Chapter 1

but does not notice the claim set up on behalf of Julian I.; neither Neander (vol. iii. pp. 415-22. Eng. Translation). It would appear that the Eastern Church kept Christmas on Jan. 6th, and the Western Church on Dec. 25th: at length, about the time of Chrysostom, the Oriental Christians sided with the Western Church. Bingham also cites Augustine as saying that it was the current tradition that Christ was born on the eighth of the kalends of January, that is, on the 25th of December. Had, therefore, Julian I. dogmatically fixed the 25th of December as the birthday of our Saviour, it is scarcely possible to suppose that Augustine, who flourished about half a century later, would allege current tradition as the reason, without any notice of Julian.

N. E. R. (A Subscriber).

[See Tillemont's _Histoire Ecclésiastique_, tome i., note 4., for a full discussion of this question. Also Mosheim's _De Rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum Commentarii_, sæculum primum, sec. 1.; and Butler's _Lives of the Saints_, article Christmas-Day.]

_Christmas-day_ (Vol. iii, p. 167.).--St. John of Chrysostom, archbishop of Nice (died A.D. 407), in an epistle upon this subject, relates (tom. v. p. 45. edit. Montf. Paris, 1718-34) that, at the instance of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (died A.D. 385), St. Julius (Pope A.D. 337-352) procured a strict inquiry to be made into the day of our Saviour's nativity, which being found to be the 25th Dec., that day was thenceforth set apart for the celebration of this "Festorum omnium metropolis," as he styles it. St. Tilesphorus (Pope A.D. 128-139), however, is supposed by the generality of ancient authorities to be the first who appointed the 25th Dec. for that purpose. The point is involved in much uncertainty, but your correspondent may find all the information he seeks in _Baronii Apparatus ad Annales Ecclesiasticos_, fol., Lucæ, 1740, pp. 475. et seq.; and in a curious tract, entitled _The Feast of Feasts; or, the Celebration of the Sacred Nativity of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; grounded upon the Scriptures, and confirmed by the Practice of the Christian Church in all Ages_. 4to. Oxf. 1644. This tract is in the British Museum. J. C. makes a tremendous leap in chronology when he asks "Was it not either Julius I. or II.?" Why the one died exactly 1161 years after the other!

COWGILL.

_Christmas Day_ (Vol. iii., p. 167.).--In a note to one of Bishop Pearson's sermons (_Opera Minora_, ed. Churton) occurs the following passage from St. Chrysostom:--

"[Greek: Para tôn akribôs tauta eidotôn, kai tên polin ekeinên] (sc. Romam) [Greek: oikountôn, PAREILÊPHAMEN TÊN HÊMERAN. Hoi gar ekei diatribontes ANÔTHEN kai ek PALAIAS PARADOSEÔS tautên epitelountes]," &c.--_Homil. Di. Nat._ ii. 354.

The remainder of the quotation my _note_ does not supply, but it may be easily found by the reference. The day, therefore, seems fixed by "tradition," and received both by the Eastern and Western Church, and not on any dogmatical decision of the popes.

R. W. F.

_MS. Sermons by Jeremy Taylor_ (Vol. i., p. 125.).--Coleridge's assertion, "that there is now extant in MS. a folio of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor," must have proceeded from his wishes rather than his knowledge. No such MS. is known to exist; and such a discovery is, I believe, as little to be expected as a fresh play of Shakspeare's. Was it in the "Lands of Vision," and with "the damsel and the dulcimer," that the transcendental philosopher beheld it?

JAS. CROSSLEY.

_Dryden's Absolom and Achitophel_ (Vol. ii., p. 406.).--The edition noticed by your correspondent, "printed and sold by H. Hills, in Blackfriars, near the Water Side, for the benefit of the Poor," 1708, 8vo., is a mere catch-penny. Hills, the printer, was a great sinner in this way. I have Roscommon's translation of Horace's _Art of Poetry_, 1709; his _Essay on translated Verse_, 1709; Mulgrave's _Essay on Poetry_, 1709; Denham's _Cooper's Hill_, 1709; and many other poems, all printed by Hills, on bad paper, and very incorrectly, from 1708 to 1710, for sale at a low price.

JAS. CROSSLEY.

_The Rev. W. Adams_ (Vol. iii., p. 140.).--The age of Mr. Adams at his death was thirty-three. His tomb is in the churchyard of Bonchurch--a simple coped coffin; but the cross placed upon it is, in allusion to his own beautiful allegory, slightly raised, so that its shadow falls--

"Along the letters of his name, And o'er the number of his years."

I have a pretty engraving of this tomb, purchased at Bonchurch in 1849, and your correspondent may perhaps be glad to adopt the idea for an illustration of the book he mentions.

E. J. M.

_Duchess of Buckingham_ (Vol. iii., p. 224.).--I am much surprised at this question; I thought {250} there were few ladies of the last century better known than Catherine, daughter of James II. (to whom he gave the name of Darnley) by Miss Ledley, created Countess of Dorchester. Lady Catherine Darnley was married first to Lord Anglesey, and secondly to Sheffield Duke of Buckingham, by whom she was mother of the second duke of that name, who died in his minority, and the title became extinct. All this, and many more curious particulars of that extraordinary lady, may be found in the _Peerages_, in _Pope_, in _Walpole's Reminiscences_, and in Park's edition of the _Noble Authors_.

C.

"_Go the whole Hog_" (Vol. iii., p. 224.).--We learn from _Men and Manners in America_, vol. i. pp. 18, 19., that _going the whole hog_ is the American popular phrase for radical reform, or democratical principle, and that it is derived from the phrase used by butchers in Virginia, who ask their customer whether he will go the whole hog, or deal only for joints or portions of it.

