112 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 170. 



known something of the authorship of Comtis, and 

 to have enlightened Sir Henry thereon ? My 

 principal objection remains. Thomas Randolph 

 was far too popular a poet to have been con- 

 temptuously alluded to by Wotton or any one else 

 in that age, and, making all due allowance for 

 laudation and compliment, Wotton does disparage 

 the poems to which Milton's Masque was ap- 

 pended. 



I think that quaint old Winstanley gives the 

 general opinion of Randolph. He says : 



" He was one of such a pregnant wit that the Muses 

 may seem not only to have smiled, but to have been 

 tickled at his nativity, such the festivity of his poems 

 of all sorts." — Lives of English Poets, p. 142., Lond. 

 1687. 



We must therefore, perhaps, look out for some 

 more obscure and worthless poet, whose "prin- 

 cipal " Milton's " accessory " was to " help out." 



When writing on this subject before, I said that 

 Samuel Hartlib had not settled in England at the 

 time of Sir H. Wotton's letter to Milton (Vol. vi., 

 p. 5.). I am indebted to Warton for that mistake. 

 He fixes the date of his coming hither to " about 

 the year 1640." (^Illustrations of Milton's Minor 

 Poems, p. 596.: Lond. 1775.) 



Samuel Hartlib figures amongst the corre- 

 spondents of Joseph Meile in March, 1634, and 

 even then dated from London. (Mede's Works, 

 vol. ii. lib. iv. p. 1058. : Lond. 1664, fol.) 



Amongst the Letters and Despatches of Lord 

 StrafForde are two letters from Sir Henry Wotton, 

 which do not appear in the Reliquice (vide vol. i. 

 pp.45 — 48.: Dublin, 1740, fol.), though some sen- 

 tences in the former of the two may be found at 

 p. 373. of said work. I often find it a pleasant 

 employment to fill up the gaps and trace out the 

 allusions in Wotton's correspondence. 



May I give a short specimen of one of his 

 letters filled up ? It was written, I suppose, to 

 Nicholas Pey : 



" My dear Nic, 

 " More than a voluntary motion doth now carry me 

 towards Suffolk, especially that I may confer by the 

 way with an excellent physician at B., whom I brought 

 myself from Venice." — Reliquitt, p. 359. 



By " B." is meant St. Edmund's Bury, and by the 

 *' excellent physician " no less than Gaspero Des- 

 potine, who, together with Mark Anthony de 

 Dominis, accompanied Sir H. Wotton and his 

 chaplain Bedell from Italy. 



However, he was very unlike the archbishop of 

 whom Dr. Crakanthorp used to say, that he was 

 well called "De Dominis in the plural, for he 

 could serve two masters, or twenty if they would 

 all pay him wages." (Hacket's Life of Williams, 

 part i. p. 103. : Lond. 1693, fol.) Despotine left 

 Italy that he might at the same time leave the 

 communion of the Church of Rome, and when 



Bedell was appointed to the living of St. Ed- 

 mund's Bury, he accompanied him thither. One 

 of Wotton's very interesting letters announces the 

 event. (Reliquice, p. 400.) Under the fostering 

 care of the saintly Bedell, Despotine rose to emi- 

 nence in his profession at St. Edmund's Bury, and 

 kept up a kind correspondence with his guide and 

 patron after his promotion to the Provostship of 

 Trinity College, Dublin, and the sees of Ardagh 

 and Kilmore. (Burnet's Life of Bishop Bedelly 

 ad init.) 



In another letter (Reliquice, p. 356.) Wotton 

 speaks of having given also to Michael Brain- 

 thwaite and the young Lord Scudamore the 

 advice of Alberto ScipionI to himself, to "keep, 

 his eyes open and his mouth shut," which Mlltoi* 

 sadly disregarded. Rt. 



Warmington. 



SKULL-CAPS VERSUS SKULL-CUPS. 



(Vol. vi., pp. 441. 565.) 



Your correspondent James Graves seems to 

 consider cooking in a skull Impossible. I certainly 

 have never tried it, nor do I wish to express an 

 opinion as to the taste of the Irish or their in- 

 vaders, A.D. 1315, though methinks those who re- 

 lished the " flesh " need not have demurred to the 

 pot. But as to the possibility, in Ewbank oa 

 Hydraulic Machines, book I. cap. 3., I find the 

 following mention of 



" Primitive Boilers. — The gourd is probably the 

 original vessel for heating water, &c. &c., its exteriar 

 being kept moistened by water while on the fire, as 

 still practised by some people, while others apply a 

 coating of clay to protect it from the effects of fiame." 

 He then quotes Kotzebue as finding " the Radack 

 Islanders boiling something in cocoa-shells." A 

 primitive Sumatran vessel for boiling rice Is the 

 bamboo, which is still used ; by the time the rice 

 Is dressed the vessel is nearly destroyed by the 

 fire. This destructlbility needs hardly to be con- 

 sidered an objection to the " starving fugitives," 

 as plenty of the same kind must have been at 

 hand, and even an Irishman's skull is probably 

 as little inflammable as gourds, cocoa-shells, or 

 bamboos. J. P. O- 



Should the following extract not be consideredi 

 as bearing on the question, we must admit that fft 

 Is a remarkable bit of folk lore. 



The quotation Is second-liand, being taken from 

 the Chronicles of London Bridge, Family Libra?'!/, 

 p. 436. ; the authority is, however, there given. 

 The passage refers to some parties engaged to 

 refine the coinage, and who were taken ill, afi'ectad 

 probably by the fumes of arsenic. 



" the mooste of them in meltinge fell sycfce 



to deathe, w*^ the sauoure, so as they were advised ta 

 drynke in a dead man's skull for theyre recure. 



