to executions at Tyburn, it seems probable. About 1763, after Shipley, Henry Pars, brother of the artist above named, managed the school, but he retired from it before his death, which did not occur till May 7, 1806, in the seventy-third year of his age, according to his epitaph in the burial-ground of Pentonville Chapel. The room was later known as the British Forum while it was used by John Thelwall for his elocutionary lectures. When those exhibitions of political oratory were stopped by Government in October 1794, the lease was purchased by Mr. Ackermann, and the room was again used as a school for drawing. A master for figures, another for landscape, and a third for architecture, were required by the eighty pupils who were resorting to it when Mr. Ackermann closed it about 1806, and there was not perhaps anything of the sort in London again, until Henry Sass opened his school at 50, Great Russell Street, in 1819. His exertions in forming a business as a publisher, printseller, and a dealer in fancy articles, such as papers, medallions (of which he had upwards of 4000 patterns in 1810), and materials for artists, had been so rewarded that his success rendered the convenience of this room as a warehouse a more desirable object than the profit derived from the school, which was superseded by a portfolio of examples on loan.

During the period in which the French emigrants were numerous in this country, Mr. Ackermann was one of the first to find a liberal employment for them. He had seldom less than fifty nobles, priests, and ladies engaged upon screens, card-racks, flower-stands, and other ornamental work. This manufacture was so well-established in favour that after 1802, when the emigrants could return to France, it furnished employment for a great number of our compatriots in transferwork and other means of decoration which have since reappeared as decalcomanie, diaphanie, potichomanie, &c.

At the beginning of the century he was one of the first who arrived at a method of waterproofing paper, leather, woollen stuffs, and felted fabrics, in which he obtained for some time considerable traffic that was conducted in his factory at Chelsea. In 1805 the preparation of the car that served as a hearse at the funeral of Lord Nelson was entrusted to him; this was an opportunity, which he did not fail to turn to account, for showing his taste.

For counteraction to Napoleon's endeavours, by bridling the newspapers, to keep his subjects in ignorance of events that were disadvantageous to him, Mr. Ackermann bethought himself of reviving, to the inconvenience of the enemy, the use made by the French in 1794-6 of aerostation in L'Entreprenant and Le Télémaque; and he contrived a simple mechanism which would every

minute detach thirty printed placards from a packet of 3000. Three such parcels were attached each to a balloon thirty-six inches in diameter, made of gold beater's-skin, and committed to the air in the summer of 1807. The success of the machinery was evinced by the return of several of the placards to London from various parts of the country; for, as the experiment had been tried at Woolwich, in presence of a government commission, with a southerly wind, the balloons had passed over Salisbury and Exeter. A change in the ministry set aside this scheme of annoyance. Before any person, except Mr. Lardner in Piccadilly, Mr. Winser in Pall Mall, and Mr. Atkins in Golden Lane, he adopted the use of gas as a means of artificial light to his premises. He showed his judgment by selecting Mr. Clegg of Manchester for the maker of the necessary apparatus to be erected at 101, Strand-(at that time each consumer had to make the gas for himself); and his liberal zeal in furnishing Mr. Clegg with the means of making experiments in manufacture, application, and remedy of failures, cleared Mr. Clegg's path to success with the Westminster Gas Company.

The patent for a movable axle for carriages engaged much of his attention during the years 1818-20; and in the latter year a picture by Nigg, in enamel on china, of the then large size of fifteen inches by twelve inches, as a present from the Archduke John of Austria, testified that prince's estimate of the position which Mr. Ackermann occupied amongst the promoters of art, commerce, literature, manufactures, and science.

The establishment of lithography in England was another example of his patient and persevering expenditure of money and time in the introduction and improvement of a novelty. He was not content with translating Alois Senefelder's treatise in 1819, but made a journey to the residence of that inventor in order to exchange the results of their theory and practice before producing in 1822 a Complete Course. The business relations between leading artists and Mr. Ackermann enabled him to induce them to touch the lithographic chalk; so in 1817, through Prout and others, the process became an acceptable, or rather a fashionable, mode of multiplying drawings: for want of such an advantage, the process, when introduced into this country by Mr. Andrée of Offenbach in its original and rude state, had received no improvement; and all its subsequent success may be attributed to Mr. Ackermann's personal emulation of the progress in it made at Munich.

