fol. 128, as far as the Citie of Carlisle, with the date 'From Newcastle upon Tyne the vijth. daie of April.' There seems to be an error in the indorse, which is, '28 Hen. 8. Charleton's Murderers of John Fenwicke, Keeper of Tindale.' I have also copied the Letter to the Council on folios 133 and 134; the Letter respecting Sir Humphrey Lisle, B. 11, folio 374; an extract from В. . fol. 2. about 'iiij Roods made into Tividale by Thomas Dacre;' and a Letter from Cal. B. m. (fol. 7, &c.) respecting the apprehension of three Charletons, principal Headsmen, &c. in Tyndale; and also several others, at the Bridel of Colwell,' dated Morpeth, xx day May; also the Earl of Northumberland's Letter about the execution of Wm. Lysle and others, Cal. B. ш. fol. 146; the half-year's pensions, fol. 237; and also extracts from a paper signed 'Fran. Walsingham' about the War Establishment at Berwick, 1516; also Cal. B. m. p. 125, and 1. p. 203, names of Deputy Wardens. III. p. 197. 158. 150. 239. เ R. Carnaby, about Charletons. Hexham, July vii. Very short extract about breaking Hexham Gaol. Copy of a Letter sent from the Headsmen of Tyndale. "The above transcripts I have lately found in sorting my papers; and fear that you may have copied more of them than the extract in your last letter. "I have not the catalogue of the British Museum by me, only extracts from it in MS., but nothing respecting the contents of Titus F. XIII. and therefore cannot say whether any of them have been printed or not, though I can speak with much confidence about the extract you have sent from fol. 160 not being printed. "I am writing the volume which I at present have in hand, in the following order :---Elsden, Corsenside, Kirk whelpington, Kirkharle, Hartburn, Bolam, Meldon, &c., and am only delayed going to press by the hope of receiving some contributions from Lord Redesdale, and the papers from the Bodleian Library. Mr. Raine and I had an excursion last week through Redesdale to Melrose, and thence home by Kelso, Wooler, and Rothbury; which has prevented me from answering your letters punctually. The extracts which your sister has made from Cotton. Claud. C. vi, list of heirs of noble families, is very interesting, and cannot fail of being of great use to me. I have made copious extracts from a MS. in the Museum, intituled "Apparatus Genealogicus sive Breve Abstractum eorum quæ ad Stemmatum Familiarum Anglicarum Series, &c' but have omitted to notice in which of the libraries it is to be found. I mention this lest either your sister or yourself should meet with it, and begin to go over the ground that I have already surveyed. Pray inquire if there be not in the Museum an Herbarium which was made by Turner. I have somewhere been told that such a curiosity is existing, but have forgot my authority. With many thanks to your sister and yourself for your kind and valuable labours, I am, my dear Sir, most truly yours, "JOHN HODGSON." "MY DEAR SIR, FROM EDWARD SWINBURNE, Esq. Barnet, July 25, 1824. "I am well aware that it is not by your wishes, but by your means, that your proceedings in the decorative part of your History must be regulated. Let us do the best we can. I am somewhat davered about the vignettes. How they can be turned to account for this second volume of yours I do not know. I wanted to obtain information ab experto about the management of vignettes, and I got them done under my eye from my sketches, by my friend Mr. de Wint: what I had in contemplation was making them a substitute for drawings, so as to keep the number of plates up to the six of the first volume; and in point of size and importance they are little inferior to the four in Lewis's hands. I confess that the difficulties attending the printing of vignettes did not in time recur to my mind, though you had formerly pointed them out to me. At present the objection is that they are not only rather too important for the purpose you mention, but are not calculated for wood-cuts; for which I have learnt a totally different management in the effect is required from that which suits the copper, no blending, but sharp oppositions of light upon dark, and vice versa. What is proper also for a vignette, where the work and mass should be in a focus in the centre, does not do for a square plate; so they would require some alteration to adapt them to that, even were they on copper. With respect to wood-cuts, I have been made to observe, in looking over Bewick's work, that both in the birds and vignettes, wherever the clean contrast is attended to, the effect is spirited and sparkling, but insipid where blending, as on copper, is attempted. Sometimes the object is all in half-tint, and brought out by a very deep back-ground. This treatment is requisite from the manner in which wood-cuts are exccuted and printed. I will, however, send you two drawings by Mr. Ellison, who was expected to return from Bognor to Pall Mall, for a few days on his way home, to be left at Mr. Adamson's. I have no topographical sketches by me, or I would try something in the style I allude to for you. I must, however, make one or two observations before I can be au fait of the method. I fully understand your point of view of Whelpington; do you want something done there for your present volume? You had better apply to Miss Swinburne, as my return is uncertain; and she will do it better. I will see Lewis to-morrow to know his progress. Having been for some time out of London, except for two or three days, I have not any recent account to give of Mr. Calverley Trevelyan.- -The summer is come at last, and most opportunely for saving the greater part, should it continue, of the hay crops: the early ones were spoilt. The corn is looking well and changing colour. The country is quite exquisite, verdant as spring, and with all the richness of summer luxuriance. You must have enjoyed your Border tour. Your topographical knowledge, poetical reminiscences, and utility of object for your History would give additional zest to the scenery. Yours very truly, "ED. SWINBURNE." "TO THE REV. J. RAINE. Whelpington, 7 Aug., 1824.