244 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[No 229. 



The Eastern Question. — The following extract 

 from Tatler, No. 155., April 6, 1710, appears re- 

 markable, considering the events of the present 

 day : 



" The chief politician of the Bench was a great 

 assertor of paradoxes. He told us, with a seeming 

 concern, ' that by some news he had lately read from 

 Muscovy, it appeared to him there was a storm gather- 

 ing in the Black Sea, which might in time do hurt to 

 the naval forces of this nation.' To this he added, 

 « that, for his part, he could not wish to see the Turk 

 driven out of Europe, which he believed could not but 

 be prejudicial to our woollen manufacture.' He then 

 told us, ' that he looked upon those extraordinary revo- 

 lutions which had lately happened in those parts of the 

 world, to have risen chiefly from two persons who were 

 not much talked of; and those,' says he, 'are Prince 

 Menzicoff and the Duchess of Mirandola.' He backed 

 his assertions with so many broken hints, and such a 

 show of depth and wisdom, that we gave ourselves up 

 to his opinions." 



F. B. Relton. 



Jonathan Sioift, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. — 

 It is remarkable (and yet it has not been noticed, 

 I believe, by his biographers) that Dean Swift was 

 suspended from his degree of B.A. in Trinity Col- 

 lege, Dublin, for exciting disturbances within the 

 college, and insulting the junior dean. He and 

 another were sentenced by the Board to ask par- 

 don publicly of the junior dean, on their knees, as 

 having offended more atrociously than the rest. 

 These facts afford the true solution of Swift's ani- 

 mosity towards the University of Dublin, and ac- 

 count for his determination to take the degree of 

 M.A. at Oxford ; and the solution receives con- 

 firmation from this, that the junior dean, for in- 

 sulting whom he was punished, was the same Mr. 

 Owen Lloyd (afterwards professor of divinity and 

 Dean of Down) whom Swift has treated with so 

 much severity in his account of Lord Wharton. 



Abhba. 



English Literature. — Some French writer 

 (Victor Hugo, I believe) has said that English 

 literature consists of four distinct literatures, 

 English, American, Scottish, and Irish, each 

 having a different character. Has this view of 

 our literature been taken, and exhibited in all its 

 aspects, by any English writer ; and if so, by 

 whom ? J. M. 



Oxford. 



Irish Legislation. — I have met with the follow- 

 ing statement : is it to be received as true ? In 

 May, 1784, a bill, intended to limit the privilege 

 of franking, was sent from Ireland for the royal 

 sanction ; and in it was a clause enacting that any 

 member who, from illness or other cause, should 

 be unable to write, might authorise some other 

 person to frank for him, provided that on the 

 back of the letter so franked the member gave at 



the same time, under his hand, a full certificate 

 of his inability to write. Abhba. 



Anecdote of George IV. and the Duke of York. — 

 The following letter was written in a boy's round 

 hand, and sent with some China cups : 

 Dear Old Mother Batten, 



Prepare a junket for us, as Fred, and I are 

 coming this evening. I send you these cups, 

 which we have stolen from the old woman [the 

 queen]. Don't you say anything about it. 



George. 



The above was found in the bottom of one of 

 the cups, which were sold for five guineas on the 

 death of Mr. Nichols, who married Mother Batten. 

 The cups are now in possession of a Mr. Toby, 

 No. 10. York Buildings, St.Sidwells, Exeter. 



Julia R. Bockett. 



Southcote Lodge. 



©uerfoJ. 



anonymous works : " posthumous parodies," 

 " adventures in the moon," etc. 



A remote correspondent finds all help to fail 

 him from bibliographers and cotemporary re- 

 viewers in giving any clue to the authorship of 

 the works described below. But he has been 

 conversant enough with the " N. & Q." to per- 

 ceive that no Query, that he is aware, has yefc 

 been started in its pages involving a problem, for 

 which somebody among its readers and contri- 

 butors has not proved a match. Encouraged 

 thereby, he tenders the three following titles, in 

 the full faith that his curiosity, which is pretty 

 strong, will not have been transmitted over the 

 waste of waters but to good result. 



1. Posthumous Parodies, and other Pieces, by 

 several of our most celebrated poets, but not 

 before published in any former edition of their 

 works: John Miller, London, 12mo., 1814. This 

 contains some twenty imitations or over, of the 

 more celebrated minor poems, all of a political 

 cast, and breathing strongly the tone of the anti- 

 Jacobin verse ; executed for the most part, and 

 several of them in particular, with great felicity. 

 Among that sort of jeux d esprit they hardly take 

 second place to The Knife Grinder, the mention 

 of which reminds me to add that it is manifest 

 enough, from half-a-dozen places in the volume, 

 that Canning is the " magnus Apollo " of the sa- 

 tirist. The final piece (in which the writer drops? 

 his former vein) is written in the spirit of sad 

 earnest, in odd contrast with the preceding 

 facetia, and betokening, in some lines, a disap- 

 pointed man. Yet, strange to tell, through all 

 the range of British criticism of that year, there 

 is an utter unconsciousness of its existence. 

 Whether there be another copy on this side the 

 Atlantic, besides the one which enables me to 



