Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/424

This page needs to be proofread.

416


NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. ix. MAT 24, 1902.


powder, which was henceforth generally abandoned. Pantaloons, which fitted closely to the leg, remained in very common use by those persons who had adopted them till about the year 1814, when the wearing of trousers, already introduced into the army, became fashionable. It is proper, however, to mention that trousers had for the previous 15 or 20 years been used by boys, and were perhaps from them adopted by the army. Previous to the French Revolution, the dress of boys was almost the same as that of men."

RONALD DIXON. 46, Marlborough Avenue, Hull.

If MR. ANDREWS will take the trouble to turn to 3 rd S. v. ; 5 th S. xii. ; 6 th S. x. ; 7 th S. vii. ; 8 th S. ii., he will find all particulars respecting this comparatively modern article of men's attire.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

OLD SPOONS (9 th S. ix. 348). The marks are probably foreign. Each silver piece marked at Goldsmiths' Hall has five marks : (1) the sovereign's head (after 1784) ; (2) the lion passant (the standard mark), probably introduced between 1538 and 1558 ; (3) the standard mark, fixed 8 & 9 William III., 1696-7 ; (4) leopard's head, the hall-mark ; (5) the maker's mark (an old custom).

The London district mark is a leopard's head ; for York, three lions and a cross , for Exeter, a castle with three wings ; for Chester, three wheatsheaves ; for Newcastle, three castles ; for Birmingham, an anchor ; for Sheffield, a crown ; for Edinburgh, a castle and lion ; for Glasgow, a tree, salmon, and ring ; and for Dublin, the figure of Hibernia. (See Cripps's ' Old English Plate.') EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

BENJAMIN HEATH, OF EXETER (9 th S. iv. 379, 485). Reference having already been made to the brothers Benjamin and John Heath successively Town Clerks of Exeter during the latter half of the eighteenth century the following (cut from the Western Times for 5 April) appears to have some interest :

" The portrait of ' Thomas Heath, Esq.,' who wa~ Mayor of Exeter in 1738, and again in 1747, is to be

Sesented to the City, on behalf of subscribers, b r. John Gidley. The portrait of the Mayor i three-quarter length, and his Worship is representeu sitting in his robes in the pose customary with artists of the period. The picture is chiefly valuabl for its local association, and for the fact that it wa painted by Hudson, under whom the great Si- Joshua Reynolds commenced his studies in London in 1741. Of Hudson, Allan Cunningham, in his 'Lives of British Painters,' says, 'He was the most distinguished portrait painter of that time ; was, nevertheless, a man of little skill and less talent, who could paint a head, but without other aid was unable to place it upon the shoulders, IJe


as, in truth, a mere manufacturer of portraits

Reynolds proceeded with his studies under Hudson ; >ut it seldom happens that a man of no genius and moderate skill can give counsel to one who longs for distinction and has the talent to obtain it.' What- jver maybe thought of Hudson's paintings as works )f art, it is well that the City should have in its seeping all portraits of its past Mayors, even if the leads only are worthy of admiration from the art critic's point of view."

HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter.

" GENTLE SHEPHERD, TELL ME WHERE " 9 th S. viii.423, 530 ; ix. 113). The last words of ch. xi., bk. ii., * Past and Present,' are ' Gentle shepherd, tell me what ! " Is it too much to presume that Carlyle had the words of ' The Wreath ' running through his mind at the time he was writing 1

JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

CELLINI AND SHAKESPEARE (9 th S. ix. 308). Roscoe's translation of the * Capitolo,' ad- dressed to Luca Martini, is in no sense a literal one. The line

Vo per la stanza, e cigli e capo arriccio is well rendered by John Addington Symonds as follows :

My cell 1 search, prick brows and hair upright. Symonds has been, as he points out, at pains to preserve the roughness of the original, whereas Roscoe rewrites it. " Capo arriccio " simply means the hair standing on end with horror, and the comparison to the quills on a porcupine did not occur to Cellini. We may safely acquit Shakespeare, therefore, of any suspicion of plagiarism, nor need we ascribe to Bacon the authorship of the 'Vita di Benvenuto Cellini,' and thus add to the burden which Mrs. Gallup has already placed upon his broad shoulders.

EDWARD M. BORRAJO.

The Library, Guildhall, E.C.

In the edition of * La Vita scritta da lui Medesimo' published by Sue. Le Monnier (Firenze, 1891) there is nothing resembling the lines quoted by ST. SWITHIN in the ' Capitolo ' of Cellini in praise of prison life, for a short term at least as a salutary lesson. Can it be a ludicrous blunder in the translation of the first line of the eighteenth triplet 1

Vo per la stanza, e' cigli e '1 capo arriccio, which expresses no horror, but elation or alertness in hitting on the means of providing writing appliances such as prisoners in romance resort to. It is not credible that Cellini wrote so long a poem on the fly-leaves of a Bible with a s olinter torn from the door