-From the time in which I received your letter of the 4th of August (? July) to the 17th of the same month my study was occupied by a constant succession of of way-faring people, and from the 17th to the 21st I was left alone to beat my brains for the sermon which I preached before my Lord 'Size on the 22d, after which day I was a week employed in doctoring the dry rot in Heworth Chapel, and since I came hither I have been sufficiently taken up in redeeming almost a month of misspent time. I have not, however, been inattentive to the subject of your letter. "In return for your sketch of Meg of Meldon I send you a very rough one of a portrait which was at Seaton Delaval, but is now either at Doddington or at Constable Melton the seat of Sir Jacob Astley, to which my note book adds Meg of Meldon; she was a Fenwick and married a Delaval.' You will see that another Meg, a Middleton, no mighty good name, might set up as a candidate for the honourable character and the famous deeds which tradition attributes to this Meg of ours. "I dined at Adamson's a week since in company with Mr. Turner of Newcastle, who said that a friend of his in Bristol asked him in a letter to inquire of me where I found in Shakspeare the lines I had quoted in my introductory Essay in the Archæologia Eliana. This Assize Sermon does not appear to have been preserved. you will recollect me saying in our journey to Scotland that I had repeatedly searched both in Shakspeare himself and in Ayscough's Index for them, and never could find more than ' rank fumitory,' and that I got the lines in question from Brand's Newcastle, who has them under quotations, and says that visitants of taste in their walks amongst the extensive and venerable remains of [Tinmouth] Castle will not forbear to exclaim in the language of Shakespear "O it pities me,' &c. (Brand, vol. i. p. 126.) "Now my object in introducing this to your notice a second time, is to beg that when you next write to Messrs. Nichols and Co. you will drop a note into your packet, mentioning that I had told you how the lines got into my essay, and requesting to know if any reader could find them in any edition of Shakspeare, or where Mr. Brand picked them up, for they seem so much beyond his own poor brain's produce, that I think if he had made them he would not have fathered them on Shakspeare. I say for your own information, and not further, that the draught of the essay was written one morning in the vestry of Jarrow without the use of books; that the quotations were corrected the next day in the Philosophical Society's room; and when the essay was first printed it got some polishing as it was transcribed, and some additions were made to it in the second edition as it now stands in the first volume of the Arch. Eliana.* Most truly yours, "JOHN HODGSON." "MY DEAR SIR, FROM EDWARD SWINBURNE, Esq. Aug. 11, 1824, 18, Grosvenor Place. "I should have written to you by Mr. Ellison to tell you why I did not by that opportunity send you the vignettes of Halton Castle and Chirdon Peel, as I intended, when I wrote to you. Since that I shewed them to Mr. Lewis, and he was so decided in his opinion that they were not calculated for wood-cuts, and that it would be a pity to throw them away upon what would also be the worse for the attempt, that I thought it best not to send them, but will leave them in his hands, to be dealt with as you direct. If you wish to have them, they ⚫ These statements to a certain extent modify the assertion made above from memory (vol. i. p. 120) that the Essay in question was written in the vestry at Jarrow in the interim between a morning marriage and an afternoon funeral.. can be sent in an office frank. He proposes two things: one is to do them in mezzotinto with etching, which he thinks preferable, as more spirited than aquatint, and which could be done, I think he said, for 5 or 67. a piece, and annex them as sort of head and tail pieces (though printed on separate paper) to the four etchings, if you want to equal the number of the first volume: or to do them on a reduced scale as etchings for vignettes to this volume, printed on fine paper and pasted and pressed on the sheet of the letterpress: to this, however, you objected, as liable to accident from detaching itself, though Lewis says it can be done easily and securely: or thirdly, to keep them for another volume, either changing them to square drawings or preserving them in the vignette form for variety. Yours, very truly, "ED. SWINBURNE." "MY DEAR RAINE, TO THE REV. J. RAINE. Whelpington, 19 October, 1824. "I will not keep your MSS. any longer. For the last three weeks the weather has been so bad that I have not ventured to send them; but as it appears more settled at present, I intend to give them to the carrier to-morrow. I have of late printed so much in brevier from them that I have had only a proof once a fortnight, so that I am still no further on than Ellingham in Alnwick Deanery, and the whole of Berwick is still to go through. I have printed a great many papers and records which Hunter has not, and which I have either from you or from London or Oxford. got "My progress with the parochial history is provokingly slow. The documents which I ordered to be written in the British Museum are dribbled in in such miserable portions, and so slowly, that I long to be in London with half a dozen hacks about me, and satisfy my craving wants at once. Added to this, after writing a most urgent letter three weeks ago to Dr. Bandinel, for papers that were copying for me in the Bodleian Library, he tells me that he left the greater part of them and the most important document with Mr. George Andrews, bookseller in Durham, on the 16th of August last-whose only answer to two letters pressing him to send them to me is that he sent them off to me last Friday, and if they be not arrived, if I will write saying so he will inquire of the coaches. The parcel entrusted to him is not mine, but for my use, and after I have done with it to be lodged in the archives at Alnwick. |