Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/222

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XL MARCH u, 1903.


He died at Paris in 1805. See Davenports 'History of the Bastille and its Principal Captives,' 1838. EVERARD HOME GOLEM AN. 71, Brecknock Road.

"SANDWICH" (5 th S. vi. 508). So long ago as 1876, PROF. MAYOR wrote on this word :

" It would be curious to trace its history on the

Continent and to find contemporary authority

for its origin."

A quotation from Gibbon's 'Journal' of 24 November, 1762, is added. The General Indexes do not show any further allusio'n to the history of word or thing. Several months ago an English magazine* published an article on eighteenth - century London, founded on Grosley's account of his visit to this country, from which I gathered that that vivacious chronicler gave a definite date to the origin of the thing. I have glanced through Grosley's book, but could not find the passage. I hope one of your readers may have better success.

A few years ago the question was raised in the Intermediaire (xxxiv. 666) whether sandwich in French is masculine or feminine. Has the point been decided ? Q. V.

"SHOULD HE UPBRAID" (9 th S. xi. 147). About sixty-five years ago, I purchased this song (now before me) at Messrs. Goulding & D'AJmaine's, 20, Soho Square. According to the title-page "it was sung by Miss M. Tree, in Shakespear's Play of the Two Gentlemen of Verona," and by Miss Stephens at the concerts, festivals, &c.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

4 THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE' (9 th S. xi. 105, 143). Referring to the Rev. Charles Wolfe's poem on this subject, the following extract from Gibson's 'History of Cork' (vol. ii. p. 418) may prove interesting :

" I see by an unpublished letter of Charles Wolfe, that he sent a copy of these lines to his friend John Taylor, at the Rev. Mr. Armstrong's, Clonoulty Cashel, on the 16th of September, 1816 :

' My dear John, I have completed ' The Burial of Sir John Moore,' and will here inflict them upon you. You have no one but yourself to blame (for praising the two stanzas) that I told you so much."

Again, p. 417 :

"I visited the grave [Wolfe's] a second time, accompanied by a literary friend, who told me the following anecdote of his elegy on the burial of Sir John Moore :

"'Charles Wolfe showed me the lines in manu- script, with the beauty of which he [sic] was so impressed that I requested a copy for insertion in a

the time ' unfortu '


periodical with which I had some connexion. Wolfe first refused, but was persuaded to comply. I laid the verses before some two or three savants, who were in the habit of pronouncing on what should, and what should not, appear in the periodical. The lines were read, ridiculed, and condemned, and I was laughed at for imagining such " stuff" worthy of publication. I felt myself in an awkward position, but I took courage to return the manuscript, and to tell Charles Wolfe that on more mature considera- tion, I did not think the periodical I had named worthy of its insertion.' "

The remains of Charles Wolfe lie within the walls of the old unroofed church of Clonmel, about a mile from Queenstown, county of Cork. Gibson says :

" Wolfe's tomb lies in a dark corner, overgrown with nettles, and sadly in need of the friendly chisel of some old, or new, ' Mortality.' "

WILLIAM C. COOKE. Vailima, Bishopstown, Cork.

The hoax played on the editor of Truth in respect to the alleged French original of this poem of which A. N. Q. seems quite un- consciousdeserves some notice. The present generation cannot be expected to be ait, courant with the light literature of pre-Victorian days, but some of your readers have heard, no doubt, of the Rev. Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known as " Father Prout of Watergrass hill," whose playful translations of well - known poems were among the attractions of Fraser's Magazine and Bentley's Miscellany in early times.

In 1834 Father Prout contributed to Fraser some articles on ' The Rogueries of Tom Moore,' in which some of Moore's best-known songs were rendered into French or Latin, and Moore was wittily accused of plagiarism. " Go where glory waits thee " was alleged to be taken from the French chanson " Va ou la gloire t'invite," written by an apocryphal Frangoise de Foix, Comtesse de Chateau- briand ; " O ! 'twas all but a dream of the past," was represented as a translation of "Tu n'as fait, 6 mon coeur ! qu'un beau songe," by the Marquis de Cinquemars ; and "Lesbia hath a beaming eye" otherwise 'Nora Creina' was stated to have been copied from a Latin poem written by Father Prout on an Irish milkmaid "In pulchram lactiferam "beginning :

Lesbia semper hie et inde Oculorum tela movit.

No one, however, who was not stolidly matter- of-fact, would have supposed that these articles were more than a clever joke.

When Sentlej/s Miscellany was started in January, 1837, Father Prout contributed to the first number some admirable skits of a similar character. The third of these will be