Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 | Page 8

copious continuations, by the
REV. ROGERS RUDING? In one of his notes, speaking of the Garrick
collection of old plays, that industrious antiquary observes:
"This noble collection has lately (1784) been mutilated by tearing out
such single plays as were duplicates to others in the Sloane Library.
The folio editions of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jonson,
have likewise been taken from it for the same reason."
This is a sad complaint against the Museum authorities of former times.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
_Mrs. Tempest._--Can any of your correspondents give me any account
of Mrs. (or, in our present style, Miss) Tempest, a young lady who died
the day of the great storm in Nov., 1703, in honour of whom Pope's

early friend Walshe wrote an elegiac pastoral, and invited Pope to give
his "winter" pastoral "a turn to her memory." In the note on Pope's
pastoral it is said that "she was of an ancient family in Yorkshire, and
admired by Walshe." I have elsewhere read of her as "the celebrated
Mrs. Tempest;" but I know of no other celebrity than that conferred by
Walshe's pastoral; for Pope's has no special allusion to her.
C.
_Sitting cross-legged._--In an alliterative poem on Fortune (_Reliquiæ
Antiquæ_, ii. p. 9.), written early in the fifteenth century, are the
following lines:--
"Sitte, I say, and sethe on a semeli sete, Rygth on the rounde, on the
rennyng ryng; _Caste kne over kne, as a kynge kete_, Comely clothed
in a cope, crouned as a kyng."
The third line seems to illustrate those early illuminations in which
kings and great personages are represented as sitting cross-legged.
There are numerous examples of the A.-S. period. Was it {408} merely
assumption of dignity, or was it not rather intended to ward off any evil
influence which might affect the king whilst sitting, in his state? That
this was a consideration of weight we learn from the passage in Bede,
in which Ethelbert is described as receiving Augustine in the open air:
"Post dies ergo venit ad insulam rex, et residens sub divo jussit
Augustinum cum sociis ad suum ibidem adveire colloquium; caverat
enim ne in aliquam domum ad se introirent, vetere usus augurio, ne
superventu suo, si quid maleficæ artis habuissent, eum superando
deciperent."--_Hist. Eccles._, l. i. c. 25.
It was cross-legged that Lucina was sitting before the floor of Alemena
when she was deceived by Galanthes. In Devonshire there is still a
saying which recommends "sitting cross-legged to help persons on a
journey;" and it is employed as a charm by schoolboys in order to avert
punishment. (Ellis's _Brand_, iii. 258.) Were not the cross-legged
effigies, formerly considered to be those of Crusaders, so arranged with
an idea of the mysterious virtue of the position?

RICHARD J. KING.
_Twickenham--Did Elizabeth visit Bacon there?_--I believe all the
authors who within the last sixty years have written on the history of
Twickenham, Middlesex (and among the most known of these I may
mention Lysons, Ironside, and John Norris Brewer), have, when
mentioning Twickenham Park, formerly the seat of Lord Bacon, stated
that he there entertained Queen Elizabeth. Of this circumstance I find
no account in the works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His
lordship entertained her at Gorhambury in one of her progresses; and I
would ask if it be possible that Twickenham may have been mistaken
for his other seat of Gorhambury? It is well known Queen Elizabeth
passed much of the latter part of her life at Richmond, and ended her
days there; and in Mr. Nares' Memoirs of Lord Burghley there is an
account of her visit to Barn-Elms; and there is also a curious
description of her visit to Kew (in that neighbourhood) in the _Sydney
Papers_, published by Arthur Collins, in two vols. folio, vol. i. p. 376.,
in a letter from Rowland Whyte, Esq. Had Lord Bacon received her
majesty, it must most probably have been in 1595. But perhaps some of
your readers may be able to supply me with information on this subject.
D.N.
_Burial towards the West._--The usual posture of the dead is with the
feet eastward, and the head towards the west: the fitting attitude of men
who look for their Lord, "whose name is The East," and who will come
to judgement in the regions of the dawn suddenly. But it was the
ancient usage of the Church that the martyr, the bishop, the saint, and
even the priest, should occupy in their sepulture a position the reverse
of the secular dead, and lie down with their feet westward, and their
heads to the rising sun. The position of the crozier and the cross on
ancient sepulchres of the clergy record and reveal this fact. The
doctrine suggested by such a burial was, that these mighty men which