398
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io th s. i. MAY u, 1004.
Again, at p. 151 this grand sportsman, writ-
ing of an exceptional day in the jungles near
Mymensing in February, 1866, when five
tigers were shot down, remarks: "I never
shot five tigers at any other time ; I have
killed three tigers in a day more than once."
Of elephants he observes at p. 89 :
"Elephants are delicate animals ; they often ail,
and often die after short illnesses. The male
elephant belonging to the Nazir of Noakholly, and
two very valuable elephants of my own, died while
in my possession, though it is stated that the life
of an elephant should average one hundred years."
As Warren Hastings left India for England,
never to return, on 7 February, 1785, the
answer to the question "Is the elephant
which carried Warren Hastings still alive 1 ? "
must surely be in the negative.
JAMES WATSON. Folkestone.
COLLINS (10 th S. i. 329). The Collins family has been established in this village for the past 170 years. The first entry in our registers is the marriage of Richard Collins to Mary Ford on 19 September, 1731. At the present time Collins is one of our commonest surnames ; it is borne by no fewer than five distinct families, all of whom belong to the agricultural labouring class.
JOHN T. PAGE.
West Haddon, Northamptonshire.
EASTER SEPULCHRE (10 th S. i. 265). If he is not already familiar with the book, W. C. B. may be glad of a reference to H. J. Feasey's ' Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial ' (London, Thos. Baker, 1897), which contains much interesting matter concerning the Easter Sepulchre, pp. 129-78.
JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. "
Great Masters. Part XIV. (Heinemann.)
THE fourteenth part of this choicest of art publica-
tions opens with a portrait of Dr. Peral, by Fran-
cesco Jose de Goya, in character a sort of modern
Cellini, examples of whose paintings are rare in this
country. The present work, a superb picture of a
man in a species of Directoire costume, is from Mr.
G. Donaldson's collection, and was exhibited at the
Guildhall in 1901. Some of Goya's customary traits
are shown us in the work, which depicts a strong
and singularly resolute man. Gainsborough's
' Duke and Duchess of Cumberland,' from Windsor
Castle, exhibited in 1777, comes next. The duke
and duchess walk arm in arm in a park, with Lady
Elizabeth Luttrell seated in the background. It
is almost more noticeable as landscape than as
portraiture, and compares, as says the criticism
appended, with the work of Watteau. Jan Steen's
' Christmas Eve,' from the Rijksmuseum, Amster-
dam, is a signed and an eminently characteristic
work of that cheerful master. It has no fewer than
ten figures, niost of them supposed members of the
artist's family, and has a sweet, homely, domestic
atmosphere. ' Venus with the Mirror,' by Velas-
quez, is one of the rare examples of the nude by this-
greatest of masters. The figure has a delicious pose,
partly suggested, as is rightly said, by the Roman
statue of the ' Hermaphrodite.' The model has her
back to the spectator, and is reclining on a couch,
with dark drapery. It is from the collection of Mr.
H. E. Morritt, and seems to have been painted for
Philip IV. as a companion to a Venus executed for
Philip II. by Titian. Nothing could be better than
the slope of the figure and the poise of the head.
The English Catalogue of Books for 1903. (Sampson
Low & Co.)
THE sixty-seventh yearly issue of ' The English Catalogue of Books ' keeps up the reputation of one of the most useful of bibliographical works. It occupies close upon three hundred pages, and gives, in addition to a list of the works published, the names and addresses of the publishers of Great Britain and Ireland, and the principal publishers of the United States and Canada. The only improve- ment we can suggest and it applies to the work from the beginning is that Christian names should, when possible, be given in full as Austin (Alfred), instead of Austin (A.). In some cases, where two- men have the same initial, as for instance in> Smith (J.), confusion might be caused. The work remains indispensable.
Reminiscences and Table Talk of Samuel Rogers.
Edited by S. H. Powell. (Brim ley Johnson.) THIS reprint is welcome. With some alterations of the prefatory matter, it supplies the contents of Dyce's ' Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers,' issued in a handsome and limited edition from Southgate in 1887. The portrait is different. Rogers's ' Table Talk ' is interesting ; much of it casts a strong light upon literary history at the beginning of last century.
Some Letters of Saint Bernard. Selected by F. A.
Gasquet, D.D. (Hodges.)
THIS selection appearing in a series of "Great Letter- Writers," we presume we are intended to- estimate its contents not so much for their weight and religious fervour as for their literary excellence; No one probably would think of including the- epistles of St. Paul with the exception, perhaps, of that to Philemon in such a series. Our present consideration is not whether the Abbot of Clairvaux was an eminent saint, an acute theologian, or an influential factor in the life of Europe in the twelfth century all which, no doubt, he was but how far his letters deserve to be regarded as typical specimens of the art of letter-writing in point of style and self-disolosure of the writer. Was he in any sense a forerunner of Madame de Sevigne, and Walpole, and Cowper, and Southey, or a successor to Cicero and Pliny ? On the contrary, St. Bernard seems rather to have grudged the time spent in necessary correspondence with potentates and his co-religionists, and he never took up his pen except to instruct and edify or arrange matters of business concerning the welfare of his monasteries. He expressly states in Letter xxvi. that he found correspondence laborious and irksome, a task frotn< which he would gladly be exempt, whereas the true-
