404
NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. vi. NOV. 33. 1912.
- Complete Peerage ' ; ' D.N.B.,' sub
- Merry ' ). This Earl Cowper died at
Florence on 22 Dec., 1789. His widow died at her villa near Florence, 5 Sept., 1826.
After this marriage Gore lived at Naples and Rome for a time, making in the latter city the intimate acquaintance of Philipp Hackert, the celebrated landscape painter. They spent two summers together at Castel Gandolpho and Albano, studying and draw- ing. From 3 April to early in June, 1777, Gore was in Sicily with his friends Hackert and Payne Knight, whose Journal was translated and inserted by Goethe in his biography of Hackert. In 1778 the Gore family accompanied Hackert in an excur- sion to North Italy. The Gores then moved to Switzerland, and remained there for nearly two years.
From about" 1780 to 1782 Gore abode in England. Again he went abroad, pos- sibly drawn through regard for his wife's health ; she died at Spa on 22 Aug., 1785. Gore, after this loss, went with his daughters to the Hague, and then to Pyrmont, where they made the acquaintance of the Duke of Saxe- Weimar. During his absence from his duchy they arrived at Weimar in October, 1787, and were cordially received by the Duchesses. The daughters had met the Duchess Anna Amalia while travelling in Italy. After a few months passed at Dresden and Berlin, they revisited Weimar on 6 Julv, 1788, to spend a few months there. The Duke, on 22 Jan., 1788, had written to his friend Knebel that he had never known his wife
" to take to any one as she has done to Emily Gore, and lew, here at least, have recognised her fine qualities as this Englishwoman does .... The Gores too are very cultured women, and Emily Oore especially is full of sympathy ; so that she may thaw the ice in that frozen soul " (Gerard, i. 198).
The Duchess Louise at first resented the Duke's attentions to p]mily Gore, but he assured his wife in 1788, on his honour, that she would be really delighted with this young Englishwoman and that the family would stay at Weimar for some time. The Duchess confessed that her husband's selec- tion did justice to his taste, for Emily was charming " both in character and appear- ance." Duntzer in his Life of Goethe (trans. Lyster, ii. 60-61) says that " Gore and his daughters Elise and Emilie were remarkable for fine culture and a feeling for art. But Goethe now [1788] found their views in Ethics and on art so limited that, in a certain sense, he found talking with them impossible. The Duke felt a passionate attraction to Emilie Elise had a warm heart for Goethe."
But Goethe was, when he expressed this
opinion of the Gores, in a captious mood.
Charlotte von Stein had driven him to
despair with her coldness, and he had fallen
in love with Christiane Sophie Vulpius.
The Duke writes to Goethe in March. 1790,
that Emily Gore is at Gotha. Goethe gives
1791 as the year of the family's arrival at
Weimar. By this time the Duchess Louise's
relation to " dear Emily " had assumed that
friendly character which her husband had
predicted (Bojanowski, ' Louise, Grossherzo-
gin von Sachsen- Weimar,' 1903, pp. 217-19).
The Chancellor von Miiller in his memoir
of the Grand Duchess Louise goes so far as
to say that
" with Miss Emily Gore, whose character was so akin to her own in noble delicacy and tranquil firmness, she formed a friendship which, present or absent, continued with undiminished warmth till death " (' Characteristics of Goethe/ trans. Sarah Austin, iii. 177).
W. P. COUBTXEY. ( To be continued. )
ANTHONY WOOD'S
'ATHENE OXONIENSES.'
(See ante, p. 381.)
6. John Sergeant to Wood, of 23 Jan.,
1687/8 ; reed. 27 Jan. Hox d SB.
I know no other books M r Austen writ but only his Devotions, TJ>e Christian .\todc- ratour under the name of Birchly, and A Letter from a Cavalier in Yorkshire. As for myself, I had forgot my Statera Appensa, against an opinion of Thomas Albius, in Latin, Printed in the year 1662 in a little octavo. Do not you forget to make mention of the works of Petrus Valesius or M r Peter Walsh which are both many and learned. True, hee is an Irishman, but they were all written and printed in England. If you comand mee, I will get you a Catalogue of them. I have a friend has a connection [?]. about Shadwell here in the suburbs of London ; you know it is call'd so from St. Chad's well. If you find anything recorded concerning the butting and bounding of it, or any usefull par- ticularities relating to it, please to communicate them to
Yr. most assured friend to serve you
JOHN SERGEANT.
Write to me alwayes by the name of D T Smith. I have writ now three Catholik Letters ag e D r Stillingfleet, and an Answer to his Sermon preacht at Guildhall Nov. 27, entituled Scripture and Tradition compared : is now going to the Press. They are all in Quarto.
Wood has made use of this letter of Sergeant's in his brief account of John Austen (' Athenae,' iii. 1226 ; and v. ' D.N.B.,' ii. 263).