Upon receiving, especially from Count Schonfeld, an authentic account of the misery produced in Germany, particularly in Saxony, and by the affair of Leipzig during the five days (October 15-19, 1813) as well as by the course of the war,

he temporarily abandoned the oversight of his own multifarious occupations in order to exert all his strength in procuring aid for the sufferers. With the help of the Duke of Sussex he got a committee together in Westminster and in the city of London: the first obtained a parliamentary grant of 100,000%., and the second furnished a rather larger sum in private contributions. This was the occasion on which the use of Whitehall Chapel was granted for a musical performance in aid of the subscription. For two years Mr. Ackermann undertook the task of correspondence with the German committee for distributing those sums, of examination into the urgency of each appeal for help, and of dividing the fund.

The "Westminster Association for the further Relief of the Sufferers by the War in Germany proposed to acknowledge his pains, probity, and prudence by a silver testimonial. This was declined by him, as was also a vote of thanks to be inscribed in gold on parchment. He begged that all thanks might be comprised in a few autograph lines from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This, surely, was not the sort of man to propose to gain a doubtful profit by "a satire upon the national clergy," which was the object of the illustrator and of the publisher of the Tours of Dr. Syntax, as absurdly attributed in dubious terms to them by the reporter of the observations said to have been made by W. Combe, and printed in the "Advertisement" prefacing his Letters to Marianne.

The relief afforded to his distressed subjects was acknowledged on the part of the King of Saxony by the presentation of his portrait in a gold box set with diamonds to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as president of the Westminster committee; diamond rings to Messrs. Howard, Marten, and Watson, three of the secretaries to it; as well as an appropriate memorial to those three gentlemen and Mr. Ackermann, made in the porcelain manufactory at Meissen, on behalf of the Dresden committee. The gift to Mr. Ackermann was a vase twenty-four inches high, allusive to Trajan's provision for children, with a pair of groups-viz. Castor and Pollux, Pylades and Orestes; and instead of the diamond ring, Mr. Ackermann received the Order of Civil Merit. On his visit many months afterwards his modesty was evident. After an interview with the King of Saxony, who, pressing his hand, declared the popular gratitude, Mr. Ackermann on returning to the hotel heard of the intention of the municipality of Dresden to give him a fête. When the managers arrived to offer the invitation, they found that during the night he had started for Leipzig. There he could not avoid a public oration; but at Zurich, Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg he begged to be excused the parade of the receptions that were proposed. In 1815 a similar activity was displayed by Mr.

Ackermann in the collection and distribution of 300,000 thalers for the relief of the wounded Prussian soldiers, and of the orphans and helpless parents of the fallen patriots. These philanthropic services were acknowledged with a diamond ring by the King of Prussia.

The influx of Spanish exiles after 1815 is perhaps almost forgotten in England in some respects it was as heartrending to Mr. Ackermann as that from France a quarter of a century previously, and he immediately devised a means of benefiting permanently several of the most distressed amongst them. He not only spent large sums in procuring Spanish translations of English works and original Spanish elementary books, and in publishing them, but established branch book and print shops in many of the chief towns across the Atlantic. The value of this contribu

tion to the advancement of Southern America was acknowledged by President Bolivar in a letter dated at Bogota, December 15, 1827. About fifty volumes and half as many school-books had been thus published before 1830.

Amongst the cases of assistance to individuals which did honour to him a few became public. The case of Mrs. Bowdich in 1824 was adopted by the Literary Gazette and by him; and one of the journals of that date says:

"Fortunate indeed, then, for an individual to meet with such an advocate. We know that the exertions of Mr. Ackermann are indefatigable in this particular case.'

The discretion which he exercised in choosing his subordinates, and the liberal manner in which he repaid their services, enabled him to produce several books which deserve the notice of all those who know how to appreciate the merit of these illustrated works in colour, relatively to others of similar pretension, both of that time and of the present day. With aquatinters like S. Mitan, and the school of hand-colourists which Mr. Ackermann educated, the works of artists were copied, and the sketches of amateurs were produced, in a manner that derides such distant imitations as those in Mr. Hotten's edition of Dr. Syntax, and surpasses even the best chromolithographs of the present time, which can compete with them on no ground but that of a cheapness of production, which, for several reasons, does not benefit the purchaser. Amongst such works that pass under his name for want of a known author, or that present an author's name on the title-page, may be specified under abbreviated titles the following publications: -1809-10, Microcosm of London, 104 pl. after Pugin and Rowlandson, with text to the first two volumes by W. H. Pyne (whence it is sometimes confused with Pyne's Microcosm), but to the third volume by W. Combe. 1812, Westminster Abbey, 84 pl. after Pugin, Huett, and Mackenzie, with text by Combe. 1813, Historical Sketch of Moscow, 12 pl. 1814,

