270 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 257. 



pardonable negligence, make damaging statements 

 •which a mere reference to his work would have 

 disproved. Brydone has been more sinned against 

 than sinning. G. Elliot. 



The following extract from the interesting work 

 of M. Dutens, Memoirs of a Travellernow in Re- 

 tirement, London, 1806, may tend to substantiate 

 the statement that this tourist never made the 

 ascent of Mount Etna which he described : 



" Mr. Brydone flattered himself with having seen, from 

 the summit of Mount Etna, a horizon of 800 miles 

 diameter, the radius of which would have been 400 miles. 

 Now, from an examination of the convexity of the globe, 

 it is proved that it would require that Etna should be 

 sixteen miles high to see that distance, even with the 

 best telescope. Etna is not, according to the most exact 

 measurement, above two miles high, and it is impossible 

 for land to be seen at more than 150 miles from its sum- 

 mit. This agrees with what Lord Seaforth once told me ; 

 that, as he was bathing one afternoon in the sea, near the 

 island of Malta, he saw the sun set behind Mount Etna, 

 the top of which only he was then able to perceive. The 

 distance from Malta to Mount Etna is computed to be 

 about 150 miles." — Vol. v. p. 55. 



The Rev, C. C. Colton, while eulogising the style 

 of Brydone, brings a graver charge against him 

 than that of imperfect veracity : 



"Brydone, the most elegant writer of travels in our 

 language : ' Non Anglus, sed angelus, siforet Christianus.' " 

 — Note to Hypocrisy, a Poem, 8vo., London, 1812, p. 104. 



William Bates. 



Birmingham. 



BOBERT PAHSONS (Vol. X., p. 131.) : BEEBINGTOn's 

 [MEMOIRS OF GKEGOBIO PANZANI (Vol. X., p. 186.). 



The history of a title-page may be left to one 

 of your contributors whosejname appears thereon. 

 If a conjecture may be hazarded, I should suppose 

 that as the first title-page by no means adequately 

 described the contents of the book, the second was 

 written as more applicable, which, notwithstanding 

 its errors, is certainly the case. The work of the 

 Rev. Joseph Berrington consists of an introduction 

 to the Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, detailing the 

 history of the Roman Catholics in England during 

 the reign of Elizabeth, and until the mission of 

 Panzani in 1634, together with a supplement 

 carrying on the history until the latter part of the 

 eighteenth century. The matter consists of a 

 preface of 33 pages, an introduction reaching to 

 111 pages, the original memoirs 147 pages, and 

 the supplement 214 pages, in all 503. It seemed 

 a misnomer to entitle such a work the Memoirs of 

 Gregorio Panzani, and another title-page was 

 obviously necessary ; whether the one printed was 

 the best may be questioned. 



My object in sending my humble Note was 

 literary and not polemical. I well knew that the 

 Roman Catholics in this country had always been 



divided as to the merits of Robert Parsons, Henry 

 Garnet, &c. Were I a member of that body I 

 might, without impeachment to my religion, adopt 

 the opinion of Mr. Berrington, or the fancy of 

 Ignoto. It is difficult to reply to the last-named. 

 Histories have been written on no other found- 

 ation than might, could, would, or should ; and the 

 impotential mood " would not," in the hands of 

 your correspondent, is as convenient as the po- 

 tential. " Credo quod impossibile est," says some 

 one : I on my part do not deny the assertion of 

 Ignoto, that the Rev. Joseph Berrington " would 

 not have written a book of this kind ;" I only assert 

 that he did, and that he dedicated it, moreover, 

 " To the [Roman] Catholic clergy of the county 

 of Stafford . . . with whom he has the honour 

 to think and act." The book is as undoubtedly 

 the book of the Rev. Joseph Berrington, as the 

 well-known Literary History of the Middle Ages 

 is his ; and until the publication of " N. & Q." of 

 September 2, 1854, its authorship has never, I 

 believe, been denied or doubted. 



In his estimate of Robert Parsons he is by no 

 means singular, as indeed his dedication would 

 lead us to conjecture. To many of the secular 

 clergy of the Roman Catholic persuasion the name 

 of Parsons has always been odious. In the De- 

 claratio Motuum, drawn up by the Rev. John 

 Mush, and addressed in his own name, and the 

 names of other secular priests, to Pope Cle- 

 ment VIII. in 1601, we read : 



" Father Parsons was the principal author, the incentor, 

 and the mover, of all our garboils at home and abroad. 

 During the short space of nearly two years that he spent 

 in England, so much did he irritate, by his actions, the 

 mind of the queen and her ministers, that on that oc- 

 casion the first severe laws were enacted against the 

 ministers of our religion and those who should harbour 

 them. He, like a dastardly soldier, consulting his own 

 safety, fled. But being himself out of the reach of danger, 

 he never ceased, by publications against the first magis- 

 trates of the republic, or by factious letters, to provoke 

 their resentment." — See in Berrington's History, p. 28. 



Thus much for the opinion of the secular priests 

 in England. Their estimate of the character of 

 Father Parsons is the same as that of the Roman. 

 Catholic layman from whose book I now quote : 



" He was the pensioner of the King of Spain, whose 

 views, in opposition to those of his sovereign, he unremit- 

 tingly pursued. . . . Such was his ascendancy over 

 the minds of the Catholics at that period, that more pains 

 were taken by many missioners to support the pretensions 

 of the King of Spain, than the real interests of religion. 

 To his intrigues, and to those rebellious principles already 

 stated, which he inculcated into his numerous adherents, 

 is the enacting of the penal laws more to be attributed, 

 than to any other cause. . . . After the accession of 

 James he was the most strenuous opposer of the oath of 

 allegiance, the principal instrument in procuring the con- 

 demnation of it from Paul V. He died in 1610. His 

 activity was persevering, his industry indefatigable, and 

 his talents uncommon ; but they were unfortunately ex- 

 ercised in opposition to his country and his sovereign, and 