C. B.

_Lord Bexley's Descent from Cromwell_ (Vol. iii., p. 185.).--In answer to PURSUIVANT'S Query, How were the families of Morse and Ireton connected? it appears that Jane, only child of Richard Lloyd (of Norfolk?), Esq., by Jane, second daughter of Ireton, married, circa 1700, Nicholas or Henry Morse. But what appears to me most likely to have occasioned the report of Lord Bexley's connexion with the Cromwell family is, that the late Oliver Cromwell, Esq., of Cheshunt, married Miss Mary Morse in 1771, which must have been not far from the period when Lord Bexley's mother, also a Miss Morse, was married to Mr. Vansittart.

WAYLEN.

_Morse and Ireton Families._--I have a small original portrait of General Ireton by old Stone; on the back of it is a card, on which is the following:--

"Bequeathed by Jane Morse to her daughter Ann Roberts, this picture of her grandfather Ireton. Will dated Jan. 15. 1732-33."

"Anne Roberts, wife of Gaylard Roberts, brother of Christ^r Roberts, father of J. R."

In Noble's _Memoirs of the Cromwell Family_, vol. ii. p. 302., the name is printed _Moore_, evidently a mistake for _Morse_:--

"Jane, third daughter of General Ireton, having married Richard Lloyd, Esq., the issue of this marriage was Jane, an only child, who married Nicholas, or Henry _Moore_ [Morse], Esq., by whom she had four sons and three daughters."

SPES.

_The Countess of Desmond_ (Vol. ii., pp. 153. 186. 219. 317.).--Touching this venerable lady, the following "Note" may not be unacceptable.

In the year 1829, when making a tour in Ireland, I saw an engraving at Lansdowne Lodge, in the county of Kerry, the residence of Mr. Hickson, on which the following record was inscribed:--

"Catherine Fitzgerald, Countess of Desmond (from the original in the possession of the Knight of Kerry on Panell).

"She was born in 1464; married in the reign of Edw. IV.; lived during the reigns of Edw. V., Rich. III., Hen. VII., Hen. VIII., Edw. VI., Mary, and Elizabeth; and died in the latter end of James' or the beginning of Charles I.'s reign, at the great age of 162 years."

On my return home I was much surprised and gratified to find in my own house, framed and glazed, a very clever small-sized portrait in crayon, which at once struck me a a fac-simile (or nearly so) of the engraving I had seen at Lansdowne Lodge.

Your correspondent C. in p. 219. appears very sceptical about this female Methuselah! and speaks of a reputed portrait at Windsor "as a gross imposition, being really that of an old man"--

"Non nostrum tantus componere lites:"

but I would remind your correspondent C. that such longevity is not impossible, and the traditions of the Countess of Desmond are widely diffused. The portrait in my possession is not unlike an old man; but old ladies, like old hen pheasants, are apt to put on the semblance of the male.

A BORDERER.

_Aristophanes on the Modern Stage_ (Vol. iii., p. 105.).--In reply to a Query of our correspondent C. J. R., I beg leave to state, that, after having made inquiry on the subject, I cannot find that any of the Comedies of Aristophanes have ever been introduced upon the English stage, although I agree with him in thinking that some of them might be advantageously adapted to the modern theatre; and I am more confirmed in this opinion from having witnessed at the Odéon in Paris, some years since, a dramatic piece, entitled "Les Nuées d'Aristophane," which had a great run there. It was not a literal translation from the Greek author, but a kind of mélange, drawn from the Clouds and Plutus together. The characters of Socrates and his equestrian son were very well performed; but the scenic accessories I considered very meagre, particularly the choral part, which must have been so striking and beautiful in the original of the former drama. Upon my return to England I wrote to the then lessee of Drury Lane Theatre, recommending a similar experiment on our stage from the free version by Wheelwright, published some time before by the late D. A. Talboys, of Oxford. The answer I received was, that the manager had then too much on his hands to admit of his giving time to such an undertaking, which I still think might be a successful one (as is the case with the "Antigone" {251} of Sophocles, so often represented at Berlin), and such as to ensure the favourable attention of an English audience, particularly as the subject turns so much upon the danger and uselessness of the meteoric or visionary education, then so prevalent at Athens.

ARCHÆUS.

Dusseldorf, March 6.

_Denarius Philosophorum_ (Vol. iii., p. 168.).--Bishop Thornborough may have been thus styled from his attachment to alchemy and chemistry. One of his publications is thus entitled:

"Nihil, Aliquid, Omnia, in Gratiam eorum qui Artem Auriferam Physico-chymicè et pie, profitentur." Oxon. 1621.

Another part of his monumental inscription is singular. On the north side are, or were, these words and figures--"In uno, 2^o 3^a 4^r 10--non spirans spero."

"He was," says Wood, "a great encourager of Bushall in his searches after mines and minerals:"

and Richardson speaks of this prelate as--

"Rerum politicarum potius quam Theologicarum et artis Chemicæ peritia Clarus."

J. H. M.

_On a Passage in the Tempest_ (Vol. ii., pp. 259. 299. 337. 429. 499.).--If you will allow me to offer a conjecture on a subject, which you may think has already been sufficiently discussed in your pages, I shall be glad to submit the following to the consideration of your readers.

The passage in the _Tempest_, Act III. Scene 1., as quoted from the first folio, stands thus:

"I forget: But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours Most busie lest, when I do it."

This was altered in the second folio to

"Most busie least, when I do it."

Instead of which Theobald proposes,--

"Most busyless, when I do it."

But "busyless" is not English. All our words ending in _less_ (forming adjectives), are derived from Anglo-Saxon nouns; as love, joy, hope, &c., and never from adjectives.

My conjecture is that Shakespeare wrote--

"I forget: But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labour's Most business, when I do it."

"Most" being used in the sense of "greatest," as in _Henry VI._, Pt. I.,