University of Oxford, 84 pl. after Nash, Pyne, Pugin, Mackenzie, &c., with text by Combe; and the supplementary Portraits of the Founders, 32 pl.; and the Costume, 17 pl. after Uwins. 1815, University of Cambridge, 81 pl., with text by Combe; and the supplementary Portraits of Founders, 16 pl.; and the Costume, 14 pl. 1816, Colleges of Winchester, Eton, and Westminster, with the Charter House, the Free Schools of St. Paul, Merchant Taylors', Harrow and Rugby, and the School of Christ's Hospital, 48 pl., with text by Combe, except for Winchester, Eton and Harrow (text by W. H. Pyne. Mr. Hotten's memoir of Combe differently excepts Winchester, Harrow, and Rugby; but the statement here made had the authority of Mr. Ackermann, who was not likely to except Eton if Combe had written it.) 1820, Picturesque Tour along the Rhine, 24 pl., by J. G. von Gerning. 1820, Picturesque Illustrations of Buenos Ayres and Monte Video, 24 pl., with text by E. E. Vidal. 1820, Picturesque Tour of the English Lakes, 48 pl. after Fielding and Walton. 1821, Picturesque Tour of the Seine, 24 pl. after Pugin and Gendall. 1824, Picturesque Tour of the Ganges and Jumna, 24 pl., by C. R. Forrest. 1826, Scenery, &c. of India, 24 pl., by R. M. Grindlay. 1828, Picturesque Tour of the Thames, 24 pl. after Westall and Owen.

All these were described as elephant 4to except Capt. Grindlay's atlas plates. They form a series which has not yet been paralleled, and which is likely to maintain that reputation. It is not supposed that these works repaid the risk (in some cases the actual cost) of production. His losses upon them were partly compensated by the extraordinary success of smaller publications that were illustrated in a similar manner. The chief of these was the Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, &c., which before the end of its first year (1809) had attained the number of 3000 subscribers, and was continued by him until the end of 1828, being during the whole of that period under the management of Frederic Shoberl as general editor, with the assistance of Lewis Engelbach as reviewer of music in criticisms which may be usefully studied by the most successful living contributors to the press. Its first series (1809-15) was distinguished by papers called Observations on the Fine Arts, from a correspondent signing "Juninus," whose earliest communications were scarcely decipherable through his wish to be anonymous: they ceased when Mr. Ackermann transmitted in gold his appreciation of the papers to the person who, he felt assured, had supplied them. That series gave Howitt's British Sports, 30 pl. 1809-11. The third series (1823-28) contained the History of the English Drama by W. C. Stafford of York. Other constant contributors were F. Accum till his exile about 1820, J. M. Lacey, and W. Carey.

But the most prolific source of matter was W. Combe, who supplied the papers entitled the Modern Spectator, 1811-15; the Cogitations of Johannes Scriblerus, 1814-16; the Female Tatler, 1816-21; and the Adviser, 1817-22; besides Amelia's Letters, 1809-11, which were republished (with his name) as the Letters between Amelia in London and her Mother in the Country, 1824. The value of the materials in the Repository was shown by the success which attended the issue of them in separate volumes. It supplied Letters from Italy, by Lewis Engelbach, 1809-13, reprinted as Naples and the Campagna Felice, with 17 pl. by Rowlandson, 1815; Select Views of London, 76 pl., with text by J. B. Papworth, 1810-15, rep. 1816; Designs for Furniture, 76 pl. (the first series), 1809-15, reprinted as the Upholsterer's and Cabinetmaker's Repository, 1816; Architectural Hints, 27 pl. by J. B. Papworth, 1816-7, reprinted as Rural Residences, 1819; Sentimental Travels to (Tour in the) the South of France, 18 pl. after Rowlandson, 1817-20, rep. 1821; Picturesque Tour from Geneva to Milan by Way of the Simplon, 1818-20, 36 pl., with text by F. Shoberl, rep. 1820; Pictorial Cards, 1818-9, rep. 1819; Hints on Ornamental Gardening, 34 pl. by J. B. Papworth, rep. 1823; Picturesque Tour from Berne through the Oberland, 17 pl., 1821-22, rep. 1824; Designs of Household Furniture and Decoration (the second series), 1816-22, rep. 1823; Views of Country Seats of the Royal Family, Nobility, and Gentry of England, after W. Westall, T. H. Shepherd, and others, but chiefly J. Gendall (now living in Devonshire), and Frederick Wilton Litchfield Stockdale (then lately of the H. E. I. C. service; and author, in 1824, of Excursions through Cornwall), 50 pl., 1823-28, rep. 1828; and Designs for Gothic Furniture, 27 pl. after A. Pugin, rep. 1828. To these republications may be added those of the Female Fashions, chiefly engraved by J. S. Agar in the Repository, which, with the British Fashions for 1803 and 1804, will hereafter be important materials for the history of costume.

