410
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9'H.xii. NOV. 21,1903.
portrait of the third duke occurs, or where
a good print of him could be obtained 1
W. E. WILSON.
Hawick.
WYMONDHAM GUILDS. Can any Norfolk antiquary kindly say whether a paper read by Mr. G. A. Carthew on this subject, before the Society of Antiquaries on 24 February, 1870, has been printea ? It was promised for Archceologia, but is not there.
T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A.
Lancaster
GAME. I shall be glad to learn the method of playing the round game with the follow- ing title, which is taken from a finely engraved sheet, in size 16 by 20 inches : "Neu erf undene Historische Chronologische Spiel Tafel zu erlernung der Teutschen Reichs Historic nach der Regierungs-Folge der R. C .Kayser samt darzu gehorigen Regeln und Erklarungen - Regenspurg, 1720 Autore, lo Balth : Springero Sumptibus Andr : Geyeri." Forty-nine finely engraved medallions, depict- ing historical events in the reigns of the Emperors of Germany from Charlemagne to Josephus, surround the title design, dedicated to Carolus VI. XYLOGRAPHER.
MUIR FAMILY. Existing is a Muir family, consisting of five males and two females, and I am the one and only male descendant. My mother's grandmother was a Miss Muir, and she held the arms of Muir, which were handed my grandmother, and are now in my posses- sion. I have reason to understand that my great-grandmother, Miss Muir, was the last of that family, but on that point I am not posi- tive ; and further, I cannot say if my father's, family were connected. Seeing that I carry the same name, am I permitted and rightly justified to hold and use the said coat of
arms? A. J. MUIR.
Johannesburg.
BRADFORD. Can any reader kindly supply me, by letter, with the maiden surname of Mrs. Anne Bradford, wife of the Venerable William Bradford, Archdeacon of liochestei and vicar of Newcastle-on-Tyne ? She ad ministered to his estate on 15 July, 1728
A. W. GRAHAM, Col. (>/, (Jipsy Hill, S.K.
LEEUWENHOEK. What is the allusion ir Cowper's ' Progress of Error ' in the lines? E'en Leeuwenhoek himself would stand aghast, Employ d to calculate th' enormous sum, And own his crab-computing powVs o'ercome
W. T. LYNN.
[Anton van Leeuwenhoek studied the Crustacea and their ova. See ' Chamber's Encyclopedia.']
QUEEN ELIZABETH AND NEW HALL,
ESSEX. (9 th S. xii. 208.)
ONE would like to learn who wrote the curious inscription given at the above eference. But is there no date attached to it? and has MR. HOOPER copied the words correctly ? for in is the Italian form of
- he preposition, en being the Spanish. Again,
- he word virgine should be spelt vergine, as
riie unknown author might have seen if he nad consulted Florio's * Dictionary,' the first edition of which was published before the close of the sixteenth century. For this rea- son, and especially on account of the incon- gruous, riot to say impious, character of the language applied to the dead queen, one is tempted to think that the lines may have been composed by some " Italianated English- man," not of the type described by Roger Ascham, but rather of that represented by the unhappy Robert Greene, whose story is so harrowing to read. It seems scarcely pos- sible that a born Italian, acquainted with the poetry of his country, was the writer of such a piece. He would have deemed it a crime, and been deterred from committing it by recalling to his memory what Petrarch had said of the first Maid of Heaven, in per- haps the most beautiful, and certainly the most touching, of his poems :
Vergine sola al niondo senza esempio, Che : 1 ciel cli tue bellezze innamorasti, Cui ne prima fu, simil, no seconda.*
Or, maybe, he would have thought of Dante's majestic trilogy, and repeated the first two lines of the thirty-third and last canto of the ' Farad iso':
Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio, Umile ed alta pin che creatura.
In the golden age of Italian literature no poet would have bestowed the epithet divina even on her whom he had been taught to look upon as the Queen of Heaven ; there- fore he would have recoiled from giving it to any queen of the earth, however famous she might have been.
If the tetrastich were composed by an Englishman, he ought not to have forgotten 'Chaucer's A B C,' which is all his own, though doubtless suggested by Petrarch's above - mentioned canzone, wherein " our
- Canzone viii. ed ultima. The omission of the
comma after fu in some editions, for example, utterly destroys the force of the line, as any one may see.
