318 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[No. 20. 
QUERIES. 
QUERIES ON OUTLINE. 
The boundary between a surface represented 
and its background receives two different treat- 
ments in the hands of artists who have the highest 
claims on our respect. Some, following the older 
painters as they were followed by Raphael and 
Albert Durer, bring the surface of the figure 
abruptly against its background. Others, like 
Murilli and Titian, melt the one into the other, so 
that no pencil could trace the absolute limit of | 
either. Curiously enough, though for very ob- 
vious reasons, the Daguerrotype seems to favour 
one method, the Calotype the other. Yet, two 
Calotypes, in which the outlines are quite unde- 
fined, coalesce in the Stereoscope, giving a sharp 
outline; and as soon as the mind has been thus 
taught to expect a relievo, either eye will see it. 
But if you look at your face in a glass, you 
cannot at once (say at three feet distance) see the 
outlines of the eye and cheek. They disappear 
every where, except in the focus common to both 
eyes. ‘Then nothing is seen absolutely at rest. 
The act of breathing imparts perpetual motion to 
the artist and the model, The aspen leaf is 
trembling in the stillest air. Whatever difference 
of opinion may exist as to Turner's use or abuse 
of his great faculties, no one will doubt that he 
has never been excelled in the art of giving space 
and relative distance to all parts of his canvas. 
Certainly no one ever carried confusion of outline 
in every part not supposed to be in the focus of 
the eye so far. 
On the other hand, every portion of a large 
picture, however severe its execution, acquires 
this morbid outline wherever the eye quits one 
detail for another. Is, then, the law governing a 
small and large surface different? Do these in- 
stances imply that a definite boundary, a modern 
German style, is indefensible? or only indefensible 
in miniature? Or, is such a picture as the Van 
Eyh in the National Gallery a vindication of the 
practice in small works? 
T can answer that it is not; and this last ques- 
tion I merely ask to avoid all answers on the score 
of authority. No doubt that strange work is one 
of the most realising pictures ever painted,— more 
so than any neighbouring Rembrandt, — whose 
masses of light and shade were used as a “creative 
power.” J want to know whether there is a right 
and wrong in the case, apart from every thing 
men call taste. Whether, whenever a work of art 
passes from suggestion to imitation, some liberty 
must not be given at the lines whence the rays are 
supposed to diverge to the two eyes from two dif- 
ferent surfaces. Every advance in art and science 
removes something from the realms of opinion, 
and this appears to be a question on which science 
must some day legislate for art. J.O. W.H. 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL—OLD SONGS ONCE POPULAB 
THERE. 
Amongst the numerous correspondents and 
readers of your very interesting little work, there 
may yet be living some who were scholars in the 
above institution during the last ten or fifteen 
years of the last century, coevals, or nearly so, 
with Richards, afterwards of Oriel College, author 
of a prize poem, Aboriginal Britons, and one of 
the Bampton Lecturers; Middleton, afterwards 
Bishop of Caleutta; Trollope, afterwards Master 
of the Grammar School; Barnes, afterwards con- 
nected with the Times; Stevens, Scott (poor 
| Scott!), Coleridge, Lamb, Allen, White, Leigh 
Hunt, the two brothers Le G. Favell, Thompson, 
Franklin, &e., pupils of old James Boyer, of 
flogging celebrity. 
If so, can any of them furnish me with the 
words of an old song, then current in the school, 
relating to the execution of the Karl of Der- 
wentwater in the rebellion of 1715, of which the 
four following lines are all that I remember : — 
“« There’s fifty pounds in my right pocket, 
To be given to the poor; 
There's fifty pounds in my left pocket, 
To be given from door to door.” 
Of another song, equally popular, less pathetic, 
but of more spirit-stirring character, can any one 
supply the remainder? — 
« As our king lay musing on his bed, 
He bethought himself once on a time 
Of a tribute that was due from France, 
That had not been paid for so long a time. 
«“ Qh! then he called his trusty page, 
His trusty page then called he, 
Saying, ‘ You must go to the king of France, 
To the king of France right speedily.’” 
Nemo. 
WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE — DOMINUS FACTOTUM 
— ROBERT PASSELLEW. 
Allow me to offer a query or two respecting 
which I shall be glad of any information your 
numerous correspondents may be able to furnish. 
1. In Fuller’s History of Waltham Abbey, pp. 
269. 274., Nichols’s edition, 1840, we have the 
following entries from the churchwarden’s ac- 
counts : — 
« Anno 1542, the thirty-fourth of Henry viii. 
primis. For watching the sepulchre, a groat.” 
“ Item, for watching the sepulchre, eight pence.” 
Im- 
The last entry occurs in “ Anno 1554, Mariz 
primo,” but Fuller adds, “though what meant 
thereby, I know not.” Can any satisfactory in- 
formation be furnished which will explain the 
custom here alluded to? 
