64 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 168. 



POPE AND THE MARQUIS MAFFEI. 



I would beg the insertion of the foUowin^r Note, 

 which occurs at p. 338. of Walker's Historical 

 Memoir on Italian Tragedy ; with a view to ascer- 

 taining whether any light has been thrown on the 

 subject since the publication of the work in ques- 

 tion. I fear there is little chance of such being 

 the case, but still I would be glad to learn from 

 any of your correspondents, whether there is other 

 evidence than the passage given from the Mar- 

 quis's letter to Voltaire, to prove that Pope was 

 actually engaged in the translation of his tragedy ; 

 or whether there is any allusion in the cotem- 

 porary literature of the day, to such a work having 

 been undertaken by the bard of Twickenham. 

 ~" It seems to have escaped the notice of all Pope's 

 biographers, that when the Marquis Maffei visited 

 Twickenham, in company with Lord Burlington and 

 Dr. Mead, he found the English bard employed on a 

 translation of his Merope : yet the public have been in 

 possession of this anecdote above fifty years. The 

 Marquis, in his answer to the celebrated letter ad- 

 dressed to him by Voltaire, says : ' Avendomi Mylord 

 Conte di Burlington, e il Sig. Dottore Mead, I'uno e 

 r altro talenti rari, ed a quali quant' io debba non 

 posso dire, condotto alia villa del Sig. Pope, ch' e il 

 Voltaire dell Inghilterra, come voi siete il Pope della 

 Francia, quel bravo Poeta mi fece vedere, che lavorava 

 alia versione della mia Tragedia in versi Inglesi : se la 

 terminasse, e che ne sia divenuto, non so.' — La Merope, 

 ver. 1745, p. 180. With the fate of this version we 

 are, and probably shall ever remain, unacquainted : it 

 may, however, be safely presumed, that it was never 

 finished to the satisfaction of the translator, and there- 

 fore committed to the flames." 



T. C. S. 



THE CHURCH CATECHISM. 



Allow me to make the following inquiries through 

 the pages of " N^. & Q.," which may possibly elicit 

 valuable information from some of your many 

 correspondents. In the Archbishop of York's 

 questions put to candidates for Holy Orders, Feb. 

 1850, occurred this Query : " The Church Cate- 

 chism . . by whom was the latter part added and 

 put into its present form ; and whence is it chiefly 

 derived?" The former part of this is readily 

 answered ; being, as any one at all read in the 

 history of the Prayer-Book well knows, added at 

 the Hampton Court Conference, 1603; and was 

 drawn up by Bishop Overall, at that time Dean of 

 St. Paul's : but whence is it chiejly derived ? That 

 is the question for which I have hitherto sought 

 in vain a satisfactory solution, and fear his grace, 

 or his examining chaplain, must have looked in 

 vain for a correct reply from any of his quasi 

 clergymen, college education though they may 

 have L'^d. It is a point which seems to be passed 



over entirely unnoticed by all of our liturgical 

 writers and church historians, as I have been at 

 no little pains in searching works at all likely to 

 clear it up, but, hitherto, without success. It may 

 be conjectured that the part referred to, viz., on 

 the Sacraments, was taken from Dean Nowell's 

 Catechism ; or, at all events, that Overall bor- 

 rowed some of the expressions while he changed 

 its meaning, as Nowell's was purely Calvinistic in 

 tendency. He may have had before him the 

 fourth part of Peter Lombard's Liber Sententi' 

 arum, or some such work. But all this is mere 

 supposition ; and what I want to arrive at, is some 

 correct data or authoritative statement which 

 would settle the point. Another interesting mat- 

 ter upon which I am desirous of information, is, 

 as to the protestation after the rubrics at the end 

 of the Communion Service. In our present Prayer- 

 Book it is in marks of quotation, which we do not 

 find in the second book of King Edward VI., 

 where it originally appears — and the expressions 

 there admit the real presence. It was altogether 

 left out in Elizabeth's Prayer-Book, but again 

 inserted in the last review in 1661, when the in- 

 verted commas first appear : the sense being some- 

 what different, allowing the spiritual but not the 

 actual or bodily presence of Christ. Why are the 

 commas or marks of quotation, if such they be, 

 then inserted ? I have written to a well-known 

 Archdeacon, eminent for his works on the Sacra- 

 ments, but his answer does not convey what is 

 sought by C. J. Armistead, 



Springfield Mount, Leeds. 



A COUNTESS OF SOUTHAMPTON. 



I have just been reading, in the Revue des deux 

 Mondes, an interesting article upon the recently- 

 published Memoirs of Mademoiselle deKoenigsmark, 

 in which I meet with the following passage : 



" Ce fut a Venise que Charles-Jean de Koenigsmark 

 rencontra la belle Comtesse de .Southampton, cette 

 vaillante amoureuse qui, plantant la fortune et famille, 

 le suivit desormais par le monde deguisee en page : 

 romanesque anecdote que la princesse Palatine a con- 

 signee dans ses memoires avec cette brusque rondeur 

 de style qui ne marchande pas les expressions. ' II 

 doit etre assez dans le caractere de quelques dames 

 anglaises de suivre leurs amans. J'ai connu un Comte 

 de Koenigsmark qu'une dame anglaise avait suivi en 

 habit de page. Elle etait avec lui a Chambord, et 

 coinme, faute de place, il ne pouvait loger au Chateau, 

 il avait fait dresser dans la foret une tente ou il logeat. 

 II me raconta son aventure a la IMasse ; j'eu la curiosite 

 de voir le soi-disant page. Je n'ai jamais rien vu de 

 plus beau que cette figure : les plus beaux yeux du 

 monde, une bouche charmante, une prodigieuse quan- 

 tite de cheveux du plus beau brun, qui tomberent en 

 grosses boucles sur ses epaules. Elle sourit en me 

 voyant, se doutant bien que je savais son secret. Lors- 



