2--1 S. VI. 143.. Sept. 25. '68.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 



253 



been said to be subject to fits of absence. But no 

 such thing is related of him. When completely 

 master of his own time, at Trinity College, with 

 scientific speculation for his onli/ business, he 

 would remain for hours in thought, and would 

 even forget his meals : but it is not related that, 

 when any other subject was the one properly be- 

 fore him, he ever left it unconsciously. It is not 

 related that when he had begun his dinner, he 

 forgot to go on with it. Most men who have ever 

 done anything great, in. any subject, have had this 

 presence of mind, when engaged: many have also 

 been given to perpetual sudden absences from 

 other engagements; but not Newton. Walter 

 Scott has distributed this quality of absence 

 equally among his scholars and mathematicians : 

 there is the minister of St. Ronan's, a scholar ; 

 Davie Ramsay, a calculator ; Dominie Sampson, 

 both scholar and mathematician. I now refer to 

 what I said on this subject in my former paper. 



There is another question, but it must be con- 

 sidered in a future communication, under a head 

 of its own : for even Gulliver must not travel be- 

 yond all limits. I will conclude with a word on 

 stock stories, of which we have seen one. There 

 is another in the very number which contains the 

 remarks I have commented on : it is that of the 

 women of Mungret (2"* S. vi. 208.). How many 

 versions there are of this story I do not know : 

 perhaps your pages may get them together. The 

 following is the Oxford version. In old time it 

 *was customary to contend in Leonine verses, the 

 challenger giving the first part, and the answerer 

 completing the verse, all impromptu ; so that the 

 dialogue would run on consecutively, and without 

 pauses. A very famous Cambridge versifier was 

 on his way to Oxford, to annihilate the scholars of 

 that place. AVhen near the town, a thatcher got ofl" 

 the roof he was working upon, and came towards 

 him. The Cantab, merely to keep his hand in, 

 began — '■'■ Rustice quid quaris f" and the thatcher 

 answered : " Quodmecum versijiceris." The other, 

 now greatly astonished, went on : — " Versijicator 

 lu ? " and was answered : " Melior non sulis ah 

 ortu." The Cantab turned his back, and was off; 

 not liking to encounter the gownsmen of a Uni- 

 versity which produced such peasant labourers. 

 But the thatcher was no less a person than Roger 

 Bacon, who bad been selected to play the trick. 



A. De Mobgan. 



CASTING OUT DEVILS. 



(2"-' S. vi. 207.) 



If no one should be " good enough to corrobo- 

 rate" Wr. R. W. Hackwood's Note under the 

 above heading, perhaps the following information 

 may interest him : — 



" 1788. Bristol was destined to be this year once more 

 the theatre of a farce like that of the Lamb Iud, West 



Street, in 1762. For any grave treatment of such details 

 we are not, in this case, to do more than refer to a pam- 

 phlet, published this same year, under the following title : 

 'A Narrative of the Extraordinary Case of Geo. Lukins, 

 of Yatton, Somerset, who was possessed of Evil Spirits 

 for near eighteen years. Also An Account of his remark- 

 able Deliverance, in the Vestry Eooni of Temple Church, 

 in the City of Bristol. Extracted from the manuscripts 

 of several persons who attended . . . The Fourth Edition ; 

 with the Rev. Mr. Easterbrook's Letter annexed, authen- 

 ticating the particulars which occurred at Temple Church,' 

 8vo., pp. 24 



" ' The persons who attended ' were the Rev. Mr. Easter- 

 brook, vicar of Temple, and fourteen other serious persons. 

 The press of the day teemed with other productions of 

 believers as well as unbelievers in Mister Nicholas 



Senior's potency The ridicule that accumulated 



round the devoted heads of the confiding ones, we believe, 

 tended to shorten the otherwise useful life of the Vicar of 

 Temple, of the goodness of whose heart, whatever might 

 be said of his share of that needful material of the head, 

 common sense, there were scarcely two opinions. 



" LuKiNs was a psalm-singer, a ventriloquist, and an 

 actor of Christmas plays or mummeries, and had prac- 

 tised upoQ the credulity of his immediate neighbourhood 

 for eighteen years when his fame reached Bristol. He 

 had exhibited in Temple Church two or three times pre- 

 vious to the grand displa3' of the Narrative. Being em- 

 ployed as a common carrier between Yatton and Bristol, 

 he was known to many of our fellow-citizens. In the 

 performance of his engagement to join the serious assem- 

 blage at the Church, he once called at the shop of Messrs. 

 Bath and Pinkney, for the purpose of inviting those gen- 

 tlemen to be witnesses of his premeditated calling of 

 ' spirits from the vasty deep ; ' but Mr. Bath (as Mr. 

 Pinkney told the writer), affecting to doubt the confor- 

 mity of infernal agency with human arrangements of an 

 adverse tendency, contented himself with hastening 

 George on his way to Temple Street, lest the Devil 

 should take it into his horned head to 'play hell' 

 among the hardwares and cutlery. Happening ourselves, 

 about 1804 or 1805, to reside in the road of Lukins's 

 journeyiugs to and fro, as he ' toddled ' along with his 

 arm-basket and a stick, he was frequently the subject of 

 observation, which he invariably acknowledged by a 

 polite touch of his hat. He was then a fair-looking, 

 cleanly-dressed, little old man, of yet comely and not 

 hard-favoured features, with a good-tempered simplicity 

 rather than archness of expression, that sufHciently ac- 

 counted for the readiness with which so many became the 

 dupes of his innocuously diabolical vocation." — J. Evans's 

 Chronological Outline of the History of Bristol, 8vo. p. 297. 



Wm. Geokge. 

 Bristol. 



George Lukins was a common carrier between 

 Bristol and Yatton in Somersetshire : he was a 

 psalm-singer, a ventriloquist, and an actor of 

 Christmas plays or mummeries, and he had prac- 

 tised upon the credulity of his immediate neigh- 

 bourhood for eighteen years before his fame reached 

 Bristol. Among many rare and curious pamphlets 

 in the library under my care are the following, 

 which I shall feel pleasure in showing to any one 

 who will favour me with a visit, and from which 

 they can copy whatever they may regard as in- 

 teresting : — 



"A Narrative of the Extraordinary Case of Geo. Lu- 

 kins, of Yatton, Somersetshire, Who was possessed of 



