302 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



C2°<i S. V. 119., April 10. '58. 



succeed in reaching the moon. This part of the 

 novel seems to have resembled the Vera Historiu 

 of Lucian, and some of the. modern fictions imi- 

 tated from it. Diogenes supposes the story to 

 • have been written on tablets of cypress wood, 

 enclosed in a box, which was discovered in a sub- 

 terranean deposit near the city of Tyre by Alex- 

 ander the Great. (Concerning this romance, see 

 Dunlop's History of Fiction, vol. i. p. 8.) 



Photius declares himself ignorant of the age of 

 this Diogenes, but conjectures him to have been 

 not much later than the age of Alexander. It is 

 more probable, as modern critics have supposed, 

 that he was of much more recent date, and that 

 he wrote in the second or third century after 

 Christ. The name of Thule originated with 

 Pytheas, and it does not seem to have become 

 current in Greek and Latin literature till the 

 Augustan age. 



The passages respecting the name Thule which 

 have been collected in " N. & Q." show that, as 

 first promulgated by the impostor Pytheas, it de- 

 noted a fictitious, but not properly a fabulous or 

 mythical island : that is to say, although the story 

 of this island was a fabrication, yet he desired to 

 make it pass current for truth. The poets em- 

 ployed it for the most part, in a general and al- 

 most abstract sense, for a remote unknown island 

 in the Northern Sea ; while the novelist Diogenes 

 gives it a purely fabulous character, and makes it 

 as unreal as Lilliput and Brobdignac in Gulliver'' s 

 Travels. Silius indeed and Claudian use Thule 

 as synonymous with one of the Britannic islands ; 

 Probus makes it one of the Orcades, and Pro- 

 copius identifies it with Scandinavia. The Roman 

 fleet, in the time of Agricola, believed that they 

 saw Thule, in the dim distance^ beyond the 

 northern extremity of Scotland ; and the geogra- 

 phical writers attempt to assign it some fixed lo- 

 cality in the Northern Seas. But the name Thule 

 never acquired any fixed geographical significa- 

 tion : it was never used, either by the natives or 

 by the geographical writers, as the appellation of 

 any real island. L. 



BARTOLOMEDS DE SCACCABIO. 



(2»'J S. v. 2^6.) 



We are informed on the infallible authority of 

 an old song that, — 



" 'Tis a pity when charming women 

 Talk of things that they don't understand." 



And arguing not a fortiori, but from the weaker 

 sex to the stronger, d debiliori it might be called, 

 we may safely assert that it is a much greater pity 

 when learned gentlemen place themselves in a 

 similar position by writing upon subjects with 

 which they have a very imperfect acquaintance. 

 On referring to the original of the " Templars' 



Roll," printed in a paper in The GentlemarCs 

 Magazine of this month, I find that the Great 

 Unknown, " Bartolomeus de Scaccario," referred 

 to in the Query of Scorpio, is a sort of Franken- 

 stein-creation of the writer of the paper from 

 materials in themselves perfectly innocent of the 

 existence of any such monster. To be plain, the 

 " Bartolomeo " in the sentence " coram Bartolo- 

 meo de Scaccario " is a wrong extension of the 

 contraction for " Baronibus," i. e. " Bar." 



Wasp. 



Scorpio asks who was " Bartolomeus de Scac- 

 cario," whose name occurs in a paper on the sub- 

 ject of the Templars' possessions in London, but 

 of whom he can find no mention among the 

 Barons or other officers of the Exchequer in the 

 time of Edward II. ? 



I cannot answer Scorpio's question ; but I 

 think it likely that Bartholomew was not (properly 

 speaking) an officer of the Exchequer Court at all, 

 but a clerk (" retained " Barrister ?) or other re- 

 presentative of the Templars, who attended the 

 court regularly to defend their causes before the 

 Exchequer Barons. 



Such an officer was clearly connected with the 

 Commandery at Clerkenwell, after the suppression 

 of the Templars, and when their estates had 

 passed into the hands of the Hospitallars ; as is 

 evident from the following entries at pp. 100. and 

 101. of the Prior of Thame's Report, edited by 

 Messrs. Larking and Kemble for the Camden So- 

 ciety : — 



" Preterea idem preceptor inveniet unum fratrem ser- 

 vientem, generalem procuratorem hospitalis, et unum 

 cJericum in curia Scaccarii domini Regis nuncupata, exis- 

 tentem ibidem cotidise coram barones domini Regis in 

 eadem curia, ad omnia placita et querelas in eadem con- 

 tingentia, ac etiam ad omnes libertates et quietancias 

 domui hospitalis per cartas progenitorum Regis Anglie 

 concessas, prosequenda, defendenda, calumpnianda, re- 

 genda et terminanda. Et etiam unum attomatum cum 

 eodem fratre procuratore in aliis curiis," &c. 



J. Sansom. 



Roger North's Autobiography (2"'^ S. v. 257.) — 

 The transcripts from this unpublished work in the 

 Baker MSS., to which Mr. Mayor refers, and 

 which he has undertaken to edit, are merely 

 extracts from the entire Autobiography, which 

 I possess in Roger North's Autograph, along 

 with about fifty volumes of other MS. works by 

 him on various subjects, including his " Letter 

 Book," and the " Three Lives of Lord Guilford, 

 Dr. North, and Sir Dudley North," in a much 

 fuller and more complete state. I think it right 

 to mention this for Mr. Mayor's guidance, and 

 that I am under promise to edit the Autobiogra- 

 phy for the Philobiblon Society. Jas. Ckossley. 



