u 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 273. 



Page 413. " John Crooke, Fellow of Winchester Col- 

 lege, 1619. Prebendary of Winchester Cathedral, 1640. 

 Master of St. Cross," &c. Died about 1645. 



Page 434. The Right Hon. " Charles Wolfran Corn- 

 •wall, Barrister-at law, one of the Lords of the Treasurj^, 

 and twice Speaker of the House of Commons, 1780, 1784. 

 Master of St. Cross." Died 1789, and was buried in the 

 Hospital Church. 



Heney Edwaeds. 



CHAEACTEE OF THE LOW COUNTEIES. 



The love of the Dutch for extreme cleanliness 

 has become, as it were, proverbial ; and every one 

 who has travelled through the country, and wit- 

 nessed their grand hebdomadal schoonmaken, can 

 testify to the almost fanatical excess to wliich the 

 passion for purification is carried among them. 

 It would appear, nevertheless, from various allu- 

 sions in the works of our older writers, that in this 

 respect, as well as others, the Dutch of the present 

 day are " unlike their Belgic sires of old ;" and 

 that while they have lost the bold and warlike 

 character ascribed to their ancestors by Goldsmith 

 in his Traveller, they have at the same time ceased 

 to be characterised by the ruggedness of dress and 

 filthiness of person which served at one time to 

 point the moral of the wit and the satirist. Thus 

 the punning allusions in Prince Henry's taunting 

 speech to Poins have ceased to be intelligible, and 

 I am not aware that any commentator has endea- 

 voured to explain them : — 



" What a disgrace is it to me to bear the in- 

 ventory of thy shirts ; as, one for superfluity, and one 

 other for use? — but that, the tennis-court keeper knows 

 better than I ; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee, when 

 thou keepest not racket there ; as thou hast not done a 

 great while, because the rest of thy low-countries have 

 made a shift to eat up thy Holland : and God knows, 

 whether those that bawl out the ruins of thy linen, shall 



inherit his kingdom," &c Second Part of King Henri/ 



IV., Act II. Sc. 2. 



An explanation of these allusions would be 

 desirable : they may be thought to receive some 

 illustration from the following passage from Earle's 

 Microcosmography ; or, a Piece of the World 

 discovered; ^c, ]2mo., London, 1732. In his 

 character of " A Younger Brother," the Bishop 

 says : " His last refuge is the Low Countries, 

 where rags and linen are no scandal, where he lives 

 a poor gentleman of a company, and dies without 

 a shirt." So also in a satirical work by Owen 

 Felltham (A Brief Character of the Low Countries 

 under the States, being Three Weeks' Observation of 

 the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants, London, 

 1659, 12mo.), the sailors (that is, the inhabitants) 

 are characterised as being able to " drink, rail, 

 swear, niggle, steal, and be loicsie alike" (p. 40.). 

 Goldsmith is reported to have said (where?) 

 that " a Dutchman's house reminded him of a 

 temple dedicated to an ox ;" and in his Citizen of 



the World (chap, xxxiv.), he says : " My Lord 

 Firmly is certainly a Goth, a Vandal, no taste In 

 the world for painting. I wonder how any call 

 him a man of taste ; passing through the streets of 

 Antwerp a few days ago, and observing the naked- 

 ness of the inhabitants, he was so barbarous as to 

 observe, that he thought the best method the 

 Flemings could take was to sell their pictures and 

 buy clothes." 



Perhaps, after all, these ill-natured sneers may 

 have little better foundation than in those physical 

 peculiarities and eccentricities which have so long 

 marked out the Low Countries as a stock theme 

 for the exercise of satirical humour — from the 

 witty and extravagant descriptions of Marvell and 

 Butler, to the pathetic " Adieu ! canaux, canards, 

 canaille" of Voltaire, and the sarcastic description 

 of the author of Vathek. William Bates. 



Birmingham. 



:^t«0r 3ott^, 



The Turkish Troops, a.d. 1800. — 



" It is, perhaps, a fortunate circumstance for Europe, 

 that the eiforts which have been made at different times, 

 and which are still making, by European officers, to in- 

 troduce a discipline among the Turks, have proved in- 

 effectual ; for, if they are considered in regard to their 

 personal courage, their bodily strength, or their military 

 habits, they will be found to equal, if not to surpass, any 

 other body of men. A loaf of bread, with an onion, is 

 what many of them have always lived upon ; rice is a 

 luxury, and meat a dainty to them. With this abste- 

 mious' diet they are strangers to many of our diseases, 

 and the hardships of a camp life are habitual to them;, 

 because, from their infancy, they have slept upon the 

 ground and in the open air. Discipline would certainly 

 make men who are possessed of such natural advantages 

 very formidable ; whereas, from a want of it, they are 

 despicable enemies." 



The camp at El-Arish : 



" The view of the camp the morning after my arrival 

 at El-Arish, was to me a very singular sight, as I believe, 

 it was original in its kind. " The ground upon which it 

 stood was irregular, and a perfect desert of white sand, 

 with no other signs of vegetation than a few date-trees, 

 which stood in a cluster at a small distance. The tents,, 

 which are of different colours and shapes, were irregularly 

 strewed over a space of ground several miles in circuit, 

 and everything that moved was conspicuous to the eye, 

 from the white ground of the landscape. The whole re- 

 sembled a large fair; a number of the soldiers who serve 

 without pay carry on a traffic by which they subsist ; 

 there are, besides, tradesmen of all descriptions who fol- 

 low the camp; some keep coffee-houses, which are dis- 

 tinguished by a red flag ; others are horse-dealers ; and 

 a number of public cryers are constantly employed in 

 describing to the multitude things lost,' or in selling 

 divers articles at auction. This scene of confusion is 

 certainly more easily conceived than told ; but a very 

 ingenious definition of it was given by a Turk, who was 

 asked to describe their manner of encampment. ' Thus,' 

 said he, pulling from his pocket a handful of paras [a 



