Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/237

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

128. vin. MARCH 6, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 191 "DEATH AS FRIEND." An old Dalziel -engraving with this title taken from a picture by a German artist, was cut from a part of The Sunday Magazine about 1870. It represents a very aged man, looking at the sunset from a room in a belfry tower ; near by, Death in a monk's robe is tolling the passing bell. Who was the artist, and where is the original picture ? J. J. B. 52ND REGIMENT OF FOOT. Was this regiment quartered in Surrey about 1781-2 ? E. G. T. FOUNDLINGS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CEN- TURY. In the registers of a country parish in Surrey the burial of foundlings was first recorded in 1757. In that year there were 7 ; in 1758, 17 ; in 1759, 28 ; in 1760, 13. The numbers then dropped suddenly to one or two a year. Can any reader suggest a probable cause for this fluctuation in numbers ? E. G. T. WILLIAM LANGHAM DIED 1838, AGED 81. Can any one inform me where in London he was born, and if he was the son of Robert Langham who received the Freedom of the Oity of London, 1744 ? (Mrs.) C. STEPHEN. Wootton Cottage, Lincoln. " THE EMPIRE." In the advertisement to his ' Fashionable Lover,' which was pro- duced in January, 1772, Richard Cumber- land (as to whom see the ' D.N.B.'), wrote ; " Wherever. . . .1 have made any attempt at novelty, I have been obliged to dive into the lower class of men, or betake myself to the outskirts of the empire." What earlier use is there of " the empire " meaning the British dominions ? Usually before 1804 "the empire" meant the Holy Roman Empire. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. A MOTTO OF ERASMUS. The last mottc or adage quoted by Erasmus from Quintilian, under the division headed " Dissimilitu- <liuis " runs thus : " Extra organum. Ductum est ab organo musico. <iuod intra vigesimam vocem consistit. Conveniet in valde clamosum." The comment is intelligible enough, but what is the vigesima vox ? Is it the twentieth stop or the vox humana ? An ordinary modern organ has generally (with three manuals) thirty stops and twenty-six pipes or, tubes. . J. B. McGovERN. St- Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M.,, Manchester. GIUSEPPE PAKINI. In ' Due Saggi Critici ' just issued by the Clarendon Press, Francesco de Sancti pronounces a somewhat over- wrought eulogy on Giuseppe Parini, but provides no dates and but a scant biography of his subject. A similar want is observable in the second sketch or essay on Ugo Fossolo, but one is better acquainted with the latter than the former and so is not as resentful at the deprivation. No doubt these essays were either written for or read to Italians, but the benighted foreigner justly craves for a few biographical details at the hands of the essayist. Perhaps some reader of ' N. & Q. ' could furnish me with such or refer me to some biographical dictionary wherein they lie concealed. J. B. McGovEBN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester. CAPT. SMITH, FOUNDER OF JESUS CHAPEL. I have a late sixteenth or early seventeenth century portrait. On the back of the canvas is inscribed the following : "Captain Smith, Founder Jesus Chapel." I shall be extremely glad if any reader can tell me anything about Capt. Smith and Jesus Chapel. He could not, of course, have been the founder of Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge. JOHN LANE. The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, W.I. THE REV. WILLIAM LOE, B.D., Rector of Kirkby Masham, Yorkshire, in 1639. Can any correspondent of ' N. & Q. ' give me the name of Loe's mother, and the date of his death? The 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' xxx. 68, where he is described as a D.D., is silent on these points. G. F. R, B. TUTOIEMENT. In Anne Douglas Sedg- wick's *A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago ' (1919, ch. 1. p. 16) we read : " The servants and the peasants in the Brittany of those days had a pretty custom of always using thou when addressing their masters or the Deity, thus inverting the usual association of this mode of address ; for, to each other they said you, and on their lips this was the familiar word, and the thou implied respect. Our servants were of the peasant class, but service altered and civilized them, very much, and while no peasant spoke anything but Breton, they talked in an o ddly accented French." Is it possible that such use of "thou" and "you " was a linguistic as well as a social characteristic of Breton ? And was it widely spread in France ? Does it survive ? Q. V.