(To be continued.)

HORACE, CARM. I. 28.

W. P.

I am one who, with some of the ablest of the German critics, think I discern the hand of an interpolator in several of the odes of Horace. In the appendix to the third edition of my Mythology of Greece and Italy I have noticed a great number of these apparent interpolations, and given the grounds on which they have been suspected by myself and others; and in a preceding volume of the present series of "N. & Q." I have added a few more. I have just discovered the following one, and with it I expect my dealings with Horace will terminate.

This ode, it will be seen, is a dialogue between a shipmaster and the departed spirit of the Pythagorean philosopher Archytas. It is amoebic, and therefore, as we may see in Theocritus and Virgil, the speeches should be of equal length. But it consists of nine four-lined stanzas, and consequently there is one too much or one too little. I think the former is the case; and, as I believe those critics to be right who make the speech of Archytas commence with "Me quoque," &c. (v. 21), I regard the fifth stanza (vv. 17-20) as being a gift bestowed on the poet by the generosity of the interpolator-a view in which, as perhaps elsewhere, I may have been preceded by Peerlkamp, to whose work I have not access.

As is the case with these interpolations in general, the fifth stanza is quite superfluous. The nauta had given instances of those who were the most likely to have escaped death, and yet who had not; and he concludes with the reflection that death is inevitable. What, then, was the need of going, as we may say, over the same ground and in so diffuse a manner? Then when we look at the verses themselves, we may see at once that they are not Horatian, but like those of the interpolator in general-who no doubt was a Grammaticus-smack of other authors. Thus the last line evidently alludes to the death of Dido in the "Eneis," a poem not written till many years after this ode, and in the strange and almost ludicrous use of the verb fugit, a passage of Lucan's Pharsalia (ii. 75), was evidently in the writer's mind. So in another of these interpolated stanzas (iii. 16, 29-32) we meet with fallit in a sense which it only has in Propertius, i. 4, 16, whence it has evidently been derived. The first line also was probably suggested by a passage in the seventh book of the "Eneis," of which poem we are also reminded in the third line. The convincing proof, however, with me is the breach of the rules of amoebic poetry, a difficulty which I see no way of getting over. THOS. KEIGHTLEY.

P.S. In what I wrote not very long since in "N.&Q." on the subject of the "Fons Bandusiæ," I showed that the verb desiliunt proved decidedly that it could not have been the fount near Venusia. It was then in the same valley in which the villa of Horace lay, and through which the stream of the Digentia ran. It is my opinion that it may have been the source of this stream, and I therefore render rivo "the stream," and see a little touch of quiet humour in the poet's thus saying that the stream should have been called Bandusia. It may be said, no doubt, that there were two fontes in the valley, and that the stream from the Bandusia ran into the Digentia, but that I regard as rather improbable. By the way, is the Fonte Bello at the present day the head of the Licenza? If it is, I am right; if not, I may be in

error.

MISS BENGER: "THE PERCY ANECDOTES."

In a note on "Gigmanity" (4th S. iii. 559), I quoted from the John Bull of Jan. 18, 1824, a statement the effect of which is to assign the authorship of The Percy Anecdotes to Miss Benger, and not to Messrs. Robertson and Byerley (4th S. ii. 605). Can further evidence be adduced to connect Miss Benger with the authorship (sole or in part) of that well-known series? and, who was this Miss Benger?* I conclude that she is the same person who is mentioned in the following passage from "My Acquaintance with the late lished in The New Monthly Magazine, Sept. 1833 Edmund Kean, by T. C. Grattan, Esq.," pub(xxxix. 13): —

"I dined several times at his house. [In London, 1817.] I there met, as usual, extremely good company. But Miss Plumtree, Miss Spence, a novelist, Miss Benger, a woman of higher talents, and Captain Glascock, author of The Naval Sketch-book, were the only persons then or

since connected with literature whom I recollect to have seen at these parties. Kean's associates were certainly not hommes de lettres."

