438
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9 th S. I. MAY 28, '98.
Is it by any chance so named after a surgeon
in the navy who published a book on his
travels in China and Japan, and who died,
I believe, in 1878 ? T. P. ARMSTRONG.
Putney.
MAJOR LONGBOW (9 th S. i. 388). This cha- racter occurred in one of the "At Homes" of the elder Mathews, entitled ' Air, Earth, and Water,' performed at the English Opera House in 1821. W. DOUGLAS.
125, Helix Road, Brixton Hill.
KOBESPIERRE AND ClJRRAN (9 th S. i. 183,
295). In thanking MR. A. E. BAYLEY for his kindness in supplying me, in ' N. & Q.,' with the titles of the several volumes in which I may find information corroborative of Mr. T. P. O'Connor's statement that Kobespierre " had some Irish blood in his veins," I must, at the same time, confess that the portraits given as representative of "the Sea-green Incorruptible" in my copies of Lamartine's
- Girondists,' vol. i. (London, Bphn, 1849) ;
Thiers's ' French Kevolution,' vol. iii. (London, Bentley, 1854) ; and H. Sutherland Edwards's ' Old and New Paris,' vol. i. (London, Cassell, 1893), do not remind me of the really fine portrait of the great Irish orator for- merly in the possession of Charles Phillips, author of the admirable work ' Curran and his Contemporaries ' (London, Black wood, 1857) now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and representing J. P. Curran as a very coarse-faced, and therefore an ugly, man. I may, however, in connexion with the subject of my doubtfulness, mention that Sir Jonah Barrington has recorded in his ' Personal Sketches of his Own Times,' vol. i p. 205 (London, Koutledge, 1869), that though Curran's face " was yellow, furrowed, rather flat, and thoroughly ordinary, there was something so indescribably dramatic in his eye and the play of his eyebrow that his visage seemed the index of his mind, anc his humour the slave of his will." On the other hand, as regards the appearance p: Kobespierre, if Lamartine's opinion is stil to be held in estimation,
"his forehead was good, but small, and extremelj projecting above the temples ; his eyes, much coyerec by their lids and very sharp at their extremities were deeply buried in the cavities of their orbits they gave out a half-blue hue, but it was vague anc unfixed ; his nose, straight and small, was very wide at the nostrils ; his mouth was large, his lips thin and disagreeably contracted at each corner, his chh small and pointed."
In conclusion I am constrained to say that cannot accept this graphic description of the likeness of "the Monster" as that of the portrait of " Robespierre, from an unpublishec
drawing touched up in water-colours attri-
uted to Gerard," that faces vol. i. of the
Memoirs of Barras, Member of the Director-
ate,' by G. Duruy (London, Osgood, Mcllvaine
fe Co.). HENRY GERALD HOPE.
Clapham, S. W.
"A CROW TO PLUCK WITH " (9 th S. i. 367).
The " with " is superfluous unless the whole sentence is quoted. "I've a crow to pluck with you " is in common use, varied by " A crow to pull" and "A crow to pick." The ordinary meaning is that some one has a difference to settle with some one else, and bells him so, or that the action of one person is such that another asks for an explanation. THOS. RATCLIFFE,
Worksop.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
John and Sebastian Cabot. By C. Raymond Beaz-
ley, M.A. (Fisher Unwin.)
THE latest contribution to the series of " Builders of Greater Britain " consists of biographies of John and Sebastian Cabot and an account of the dis- covery of North America, by Mr. Beazley, the author of ' Prince Henry the Navigator.' A litera- ture on the subject of the Cabots has sprung into existence within the last sixty years. In the very latest completed volume of ' N. & Q.' an active dis- cussion is maintained on points of interest con- nected with John Cabot and the Matthew. Facts are, none the less, wanting, and Mr. Beazley is handicapped by their non-existence or inacces- sibility. . The conclusions of Mr. Harrisse, that among treacherous intriguers Sebastian Cabot (long lauded as one of the worthiest of men) has an un- enviable supremacy, are not accepted en bloc ; but the admirable industry and close argument of that eminent student are warmly commended. To John Cabot's discoveries in 1497 and 1498 England owes her "title" in the New World, and Sebastian's voyage of 1553, which gave our merchants their first glimpse of Persia and Central Asia, was " at least one starting-point of the Elizabethan revival of trade, discovery, and colonial extension." That Sebastian Cabot ' ' allowed his father to be de- frauded in silence of much of the credit that was justly his " Mr. Beazley concedes. His life-work is, however, almost inseparable from that of his father, to which it is in many respects complementary; and no account of the "builders" of "Greater Britain " could be complete which did not comprise both. Not the least interesting portion of Mr. Beazley's volume is found in the two opening chapters, which deal with the alleged visits of the Chinese, the Norsemen, the voyages of St. Brandan, and other myths. These legends are, it is held, in a great measure borrowed from Oriental travel romances, " with some additions from classical myth and Christian hagiology." John Cabot, a Genoese by birth and a Venetian by adoption, is held to have settled in England about 1491, and the first letters patent to him were granted in 1496. By the close of 1497 he was in receipt of a pension irom
