458
NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. HI. JUNE 10, ML
The London firm of Thomson Bonar & Co.,
which still exists in Old Broad Street, may
owe its origin to another Thomson Bonar,
a relative, who is described by Anderson as
a " descendant " of the Rev. John Bonar
of Fetlar, father of John Bonar of Perth
This Thomson Bonar made a fortune as a
Russia merchant, purchased (?) Camden
Place, Chislehurst, and was there, with his
wife, murdered by an Irish footman named
Nicholson on the night of May 30-31, 1813,
(' Annual Register ' for 1813, Chronicle,
31 May ; and The Times for 1 June, 1813,
et seq.). Thomson Bonar, the Russia mer-
chant, had at least two sons, one of whom
was colonel of the Kent Militia Regiment
at the time of the murder ; and both seem
to have been present at the execution of
Nicholson (see ' Annual Register,' Chronicles,
23 August, 1813). S. H. P.
RICHARD ROLLE'S 'PRICK OF CON- SCIENCE ' : ' THE BRITISH CRITIC '(US. iii. 227, 277, 377, 417). It may be worth noting that the article in question was written by Mark Pattison. He mentions it in his
- Memoirs,' chap. vi. p. 186 :
"I wrote an elaborate article in The British Critic on * Earliest English Poetry,' for which I spent months of study, and got to know all that was then known on the subject."
It was not reprinted in his ' Essays ' (1889). EDWARD BENSLY.
MR. HIGHAM, ante, p. 417, wrongly I think, attaches the letters D.D. to the name of the Rev. Thomas Mozley as editor of The British Critic and author of ' Reminiscences of Oriel College, Oxford,' 1882. With so many other claims to distinction, my old fellow - townsman of Gainsborough (whose obituary notice I wrote in The Athenaeum for
24 June, 1893) would have repudiated, I feel sure, this inapposite titular appendage.
The mistake has probably been caused by the fact that his brother J. B. Mozley, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, was certainly D.D. WILLIAM MERCER.
" O. K." (US. iii. 266, 390). At the end of the will of Thomas Cumberland, lorimer, of London, dated 8 Dec., 1565, entered in the Archdeaconry Court registers at iii. 173 b, occur the letters O. K. in capitals. I do not think they stand for the initials of any persons as, e.g., of the scrivener who drew up the will or a witness. This being ! the case, what do they mean ?
WILLIAM McMuRRAY.
nn
The Fortunes of Nigel. By Sir Walter Scott.
Edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary,
by Stanley V. Makower. (Oxford, Clarendon
MR. MAKOWER has provided an excellent anno-
tated edition of one of Scott's brightest stories.
We are not generally in favour of the principle
which adds to task-books stories which should
bring unadulterated delight in hours of leisure ?
but if Scott is to be so treated, Mr. Makower
does the business as well as anybody. He has
evidently taken great pains over, his editing, and
the result is a body of sound information alike
in history and philology. The boy who has
mastered this edition will have discovered a
good deal concerning a period of which many
adults know little. The editor's Introduction
meant more, we take it, for teachers than pupils
explains his work and the reasons for it. He
is fully justified in insisting on the importance of
the glossary, which summarizes much of the
store of learning and illustration now available
in the great Oxford Dictionary and other autho-
rities. ' Nigel 'is, besides being a rattling story,
something of a feat of virtuosity in its language.
With Shakespeare, Scott was wonderfully familiar,
and the student will recognize much of his lan-
guage. Thus the " roasted crab " of p. 342 is
doubtless a reminiscence of the charming lyric
at the end of ' Love's Labour's Lost.'
King James I. being an admirable pedant, there is more than the usual amount of classical tags to be found here, which Mr. Makower duly assigns to their familiar authors, and trans- lates. We miss, however, a reference to the source of "Incumbite remis fortiter" (p. 135), which we take to be a reminiscence of the " validrs incumbite remis," of '^Eneid,' x. 294. The " infandum, regina," of p. 198 derives a further point from its association with the Westminster schoolboy and Queen Elizabeth. " Crasso in aere " (p*. 251) is a quotation from Horace, ' Ep.,' ii. 1, 244. " Equam memento," &c. (p. 471), is of course, a deliberate pun on Horace, but not one, we think, invented by Scott. The joke was made by Lord North when his son Frank sold the little mare given him by his father.
We mention these trifles, not as of any import- ance, but to show that we have paid the editor the compliment of reading his notes with care.
IN The Cornhill this month ' The Lost Iphi- geneia,' a capital story, is concluded. Judge Parry in ' Dear Old Cecil ' has a striking story of a man who was victimized at school and later by a dominating companion who finally led him to serious fraud. ' Lop Ears,' by Dorothea Deakin, is a highly entertaining account of a devastating female child who insisted on having her own way. A third story by Mr. C. H. Cautley, ' IP the Vald' Or,' takes the form of a sentimental journal. ' The Keys of all the Creeds,' an Indian study by Major G. F. Macmunn, is a vigorous exposition of our rule as viewed by one of the best of the native types. In ' The Two Novelists : a Letter from Thackeray,' Miss Flora Masson gives a pleasant account of her father's connexion with Thackeray, who wrote him a letter concerning Dickens Masson having reviewed the two chief Victor:
ens,
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