cedent, circiter, and subsequent to the Conquest. M. M. M. says, that Meares or Marres, &c. cannot belong to the Morresfamily, because since the settlement of the latter in Ireland, they had no collaterals, and that in fact there are " only four solitary heads" of it; but this is no proof that other families may not, as I said before, have sprung from the same root. By this mode of reasoning, your Correspondent would say that no Seymours were related to one another but those who proceed from the Protector: now how false would this be, for there are by far a greater number of Seymours who derive from the Protector's ancestors, than from the Protector himself. This method of arguing is too confined, and would destroy many an existing line of antient nobility. I have now, I trust, said sufficient to convince any person disposed to be convinced, and ten times more than sufficient for a person resolved to remain obstinate in error: so here I shall let the matter rest. Yours, &c. Mr. URBAN, A S. July 2. N old friend visiting me lately out of the country, informed me, that he had heard Prayers on Weekdays were left off in all or most of the London Churches: even in Passionweek the Churches were shut. This, he said, put him almost in a rage with the Relator, whom he supposed to have forged a monstrous falsehood to vilify the London Clergy. I shook my head, and feared it was too sadly true. But as he wished to see the interior of some of the City Churches, I proposed going on Ascension-day, when the parishes walk their bounds. We accordingly set off. At the Metropolitan Church St. Mary-le-Bow, the Charity-Children were ranged in the vestibule; but, on my trying the interior doors, the Beadle told me there would be no Service. We went next to several of the neighbouring Churches, St. Mary Aldermary, St. Antholin's, St. Mildred Poultry: all shut! But looking into the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, we found a congregation met devoutly to celebrate this grand Festival of the Christian Church (and a sermon preached). Surely if Christ is not ascended as well as risen, to borrow an argument from St. Paul, then is our faith and hope vain. Alas! well may the Methodists triumph in the indolence of the Established Clergy! I wish to be informed if any of your Correspondents know of an excellent plain little book, intituled The Communicant's Assistant, printed and sold by H. Kent, Finch-lane, 1753; with an Appendix in two parts, containing a Dissertation upon the principal errors committed in the time of Divine Service, both in the Church and out of it, by Protestants of the Church of England; and a Postscript, wherein is shewn briefly the duty of Churchwardens. It would be a deed of charity to re-print it, as I think, on the whole, I never saw a book so well adapted to inform and persuade the lower class to the duty of communicating. It is excellent on the various indecorums too generally committed in the time of Service, as sitting at prayer, whispering, or other inattentions, improper dress - on this head I was sorry to hear that a girl's cha rity-school appeared at St. Paul's on the Anniversary, decorated with necklaces. I was under the dome; but I did not observe that particular school, though I saw too many unnecessarily decked out with gaudy ribbands, which I hoped was left off by all. Yours, &c. Mr. URBAN, M E. Cambridge, July 3. R. Butler, in the Preface to the First Volume of his Æschylus, speaks of four MSS. as having been now for the arst time collated; and elsewhere mentions that the collation of two of these had been sent him, and that he had collated the other two himself. The remark of the Edinburgh Reviewer is this; that "Mr. Butler professes to have collated four MSS. not previously consulted. Whether the four MSS.had been previously consulted or not, is not a matter of much importance, since consulting and collating are different things." Mr. Butler thinks it possible, that Mr. Blomfield was with the Reviewer in the University Library when he examined the two MSS. collated by Mr. Butler, and this may be called consulting. Why the Reviewer chose to use the word consult, it is in vain to search; but, considering the language of Mr. Butler, he ought to have used the word collate, consider ing too what he immediately after says of those two MSS. that they had been collated in 1744 by Dr. Askew, and considering that he thus meant to strip Mr. Butler of the honour of collating them for the first time. Mr. Butler, in justification, explains after this manner the collation of Dr. As kew and his own: that Dr. Askew collated only one of those MSS. throughout, and a part only of the other; that his collation either of the whole of the one or of the part of the other was very imperfect; and that he, Mr. Butler, collated them both throughout with accuracy, even to the injury of his eyesight in copying out of the latter MS scholia, altogether neglected by Dr. Askew. That Mr. Butler's collation of these MSS. is much more satisfactory than that of Dr. Askew must be granted, but that he makes out a satisfactory claim to the title of First Collater must be denied: he would do well to alter the language of his Preface, and in his Conspectus the title of "Codices à nobis collati." Dr. Askew certainly collated one. Yours, &c. W. S. - P. S. The Regius Greek Professor, Mr. Monk, denies that he communicated to Mr. Blomfield the remarks on the review of the Oxford Strabo, and also that Mr. Blomfield knew of his receiving them, but does not deny that they were communicated to Mr. Blomfield; the name of the person who had received them being suppressed. See his letter to Mr. Butler. MR. URBAN, T June 17. HE Parish Church of Hornsey, Middlesex (see Pl. II. Fig. 1.) in old records written Haringeye, occurs early in the 14th century, in the registers of the see of London, the bishops of which are patrons of the Rectory. It is an antient structure, consisting of a Nave with two Ailes, a Chancel, of the same pace with the Nave, and a square West Tower; in the West face of which are the Figures represented in the Plate (see Figs. 2 and 3); two angels holding shields, with the see of Canterbury, impaling, Gules, 3 escalops, with a goat's head above a fess Or; probably those of Warham, who bore these arms, and was