532
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. 11. DEC. 31, MM.
the tutor, Hodson, but escaped the penalty
by quoting Aristophanes. The statue, how-
ever, was perhaps not Hercules, but, in Tuck-
well's words, "a man bestriding a prostrate
foe and raising a mighty jawbone for the
death blow." C. W. B.
Canon H. L. Thompson, in his short history of Christ Church (1900), p. 232, says :
" The bronze head of Mercury himself whose statue, dethroned more than seventy years ago, was hidden for many years in a stonemason's yard now rests in dignified but inaccessible seclusion in the Wake archives of the Library, to which safe home it was entrusted by the Rev. T. Vere Bayne."
Dr. Ingram, in the first volume of his
- Memorials of Oxford 5 (1832-7), speaks of
the removal as recent, so I suppose we may place it in the late twenties. During the reign of Dean John Fell, before 1670, Dr. Richard Gardiner, the senior Prebend, had given the basin, " and in the midst thereof a rock of stone with a large globe covered with lead and gilt, and a fountain of water conveyed through the centre of the said rock and globe by a pipe running through the mouth of a serpent into the said basin." Tom Quad, as thus finished and beautified, may be seen in Loggan's drawing of 1675. In 1695 the statue of Mercury (the body of lead, the head and neck of bronze) supplanted the globe. The gift of Canon Anthony Radcliffe, it was evidently a copy of Giovanni da Bologna's beautiful flying Mercury now in the Bargello at Florence. This was cast in 1565, and,
. like many other bronzes of the period, was originally placed on a fountain in one of the Medicean villas. The Oxford replica, which in all probability occupied the site of an ancient preaching-cross formerly belonging to the priory of St. Frideswide, may be seen on the * Oxford Almanack' tops for 1724 and the following year. Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I., greatly daring, has recently painted a picture of a portion of the great quadrangle looking towards Tom Tower, showing Mer- cury again poised upon his pedestal (see
- Oxford,' by Fulleylove and Thomas, 1903,
p. 105). The effect is not among his happier renderings of Oxford. But at the same time Tom Quad calls for some central object of beauty, both to relieve the monotony of the present ground-plan and to display the great size of the area. The beauty of the even larger great court of Trinity, Cambridge, is much enhanced by the admirable fountain which adorns its centre. A. R. BAYLEY.
A statue of Mercury (the body of lead, and toe-bead and neck of bronze) was presented to the House by Canon Anthony Radcliffe in
the last decade of the seventeenth century.
According to Mr. H. L. Thompson's * Christ
Church' (1900), "the statue, dethroned
more than seventy years ago, was hidden for
many years in a stonemason's yard," while
the bronze head rests among "the Wake-
archives of the Library " (see pp. 87-8, 232).
G. F. R. B.
Perhaps the following extract from ' Lusus Alteri Westmonasterienses ' (1867) may throw some little light on the subject. In an epigram dated 1812 (p. 217) the subjoined may be found :
Nonne hoc monstri est simile. * In platea, Wolseie, tua stat Mercurius, qui
Plumbeus exiles ejaculatur aquas. Quid vult hoc monstrum ? levis est deus iste, deique
Materies etiam debuit esse levis, &c.
An appended note adds :
" This leaden image stood in the centre of a round tank in the great quadrangle of Christ Church, Oxford, but was dragged from its pedestal in the night by some riotous undergraduates."
The old statue called Cain and Abel, said by some to represent Samson slaying a Philistine, has disappeared from the quad- rangle of Brasenose College, so perhaps in future years its very existence may be questioned. JOHN PICKFOKD, M.A.
The following note from "Oxford, painted by John Fulleylove, R.I., described by Edward Thomas," refers to a reproduction of the Mercury :
"Christ Church College Tom Quadrangle. The front of the picture is occupied by part of the basin- of the fountain, from the centre of which rises a pedestal bearing a figure in bronze of ' Mercury ' (restored). In reality the figure no longer shows above the water-lilies in the basin, but engravings of views of the Quadrangle in the eighteenth cen- tury, in which a figure of Mercury appears, are still to be seen, and the fountain was once called ' The Mercury.' The entrance gateway to the College- and a portion of Tom Tower appear in the back- ground."
A. C. B.
" PAPERS" (9 th S.xii. 387; 10 th S. i. 18, 53 111, 172). I have just met with an early instance of the official use of the word " Papers " in connexion with the sale and exchange of commissions in the army. It is under the heading ' Form of Application for Permission to Exchange,' at p. 41 of the ' General Regulations and Orders for the Army,' 1811, and is as follows :
" All Applications for Officers to exchange f ronr one Regiment to another are to be accompanied by a Certificate from the Colonel or Officer Command- ing the Regiment to which they actually belong, according to the folio wing Form: I , Command- ing the Regiment of , do hereby certify
upon my Word and Honor as an Officer and a
