Notes and Queries, Number 45, September 7, 1850. Various

Notes and Queries, Number 45, September 7, 1850

in spite of the separation of centuries, there does not appear a family likeness, though there were no family acquaintance between them; Saint Agobard being Bishop of Lyons in the ninth century, and Lord Plunket Attorney-General for Ireland in the nineteenth.

The Saint is pleading against the judical ordeal:

"Illi autem profecti, prædicaverunt ubique Domino cooperante; annuntiataque est ab eis omni creaturæ; id est, cunetis nationibus mundi; una fides indita per Deum, una spes diffusa per Spiritum Sanctum in cordibus credentium, una caritas nata in omnibus, una voluntas, accensum unum desiderium, tradita una oratio; ut omnes omnino ex diversis gentibus, diversis conditionibus, diverso sexu, nobilitate, honestate, servitute diversa, simul dicant uni Deo, et Patri omnium; Pater Noster qui es, &c., sicut unum Patrem invocantes, ita unam santificationem quærentes, unum regnum postulantes, unam adimpletionem voluntatis ejus, sicut fit in coelo optantes; unum sibi panem quotidianum dari precantes et omnibus dimitti debita."

To which other passages might be added, as, in fact, S. Agobard pursues the one idea until he hunts it down to the one effect of sameness and common antithesis. Should we say Lord Plunket had read these passages, and is thereby convicted of eloquent plagiary? I say, No! Lauder then equally convicted Milton of trespassing on the thoughts of others, by somewhat apposite quotations from the classics. We are, in truth, too much inclined to this. The little, who cannot raise themselves to the stature of the great, are apt to strive after a socialist level, by reducing all to one same standard—their own. Truth is common to all ages, and will obtain utterance by the truthful and the eloquent throughout all time.

S.H.

Athenæum, August 12.

NOTES ON THE SECOND EDITION OF MR. CUNNINGHAM'S HANDBOOK OF LONDON

14. Long Acre. Mr. Cunningham, upon the authority of Parton's History of St. Giles's, says:

"First known as the Elms, then called Seven Acres, and since 1612, from the length of a certain slip of ground, then first used as a public pathway, as Long Acre."

The latter part of this statement is incorrect. The Seven Acres were known as Long Acre as early as 1552, when they were granted to the Earl of Bedford. See Strype, B. vi. p. 88.

Machyn, in his Diary, printed by the Camden Society, p. 21., under the date A.D. 1556, has the following allusion to the Acre:

"The vj day of December the Abbot of Westminster went a procession with his convent. Before him went all the Santuary men with crosse keys upon their garments, and after went iij for murder: on was the Lord Dacre's sone of the North, was wypyd with a shett abowt him for kyllyng of on Master West, squyre, dwellyng besyd … and anodur theyff that dyd long to one of Master Comtroller … dyd kylle Recherd Eggylston the Comtroller's tayller, and kylled him in the Long Acurs, the bak-syd Charyng Crosse."

15. Norfolk House, St. James's Square. The present Norfolk House was built from a design by R. Brettingham, in 1742, by Thomas Duke of Norfolk, and finished by his brother Edward in 1762. Mr. Cunningham speaks as if the old house, in which George III. was born, was still standing.

16. Soho Square. Mr. Cunningham has not corrected his mistake about Mrs. Cornelys's house in this square, (see "Notes and Queries," vol. i., pp. 244, 450.). D'Almaine's, which Mr. Cunningham confounds with Mrs. Cornelys's, was at a former period tenanted by the Duke of Argyll; then by the Earl of Bradford; and, at a later time, by the celebrated Onslow, who held his parliamentary levees in the principal drawing-room. The ceilings of the best rooms are adorned with paintings by Rebecca and Angelica Kauffman.

Mr. Cunningham has taken some pains to destroy the Pennant tradition concerning the name of this square, but he has not given us one important piece of information, i.e. that between the years 1674 and 1681, the ground was surveyed by Gregory King, an eminent architect of those days, who projected the square with the adjacent streets. Query, Did it not take the name of King's Square from the architect? This seems very probable; more especially as the statue of Charles I. was not placed in the square until the beginning of the next century. The centre space was originally occupied by a splendid fountain, (the work of Colley Cibber's father), an estimate of the "cost and charges" of which is now before me.

Among the eminent inhabitants of this square, not noticed by Mr. Cunningham, were the following:—Lord Berkely, Lord Byron, Lord Grimstone, Lord Howard, Lord Leicester, Sir Thomas Mansel, Lord Morpeth, Lord Nottingham, Lord Peterborough, Lord Pierrepoint, Lord Pigot, Dudley North, the Earl of Dartmouth, the Duchess of Cleveland, the Duchess of Wharton, &c. These names appear in the books of the parish of St. Anne, between the years of 1708 and 1772.

17. Surrey Institution. At one period (about 1825), this building was known as the Blackfriars Rotundo. Here that execrable character, Robert Taylor, who styled himself "the Devil's Chaplain," delivered his blasphemous discourses.

18. Opera House. Mr. Cunningham, speaking of the translation of Arsinoe, the first Anglo-Italian opera performed in this country, says: "The translation was made by Thomas Clayton." This is an error, for Clayton himself says, in his preface: "I was obliged to have an Italian opera translated." Clayton was the composer of the music.

19. James's (St.) Chapel, St. James's Palace. Mr. Cunningham says, "The service is chanted by the boys of the Chapel Royal." This ought to read, "The service is chaunted by the boys and gentlemen of the Chapel Royal" The musical service of our cathedrals and collegiate establishments cannot be performed without four kinds of voices, treble, alto, tenor, and bass.

20. Bagnigge Wells. Mr. Cunningham makes a strange mistake concerning this once popular place of amusement when he says, "first opened to the public in the year 1767." A stone, still to be seen, let into the wall over what was formerly the garden entrance, has the following inscription:

"S + T

This is Bagnigge

Hovse neare

The Pinder a

Wakefeilde

1680."

The gardens were first opened for the accommodation of persons who partook of the mineral springs; subsequently, amusements were added; and in Bickham's curious work, The Musical Entertainer (circa 1738), is an engraving of Tom Hippersley mounted in the "singing rostrum," regaling the company with a song. About half a century after this date, a regular orchestra was erected, and the entertainments resembled Marylebone Gardens and Vauxhall. The old house and gardens were demolished in 1842, to make room for several new streets.

Edward F. Rimbault.

NOTES ON COLERIDGE'S AIDS TO REFLECTION

(2nd Edition, 1831)

Introductory Aphorisms, No. xii., p. 7.:

"Tertullian had good reason for his assertation, that the simplest Christian (if indeed a Christian) knows more than the most accomplished irreligious philosopher."

The passage referred to is in the Apology, c. 46:

"Deum quilibet opifex Christianus et invenit et ostendit et exinde totum, quod in Deo quæritur, re quoque assignat; licet Plato affirmet factitatorem universitatis neque inveniri facilem et inventum enarrari in omnes difficilem."

Note to Aphorism xxxi., p. 30.:

"To which he [Plato] may possibly have referred in his phrase [Greek: theoparadotos sophia]."

Possibly Coleridge may have borrowed this from Berkeley's Siris, § 301., where [Greek: theoparadotos philosophia] is cited from "a heathen writer." The word [Greek: theoparadotos] occurs in Proclus and Marinus (see Valpy's Stephani Thesaurus), but not in Plato.

The motto from Seneca, prefixed to the Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion, is from the fourty-first Epistle of that writer.