeds to say, 

 " in Dublin, and have never heard so outrageous 

 a Catholic as he was. He said, to my astonish- 

 ment, that his grandfather was a great light, but 

 burnt witli his head downwards in this world, till 

 he dropped into hell in the next." Was Usher's 

 grandson the only remaining member of the pri- 

 mate's family ? Was he a Roman Catholic ? and 

 was he a man likely to have uttered the above 

 atrocity ? T. A. T. 



Florence. 



[The author of this work is the eccentric Thomas 

 Amory, who appears to have travelled in search of 

 Socinians, as Don Quixotte in search of chivalrous 

 adventures, and probably from a similar degree of in- 

 sanity. In 1755 he published Memoirs: containing the 

 Lives of several Ladies of Great Britain. The charac- 

 ters of these ladies are truly ridiculous, and probably 

 the offspring of fiction. They are not only beautiful, 

 learned, ingenious, and religious, but they are all zealous 

 Socinians in a very high degree of heterodoxy. At the 

 end of these Memoirs he promised a continuation of 

 them, which was to contain what the public would 

 then have received with great satisfaction, and certainly 

 would still, should the MSS. luckily remain extant, 

 namely, " An Account of two very extraordinary per- 

 sons, Dean Swift and Mrs. Constantia Grierson." " As 

 to the Dean," he says, " we have four histories of him 

 lately published : to wit, by Lord Orrery, the Observer 

 on Lord Orrery, Deane Swift, Esq., and Mrs. Pilking- 

 ton." Of course these pieces are all imperfect and very 

 unsatisfactory ; but he adds, " I think I can draw his 

 character, not from his writings, but from my own near 

 observations of the man. I knew him well, though I 

 never was within sight of his house, because I could 

 not flatter, cringe, or meanly humour the extrava- 

 gancies of any man. I am sure I knew him better 

 than any of those friends he entertained twice a week 

 at the deanery, Stella excepted. I had him often to 

 myself in his rides and walks, and have studied his 

 soul when he little thought what I was about. As I 

 lodged for a year within a few doors of him, I knew his 

 times of going out to a minute, and generally nicked 

 the opportunity. I knew the excellencies and defects 

 of his understanding ; and the picture I have drawn of 

 his mind, you shall see in the Appendix aforesaid. As 

 to Mrs. Grierson, Mr. Ballard's account of her in his 

 Memoirs of some English Ladies, lately published, is not 

 worth a rush !" This Appendix was never published. 



