2 nd S. IX. Jan. 21. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



37 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 21. I860. 



N°. 212. — CONTENTS. 



NOTES: — "Books Burnt:" — Lord Bolingbroke, 37 — 

 Burgkead: Singular Custom: Clavie: Durie, 38 — Gene- 

 ral Literary Index : Index of Autkors, 39 — Tke Execu- 

 tioner of King Ckarles I., 41 — Edward Kirke, tke Com- 

 mentator on Spenser's " Skepkeard's Calender," 42. 



Mixob Notes : — Origin of " Cockney " — Unburied Coffins 



— Historical Coincidences : Frenck and Englisk Heroism 

 at Waterloo and Magenta — Tke Freuek in Wales — Ju- 

 nius, a. 



QUERIES : — Lord Macaulay — Swift's Marriage — Burial 

 in a Sitting Posture— Monteitk Bowl — Quotation Wanted 



— Excommunication of Queen Elizabetk — Bang Bladud 

 and kis Pigs — Judges' Costume — Bp. Downes' "Tour 

 tkrougk Cork and Boss" — Celtic Families — Magister 

 Rickard Howlett — Oldys's Diary — Tke Battiseombe 

 Family — Crowe Family — Ckarles II. — Pepysiana— The 

 Young Pretender— Sir George Paule — Tickering Family 



— Sir Hugk Vaugkan, 44. 



Queries with Answees: — Antonio Guevara — Post Of- 

 fice in Ireland — Autkony Stafford — Anonymous Author 

 — Orrery — Sir Henry Bowswell — Biskop Lyndwood, 46. 



REPLIES: — EngUsk Comedians in tke Netkerlands, 48 — 

 Tke De Hungerford Inscription, 49 — Prokibition of Pro- 

 pkeeies, 50 — Folk-lore and Provincialisms, 51 — Tke Mayor 

 of Market Jew or Marazion — Tke King's Scutcheon — Sir 

 Peter Gleane — Aritlunetical Notation — Boydell's Skak- 

 speare Gallery— Sir Robert le Grys — Tke Tkree Kings 

 of Colon — Cutting one's Stick : Terms used by Printers — 

 Eteraldic Drawings and Engravings — Tkree Ckurckwar- 

 dens — Cabal— Geering — Hildesley's Poetical Miscellanies 



— Discovery of Gunpowder Plot by tke Magic Mirror — 

 Campbellton, Argyleskire, &c, 54. 



Notes on Books, &c. 



"BOOKS BURNT:" LORD BOLINGBROKE. 



In the first volume of the Diaries and Corre- 

 spondence of the Rt. Hon. George Rose, edited by 

 the Rev. Leveson Vernon Ilarcourt*, I find the 

 following note, which may be added to your re- 

 cords of" Books Burnt : " — 



" Lord Bolingbroke had printed six copies of his Essay 

 on a Patriot King, whick lie gave to Lord Ckesterfield, 

 Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Lyttleton, Mr. Pope, Lord 

 Marchmont, and to Lord Corn bury, at wbose instance 

 he wrote it. Mr. Pope lent his copy to Mr. Allen, of 

 Bath, who was so delighted with it tbat lie had an 

 impression of 500 taken off. but locked them up se- 

 corely in a warehouse, not to see tke light till Lord 

 Bolingbroke's permission could be obtained. On tke dis- 

 covery-, Lord Marchmont (then living in Lord Boling- 

 broke's house at Battersea) sent Mr. Gravenkop for the 

 whole cargo, who carried them out in a waggon, and the 

 books were burnt on the lawn in the presence of Lord 

 Bolingbroke." 



The editor has attached this note to the follow- 

 ing early entry in Rose's Diary : — 



" It appears by a letter of Lord Bolingbroke's, dated 

 in 1740, from Angeville, that he had actually written 

 some essays dedicated to the Earl of Marchmont, of a 

 very different tendency from his former works. These 

 essays, on his death, fell into the hands of Mr. Mallet, his 

 executor, who had at the latter end of his life acquired a 

 decided influence over him, and they did not appear 

 among his lordship's works published by Mallet ; nor have 



2 Vols. 8vo. Bentley. (Just published.) 



they been seen or heard of since. From whence it must 

 be naturally conjectured that they were destroyed by the 

 latter, from wbat reason cannot now be known ; possibly, 

 to conceal from tke world the change, such as it was, in 

 kis lordship's sentiments in the latter end of his life, and 

 to avoid the discredit to kis former works. In wkick re- 

 spect ke might have been influenced either by regard for 

 the noble viscount's consistency, or by a desire not to 

 impair the pecuniary advantage be expected from the 

 publication of his lordship's works." 



Upon this Mr. Harcourt notes : — 



" The letter to Lord Marchmont, here referred to, has a 

 note appended to it by Sir George Rose, the editor of The 

 Marchmont Papers, who takes a very different view of its 

 contents from his father. He gravely remarks, that as 

 tke postkuraous disclosure of Lord Bolingbroke's inve- 

 terate hostility to Christianity lays open to the view as 

 well tke bitterness as tke extent of it, so the manner of 

 that disclosure precludes any doubt of the earnestness of 

 his desire to give the utmost efficiency and publicity to 

 that hostility, as soon as it could safely be done; that is, 

 as soon as deatk could shield kirn against responsibility 

 to man. Sir George saw plainly enougk that when ke 

 promised in those essays to vindicate religion against di- 

 vinity and God against man, ke was retracting all that he 

 had occasionally said in favour of Christianity ; he was up- 

 holding the religion of Theism against the doctrines of 

 the Bible, and tke God of nature against the revelation of 

 God to man." 



It is painful to reflect upon this prostration of 

 a splendid intellect ; and I am but slightly re- 

 lieved by Lord Chesterfield's statement in one of 

 his letters published by Lord Mahon, in his edi- 

 tion of Chesterfield's Works, that " Bolingbroke 

 only doubted, and by no means rejected, a future 

 state." Lord Brougham says : — 



" The dreadful malady under which Bolingbroke long 

 lingered, and at length sunk, — a cancer in the face, — he bore 

 with exemplary fortitude, a fortitude drawn from the na- 

 tural resources of his mind, and unhappily not aided by 

 the consolations of any religion ; for, having early cast 

 off tke belief in revelation, be had substituted in its 

 stead a dark and gloomy naturalism, which even re- 

 jected those glimmerings of hope as to futurity not 

 untasted by the wiser of the keatkens." 



We know that Bolingbroke denied to Pope his 

 disbelief of the moral attributes of God, of which 

 Pope told his friends with great joy. How un- 

 grateful a return for this " excessive friendliness " 

 the indignation which Bolingbroke expressed at 

 the priest having attended Pope in his last mo- 

 ments ! 



Bolingbroke died at Battersea in 1752, and 

 some sixty years after (in 1813), a home-tourist 

 gleaned in the village some recollections of Bol- 

 ingbroke and his friend Mallet. The tourist was 

 Sir Richard Phillips, who, in the early portion of 

 his Moi-ning's Walk from London to Kew, in 1813, 

 describes Bolingbroke's house as then converted 

 into a mal ting-house and a mill ! Some parts of 

 the original house, however, then remained; and 

 among them " Pope's room," in which he wrote 

 his Essay on Man : this was a parlour of brown 

 polished oak, with a grate and ornaments of the 

 age of George I. 