There were two Misses Plumptre, sisters of the Rev. James Plumptre, B.D., Rector of Great Gransden, Huntingdonshire, and daughters of Dr. Plumptre, President of Queen's, Cambridge; and the list of works published by the two sisters and their brother is very lengthy. Miss Spence was author of Helen Sinclair, The Nobility of the Heart, and other novels, that obtained a certain amount of popularity in the early part of the century. Of Miss Benger I find the following notice, in A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland, published by Colburn, 1816:

"BENGER, MISS ELIZABETH OGILVY.-The Female Geniad, a poem (written at the age of thirteen), 4to, 1791. The Abolition of the Slave Trade, a poem (printed with Montgomery's and Grahame's pieces on the same subject by Bowyer), 4to, 1809. The Heart and the Fancy, a tale, 2 vols. 12mo, 1813. Klopstock's Letters, from the German, forming a sequel to his Life, by Miss Smith, 2 vols. 1813."

Was she one, if not both, of " the Brothers Percy of Mont Benger"? or did she assist Messrs. Byerley and Robertson in the compilation of the Anecdotes? I may add, that the Catalogue of the London Library (3rd edition, p. 579) also ascribes the authorship of The Percy Anecdotes to "Thos. Byerley and J. C. Robertson"-the date of publication being 1820-23, and Miss Benger's name does not appear in that voluminous catalogue. From another source I find that Miss Benger died in 1827, and that she was also the authoress of memoirs of Mrs. E. Hamilton, Anna Boleyn, and the Queen of Bohemia. CUTHBERT BEDE.

[* Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger died on Jan. 9, 1827. There is an excellent notice of her literary career in the Gentleman's Mag. for March, 1827, p. 278.- ED.]

"Sir,

"Your last requires little more besides the acknowIedging the favour of it. Dr Richard Pococke you mention was admitted Clerk of our College on the 3d of february, 1721, and took his degrees in Law, as you observe. The affair of Wesly I have had but little concern in, besides the mortification of hearing him preach for about an hour or more: For when I sent the Beadle for his Notes, which he deliver'd to me sealed up, he told me it was well he went so soon for 'em, for he found him preparing to go out of town. I was at Queen's College when the notes were brought to me, before 12 o'clock, where I was engaged as one of Mr Michell's Trustees for his Benefaction there in auditing the year's Account, as he by his Will has appointed to be on every Bartholomew day. Being thus disappointed of summoning Mr Wesly before proper persons, I thought it adviseable to keep his notes in my own Custody till the Vice-Chr came home, who was expected in a little time: and to whom I deliver'd 'em as I received 'em, only not under seal. I suppose it will not be long ere the Vice-Chr does something in that affair, tho' it is now a busy time with him, just at the removal of the office from himself to the Rector of Lincoln, where Wesly is still Fellow. am,

Sir, your very humble servant,
Jo. MATHER."

CHAUCER'S "SCHIPPES HOPPESTERES."-When Chaucer wrote his "Schippes Hoppesteres" he

was translating Boccaccio's Navi Bellatrici. Is it not probable that his copy was mis-written, or by him mis-read "ballatrici"? W. P. P.

BIRDS' EGGS UNLUCKY TO KEEP. -A native of Kent lately gave me a collection of the eggs of British wild birds, but with a strict injunction not to retain the possession of them, as the keeping of them would be very unlucky. Is this superstition general? EDWARD J. WOOD.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL AT THE CAPE.-I read in a late number of The Athenæum that " few echoes of what Sir John Herschel did at the Cape have reached England." I have always understood that, during the four years Sir John Herschel spent at the Cape of Good Hope (1834-8), he examined the whole southern celestial hemisphere; and on his return to England, the results of this expedition were published in a large quarto volume, at the expense of the then Duke of Northumberland: for which work the Astronomical Society voted the author a fitting testimonial. Now, to term this big book "few echoes," is more depreciatory than the lady's remark that, during Herschel's stay at the Cape, he had completely "rummaged the heavens."

FIAT JUSTITIA.

NOTICE OF THE DISCOVERY OF A CORNISH MYSTERY PLAY.—I make the following extract from The Athenæum of July 3, hoping that some particulars respecting the title and contents of this old Cornish mystery will be thereby elicited :

"Mr. Wynne of Peniarth, in cataloguing, with the assistance of the Rev. Robert Williams, author of A Cornish Dictionary, &c. the collection of Hengwrt and Peniarth MSS., has discovered a Cornish mystery' which is believed to be unique." Only three of these mysteries were heretofore known; this is a fourth." E. H. W. D.

Greenwich,