Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/401

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io<" s. iv. OCT. 21. loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 331 On 9 April, 1730, some depositions were taken at Melford, in an action in the Court of Exchequer in which James Johnson, clerk, •was the plaintiff and Richard Warren, D.D., John Baines, gentleman, and others, were defendants. From the depositions it seems that Baines and the others had acted as arbitrators in a dispute between Johnson and one Bulley in a matter of tithes. Johnson had thrown over their award, and brought this action against them to set it aside. The evidence shows that Johnson had been in Melford about twenty years, and Baines had been known to a witness, aged forty- eight, for about the same time, which suggests that he was a new-comer. He signed the award on 23 March, 1727, but was dead in 1730, at the date of the depositions, which gives a very narrow limit in a search for his will (Exchequer Depositions, Easter, 3 Geo. II., No. 1). MARK W. BULLEN. 38, Mount Park Crescent, Baling, W. " TWOPENNY " FOK HEAD (10th S. iv. 69,217). —Although your Yorkshire correspondents suggest that "twopenny " has everything to do with a ram and nothing with twopence, there can be no doubt as to what Sir John Tenniel thought it meant when he drew his striking Punch cartoon in November, 1867, representing Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, playing leap-frog with John Bull, and exclaiming, "Now, then, John.I 'incoming over yer again : tuck in yer twopenny," in allusion to the additional twopence placed on the Income Tax for the purposes of the Abyssinian expedition. POLITICIAN. WILLIAM LEWIS, COMEDIAN (10th S. iv. 148, 218). — Probably Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has some good authority for stating, as he does in his history of 'The Garrick Club,' 1904, p. 3, that it was before its hotel time that

  • ' Probatt's " was the residence of the incom-

parable comedian William Lewis, an airy, light performer, of whom there are no fewer than four portraits in the Garrick Club. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. LADY WILDE AND SWEDENBORG (9th S. vii. 287).—Upwards of four years ago I asked at the above reference for an explanation of the attribution to "Speranza," in a list of her works prefixed to her 'Ancient Legends of Ireland,' 1888, of 'The Future Life: Swedenborg,' but no reply was forthcoming. By other means, however, I have lately been enabled to answer my own question, thus. In the year 1852 there was commenced by Mr. John Simms, of Belfast—whose London agent was Mr. John Chapman—the publica- tion of a series, in small octavo volumes, clad in yellow-coloured "fancy boards," entitled " The Spiritual Library." The first of these was "The Religion of Good Sense. By Edward Richer, of Nantes." The second, issued in 1853, was by the same writer, 'The Key to the Mystery ; or, the Book of Revela- tion Translated,' both advocating, dialogue- wise, the doctrines promulgated by Emanuel Swedenborg. Each of these volumes was translated from its native French by Lady Wilde. The third volume of the series— originally issued in 1853, and frequently reproduced from the stereotyped plates, at brief intervals, down to the present time— was an English version of Emanuel Sweden- borg's treatise ' De Coslo et de Inferno,' slightly modified from an existing transla- tion, and renamed 'The Future Life,' not by Lady Wilde, but by the publisher. The series did not extend beyond the three volumes just described, but Lady Wilde translated another volume, viz., a third work by Edward Richer, entitled 'God and the Spiritual World,' which was announced to form vol. iv. of " The Spiritual Lib- I rary," but which, as already stated, did ' not appear. My informant is Mr. Simms I himself, who is still enjoying life in the north of Ireland at a green old age, and whose information was communicated to me in a style reminiscent of the good old times when beautiful penmanship was not, as now, an all but lost art. CHARLES HIGHAM. 169, Grove Lane, S.E. CURTIS : HUGHES : WORTH (10th S. iv. 207). —William Worth, appointed a Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland in 1681, did not attain to the rank of Chief Baron. He was married four times. His third wife, whom he married in 1687, was Dorothy, daughter of Henry Whit- field and widow of Sir Richard Bulkeley, Bart. She died in 1704. Further information will be found in The Irish Builder for 1894, p. 222. F. ELRINGTON BALL. Dublin. "THE SCREAMING SKULL" (10th S. iv. 107, 194, 252).—A similar story to that recorded by MR. PICKFORD at the last reference is admirably worked up by F. Anstey in 'A Fallen Idol.' JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire. ICELANDIC DICTIONARY (10th S. iv. 229).— A glossary or " word-list," to help beginners to use the ' Icelandic-English Dictionary' of G. Vigfusson, is found in Vigfussou and York Powell's 'Icelandic Prose Reader," pp. 521 - 59 (Clarendon Press Series, 1879),