Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/299

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10 S. X. Sept. 26, 1908.]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
243

See also the 'Grammatical Observations' appended to Schmidt's 'Shakespeare Lexicon': "Suffixes and prefixes omitted."

More interesting is this instance from Tennyson's 'Sir Galahad':—

How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favours fall!

I think the same construction may be found in Latin (Ovid, 'Metam.,' i. 74):—

Cesserunt nitidis habitandæ piscibus undæ,

where the dative "piscibus" seems to go both with "cesserunt" and with "habitandæ."

In conclusion, it is perhaps necessary to point out that "thou beest" is understood between "if" and "he" (1. 87).

A. E. A.




DODSLEY'S FAMOUS COLLECTION OF POETRY.

(See 10 S. vi. 361, 402; vii. 3, 82, 284, 404, 442; viii. 124, 183, 384, 442; ix. 3, 184, 323, 463; x. 103.)

Poems by the Rev. Edward Rolle were inserted in vol. iii. 61-70, 231-5. He is one of a little group of New College men whose essays in verse enjoyed a temporary existence in this miscellany. I suspect that the medium of communication between author and publisher was the Rev. Joseph Spence.

Edward Rolle, the son of Robert Rolle, of Meeth, Devonshire, who married in 1699 Margaret Martyn, was born on 27 April, 1703, and baptized on 7 May at Meeth. The date of his birth is given in the Winchester College books as 25 Aug., 1705, but the earlier date agrees with the age given to him at the time of his death. He was a scholar of Winchester College in 1719, and matriculated from New College, Oxford on 10 July, 1723. From 1723 to 1755 he was a Fellow of New College, and his degrees were B.A. 1727, M.A. 1730, and B.D. 1758 A sermon preached by him in New College Chapel on 'The Rights of Primogeniture' is mentioned in John Mulso's 'Letters to Gilbert White,' p. 283.

The contents of Egerton MS. 2234 at the B.M. consist of letters from and replies to Joseph Spence during his three travels abroad, which lasted from Dec., 1730, to July, 1733, and from May, 1737, to (with a break) November, 1741. Many of them are either addressed to Rolle or relate to him, and he acted, more than once, as Spence's deputy in the Poetry-Professorship at Oxford. A letter from Spence to his mother, 16 Nov., 1732, tells that "Capt. Rolle," as the parson was playfully called, had, through the interest of his cousin Henry Rolle, M.P., got

"a pretty little living …… wᶜʰ he can hold with New College. 'Tis in Devonshire, within three miles of the place where he was born, and there's a pretty little newfashion'd house upon it."

By the kindness of Mr. Thomas W. Burch of the diocesan registry at Exeter, I am enabled to state that the benefice was Monk-Okehampton. He was instituted to it on 24 June, 1732, on the presentation of Hugh Stafford of Pynes, and he held it until 1755. He did not often reside; it appears from the Visitation books of 1744 and 1753 that he was excused from attending, as he was at Oxford.

Spence in a letter to his mother (Mirabella Spence) dated from Florence, 7 Nov., 1740,. gives an amusing description of Rolle's person:—

"A Lazy, Lath-gutted Fellow, with a Wezel-Face. He's thin and made for business. He shou'd write as fast as a Greyhound runs. I always thought he'd come to little or nothing, and so he's like to do if he grows much thinner."

In the summer of 1753 Rolle himself was abroad. He had been to Venice, Padua, Florence, had crossed the Alps, and was on 12 July at Mayence; he was then preparing to descend the Rhine to Spa and Amsterdam. His intention was to "go thro' the Towns of Holland to Brussels and to Calais." His companion was a Mr. W., who was apparently paying expenses. These travels are described by him in a letter to Spence which is printed in Singer's edition of the 'Anecdotes' (1820), pp. 443-6. Two other letters by Rolle, written from his Devonshire benefice to Spence, are in the same volume, pp. 422-3 and 441-2.

Rolle and Spence were both friends of the Rev. Christopher Pitt, the translator of Virgil, whom they used to visit at his parsonage house of Pimperne, near Blandford, in Dorset. A letter from Pitt (4 Jan., 1736/7) speaks of his imitations of Horace, one of which, addressed to Rolle, had been printed.

In 1755 Rolle was nominated by his college to the rectory of Berwick St. John in Wiltshire, and in that year he married. He was appointed to the vicarage of Moorlynch in Somerset in 1758; and he was collated on 9 May, 1771, to the prebendal stall of Yetminster Secunda in the cathedral church of Salisbury. These three preferments he held until his death. His wife Elizabeth died on 21 Nov., 1788, aged 68, and was buried at Berwick St. John on 28 Nov. He died on 30 June, 1791, aged 88, and was