10 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 62. 



BEATRIX L4DY TALBOT. 



In reference to the Query of Scotus (Vol. ii., 

 p. 478.) respecting Beatrix Lady Talbot (so long 

 confounded by genealogists with iier more illus- 

 trious contemporary, Beatrix Countess of Arun- 

 del), perhaps I may be permitted to state, that the 

 merit, whatever it may be, of having been the first 

 to discover this error, belongs to myself; and that 

 the whole of the facts and authorities to prove the 

 non-identity of the two ladies were supplied by me 

 to the late Sir H. Nicolas, to enable him to com- 

 pile the article on the subject in the Collectanea 

 Topographica, vol. i. ; the notes to which also were 

 almost entirely written by myself From the note 

 of Scotus, one would suppose that he had made 

 the discovery that L.idy Talbot belonged to the 

 Portuguese family of Pinto; whereas he merely 

 transcribes my words in p, 405. of the Addenda to 

 vol. i. of the Collectanea. 



I had originally supposed that this lady was 

 a member of the house of Sousa, which bore a 

 coat of four crescents, quartered with the arms of 

 Portugal (without the boi'der) ; and in that belief 

 a paragraph was written by Sir II. Nicolas, accom- 

 panied by a pedigree, to show the connexion of 

 Beatrix Lady Talbot, through her great-great- 

 grandfather, with the royal line of Portugal, and, 

 consequently, with Beatrix Countess of Arnndel ; 

 but these were subsequently struck out. By an 

 oversight, however, the note referring to some 

 works on the genealogy of the house of Sousa has 

 been .allowed to remain at p. 87. of the Collectanea; 

 and as it stands at present, it has no corresponding 

 passage in the text. For the information that 

 Lady Talbot bore the arms of Pinto, I was really 

 indebted to a Portiiguese gentleman, the Chevalier 

 M. T. de Moraes Sarmento, who published (anony- 

 mously) a small volume entitled Bussell de Albii- 

 querque., Conto Moral., por um Porti/guez, l2mo. 

 Cintra, 1833, at pp. 331-2. of which work is a 

 brief notice of the two Beatrixes, from memoranda 

 furnished by myself At the time I collected the 

 information given to Sir H. Nicolas, I wrote to the 

 Earl of Shrewsbury, to inquire whether among 

 the family papers any evidence could be found, to 

 clear up the history of his ancestress; but his 

 lordship informed me he had no means of elucidat- 

 ing the difficult}', and that in the earliest pedigree 

 in his possession (drawn up in the reign of Eliza- 

 beth), Beatrix Lady Talbot was not only de- 

 scribed as daughter of the King of Portugal, but 

 had the royal arms of Portugal assigned to her, — 

 a proof, by the way, that even in pedigrees com- 

 piled and attested by heralds, there are statements 

 which are not borne out by historic documents. 

 I am still, tlierelbre, like Scotus, anxious to know 

 more about this lady, and hope some of your cor- 

 respondents versed in Portuguese genealogies may 

 supply the required information. F. Madden. 



a£lEj)Iic;S ta Mmav (Outfits. 



Passage in Hamlet (Vol. ii., p. 494.). — The 

 word modern, instead of moderate, in ray editions 

 of Shakspeare, is a printer's error, which shall be 

 corrected in the edition I am now publishing. To 

 a person unfamiliar with printing, it might appear 

 impossible that any compositor, with this copy 

 before him, — 



" Wliile one with moderate haste might tell a hundred," 

 should substitute — 

 " While one with modern haste might tell a hundred." 



And yet such substitution of one word for another 

 is a constant anxiety to every editor. Some may 

 consider that a competent editor would detect 

 such a gross blunder. Unfortunately, the more 

 familiar the mind is with the coi'rect reading, the 

 more likely is such an error to escape the eye. 

 Your correspondent who did me the favour to 

 point out this blunder will,. I trust, receive this 

 explanation, as also your other readers, in a candid 

 spirit. The error has run through three editions, 

 from the circumstance that the first edition fur- 

 nished the copy for the subsequent ones. The 

 passage in question was not a doubtful text, and 

 therefore required no special editorial attention. 

 The typographical blunder is, however, an illus- 

 tration of the difliculties which beset the editors 

 of our old dramatists especially. Had the word 

 modern occurred in an early edition of Shakspeare, 

 it would have peri)lexed every commentator; but 

 few would have ventured to substitute the correct 

 word, moderate. The diificulty lies in finding the 

 just mean between timidity and rashness. With 

 regard to typographical errors, the obvious ones 

 iiaturally supply their own correction ; but in the 

 instance beibre us, as in many others, it is not 

 easy to detect the substitution, and the blunder is 

 perpetuated. If a compositor puts one for tvon — 

 a very common blunder — the context will show 

 that the ear has misled the eye; but if he change 

 an epithet in a well-known passage, the first syl- 

 lable of the right and the wrong words being the 

 same, and the violation of the propriety not very 

 startling, the best diligence may pass over the 

 mistake. It must not be forgotten that many 

 gross errors in typography occur after the sheet 

 is gone to press, through the accidents that are 

 constantly happening to the movable types. 



Charles Knight. 



Passage in Tennyson (Vol. ii., p. 479.). — The 

 following extract from Sir James Mackintosh's 

 Historij of England, vol. ii. p. 185., will explain 

 this passage : 



" Tlie love of Margaret Roper continued to display 

 itself in those outwardly unavailing tokens of tender- 

 ness to his (her father, Sir Thomas More's) remains, 

 by which affection seeks to perpetuate itself; ineffec- 

 tually, indeed, for the object, but very effectually for 



