320 NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. v. APRIL 20, 1912.
L'ntermédiaire continues to enshrine in its volumes every variety of information which is likely to be of service to students of bygone thought and action. The uncertainty overclouding the latest days of Louis XVII. in the Temple renders the mystery of his death, or of his survival, a subject of perennial interest. Lately, Joan of Arc's standards have received attention. One memorandum of historical interest chronicles the guillotining of a priest in his sacerdotal dress during the Revolution.
In the issue for 10 March a reproduction of what is supposed to be the only authentic portrait of Cervantes is given. In the same number the circumstances connected with the interment of Adrienne Lecouvreur are considered worthy of comment. A quotation is also printed which describes a curious sort of Christian paganism prevailing in one part of the La Plata region in South America. This hybrid religion has arisen from the native beliefs of the district blending with the half-remembered doctrines of Jesuit missionaries.
Among other subjects discussed are "belgicisms," almanacs written in local dialect, time-honoured proverbial phrases, and more or less startling neologisms, due to modern inventions and discoveries. What would Rabelais make of a modern daily paper dealing with wireless telegraphy and radium? How would the vocabulary of a biologist, a strike-leader, or an airman impress Shakespeare? The erudite jargon of scientific men and the simpler popular phrases fitted to new ideas and new activities might prove equally puzzling. To Pantagruel or to Falstaff "wire" would be as bewildering as "telegram."
Booksellers' Catalogues.—April
Messrs. Maggs Brothers' Catalogue No. 285 (Engraved Portraits and Decorative Engravings) runs to 323 items. So large a number is of interest that selection is difficult. We may mention the following: a portrait of Lady Elizabeth Compton, mezzotint by J. R. Smith, after W. Peters, second state, 1780, 115l. 10s.; a mezzotint by Wm. Dickinson, after Reynolds, with plate-mark, but artists' names only, of Diana, Viscountess Crosbie, 75l.; Hoppner's portrait of Sir Samuel Hood, engraved by George Clint, 1808, 72l. 10s.; Lawrence's 'Master Lambton,' engraved by S. Cousins, 1827, 105l.; an impression, printed in colours, of John Young's mezzotint after the portrait of Nelson by Rising, 1801, 85 guineas; 'Lady Catherine Powlet,' a mezzotint by J. R. Smith, after Reynolds, 1778, 75l.; and a fine oval stipple engraving, printed in red, by T. Burke, after Angelica Kauffman's portrait of Lady Rushout and her daughter. The illustrations in this Catalogue are unusually numerous and pleasing: 'Mrs. Tickell' ( J. Conde, after Cosway, 1791, 85l.), Rembrandt's 'Jew Rabbi' (Pether, 25 guineas), and Tomkins's 'Hobbinol and Ganderetta,' after Gainsborough (1789, 10l. 10s.), are three examples, taken more or less at random, out of as many as sixty-six.
Messrs. Maggs's Catalogue of Autograph Letters and MSS. (No. 286) includes, as its principal item, the three folio volumes which contain the autograph MS. notes of Count Balmain, the Russian Commissioner at St. Helena during Napoleon's captivity. They contain daily bulletins concerning the prisoner; copies of letters and instructions received by Balmain from Sir Hudson Lowe; his correspondence home, and with Bertrand; and his transcript of the instructions from the Russian Government on his appointment as commissioner. The last dated entry is for 16 April, 1820, 200l. For 125l. is offered a letter of Burns's, dated Edinburgh, 25 Oct., 1787, in which he speaks of a tour in the Highlands, and inquires concerning Jean Armour; and for 52l. 10s. a holograph letter in Latin, 'Ornatissimo viro D. Nicolao Vesuuio Epō Lingonien à særis,' dated 10 Cal. November, 1527, from Erasmus. The same price, 52l. 10s., is asked for a letter—Gresham House, 16 Sept., 1579—from Sir Thomas Gresham to Sir Nathaniel Bacon; and another interesting letter belonging to the same period is from the Earl of Leicester to the Lord Treasurer and Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asking for a payment of 5,000l., "At ye Court this xviii of November, 1576," 38l. Of seventeenth-century letters, the best is one from Henry, Prince of Wales, to the Dauphin (Louis XIII., then a child of four) in French, dated "à Richmonde le 25e d'Octobre, 1605," to accompany the present of "une meute de petits chiens." The letter (beautifully written, as the illustration in the Catalogue shows) belongs to the Prince's twelfth year, 78l. There is a letter also from Louis XIII. to Monsieur Boutilier about the departure of three musketeers to be presented to Cardinal Richelieu, 1634, 15l. 15s. The most important of the American letters are two from Washington—the first to Robert Carey & Co., 1759, 75l.; the second to R. H. Lee, 1773, 45l., both on matters of business. In the way of nineteenth-century literature we noticed examples from Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Stevenson, Swinburne, and many others.
[Notices of other Catalogues held over.]
The Revision of the Vulgate.
The Commission for the Revision of the Vulgate has issued its second report, the first having appeared two years ago. The work of necessity proceeds but slowly, since the object is the publication of a text of St. Jerome's Latin Bible which shall be as perfect as possible, and to ensure that object the discovery, examination, and collation of all available texts form the first condition. Already the MSS. photographed and collated fill about 70 volumes, while an attempt at making use of the material collected with 30 MSS. of Exodus has shown that a greater number must be consulted before a text can be established with certainty.
The report in itself is most interesting, especially in the account of Dom De Bruyne's researches in Spain, and in the note upon the Vercelli Gospels.
Notices to Correspondents.
Mr. Pratt Barlow ("I shall pass through this world but once").—See 10 S. i. 247, 316, 355, 433; v. 260, 393, 498; vi. 180; v. ii, 140; xi. 60, 366.]
J. H. L.—Forwarded.