Bishop of London 1502-1504: and round their feet are scrolls, which once bore Inscriptions, GENT. MAG. July, 1810. now entirely defaced. The fragments in the window contain a request to pray for the soul of a man and his wife, who perhaps contributed the window. (See Fig. 4.) There is a Gallery at the West end, erected and built at the sole charge of Mr. Samuel Armitage, citizen and girdler of London 1731, a good benefactor to this parish; and another Gallery at the bottom of the South aile for singers and servants. The Font is octagon, with pannels of niche work. The Bishops of London had a Park here, now called The Woods, in which Norden mentions a hill or fort called Lodge Hill, seeming by the foundation to have been in old time a lodge when the park was replenished with deer; with the stones that came from the ruins of which, the Church is said to have been built. In this Park was a famous meeting of the Nobles, 10 Rich. II. 1387, in a hostile manner, to rid the King of the traitors he had about him, Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, Alexander Neville, Archbishop of York, and Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who, with others, had conspired the deaths of the Duke of Gloucester, and the Earls of Arundel, Warwick, Derby, and Nottingham. While the King amused them with promises of dismissing his favourites and remedying their grievances, the Duke of Ireland was advancing with an army from Warwick to arrest them; but, being met at Radcot-bridge in Oxfordshire*, was entirely routed, and obliged to quit the kingdom; by which means the King came again into the hands of the other party, who took their revenge on their enemies t. The King had sent the Duke of Northumberland to Ryegate, to arrest the Earl of Arundel; but he not succeeding, the Earl rode all night with his army to Haringey Wood, where he found the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Warwick with a considerable force§. For a more particular account of this parish, see Mr. Lysons's Environs of London, Vol. II. Yours, &c. D. H. of WHAT Horace observes in another place, speaking of Lucilius, that his book, like a votive tablet, represents the good old way of living, is equally applicable to himself, and par ticularly in the present performance, which may be considered as an interesting account some passages in his life. Few authors have in their works spoken so much of themselves as Horace; and nothing perhaps is more difficult than to talk of oneself with propriety; that is, so as to be neither tiresome nor disgusting; equally remote from affected modesty on one hand, and ridiculous vanity on the other; with ingenuousness, yet without garrulity; with due self-estimation, yet without vaunting. The task becomes harder, if, in the situation and relative position of our poet, we should have to speak of ourselves to such a person as Mæcenas. Never to trip in a path at once so slippery and tortuous, is perhaps the non plus ultra of urbanity and delicate sensation; and doubtless the Graces must have been particularly auspicious to him, who could off with much ease and decorum from such a hazardous enterprize, as Horace in this Satire and in the viith and xixth Epistles to Mæcenas has done. come SO Horace, in consequence of the liking which Mæcenas had condescended to take to him, began, as it appears, about this time, to excite the attention of the publick, the dislike of the middling class of poets, and in general of those who by witty conversation, taste, and the talent of amusing, sought to render themselves agreeable to the great. Among these people, were not a few who could boast a far higher descent than our bard-for every thing had been so turned upside down in Rome by the civil war, the proscriptions, and the last triumvirate, that numbers, who were born to a quite different fortune and a quite different course of life, being now reduced to a state of utter dependence, were obliged to contrive means of subsistence which they would heretofore have looked down upon with scorn. It was probably people of this stamp who, more than others, upbraided our poet with the meanness of his birth, and thus at last com pelled him, no less for his own sake than that of his magnificent patron, to explain this matter to the world, or the infinite multitude of those to whom he could not be more intimately known. Mæcenas, notwithstanding his vast influence and reputation, never held any public office in the adminis tration of the Roman republic; yet he seems to have lent a willing ear whenever any compliment was paid him on the high antiquity and the noble origin of his race*, pleasing himself with an assumed modesty, which in fact was only a cover to the pride of preferring to be the first among the hereditary equestrians, than to be clothed with those honours which were conferred by popular election, and which he would have possessed in common with that earth-born tribe, who in those times, either by the aura popularis or the favour of the triumvirs, were elevated to posts which they were not born to fill. He had therefore, even though he had been less of a philosopher, a reason of very near concernment, for looking, in the choice of his friends and commensals, at their personal quali-, ties rather than at the circumstance quali sit quisque parente. To this, however, was added a political view, to which (as may be assumed upon the most solid arguments), in this mode of proceeding, his eye was constantly directed; namely, that it was conformable to the great plan of the young Cæsar, chalked out by himself, that in the monarchy into which he intended imperceptibly to transform the republick, every thing should in a manner be new, and, in the design of defeating the pretensions of the remaining old families, and as much as possible of rendering the condition of the Romans dependent on the arbitration of the imperator, less regard should in future be had to the honours and merits of ancestry, than to personal worth and acquirements. Ac cordingly Horace brings his process before a judge no less favourable than competent; and the artful turn he gives it is so well adapted, that he seems rather to be writing a justification of the esteem and attachment with which he is honoured by Mæcenas, than an apology for himself. |