Notes and Queries | Page 7

score of authority. No doubt that strange work is one
of the most realising pictures ever painted,--more so than any
neighbouring Rembrandt,--whose masses of light and shade were used
as a "creative power." I want to know whether there is a right and
wrong in the case, apart from every thing men call taste. Whether,
whenever a work of art passes from suggestion to imitation, some
liberty must not be given at the lines whence the rays are supposed to
diverge to the two eyes from two different surfaces. Every advance in
art and science removes something from the realms of opinion, and this
appears to be a question on which science must some day legislate for
art.
J.O.W.H.
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CHRIST'S HOSPITAL--OLD SONGS ONCE POPULAR THERE.
Amongst the numerous correspondents and readers of your very
interesting little work, there may yet be living some who were scholars
in the above institution during the last ten or fifteen years of the last
century, coevals, or nearly so, with Richards, afterwards of Oriel
College, author of a prize poem, Aboriginal Britons, and one of the
Bampton Lecturers; Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta;
Trollope, afterwards Master of the Grammar School; Barnes,
afterwards connected with the _Times_; Stevens, Scott (poor Scott!),
Coleridge, Lamb, Allen, White, Leigh Hunt, the two brothers Le G.

Favell, Thompson, Franklin, &c., pupils of old James Boyer, of
flogging celebrity.
If so, can any of them furnish me with the words of an old song, then
current in the school, relating to the execution of the Earl of
Derwentwater in the rebellion of 1715, of which the four following
lines are all that I remember:
"There's fifty pounds in my right pocket, To be given to the poor;
There's fifty pounds in my left pocket, To be given from door to door."
Of another song, equally popular, less pathetic, but of more
spirit-stirring character, can any one supply the remainder?
"As our king lay musing on his bed, He bethought himself once on a
time Of a tribute that was due from France, That had not been paid for
so long a time.
"Oh! then he called his trusty page, His trusty page then called he,
Saying, 'You must go to the king of France, To the king of France right
speedily.'"
NEMO.
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WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE--DOMINUS
FACTOTUM--ROBERT PASSELLEW.
Allow me to offer a query or two respecting which I shall be glad of
any information your numerous correspondents may be able to furnish.
1. In Fuller's History of Waltham Abbey, pp. 269. 274., Nichol's edition,
1840, we have the following entries from the churchwarden's accounts:
"Anno 1542, the thirty-fourth of Henry viii. Imprimis. For watching the
sepulchre, a groat."
"Item, for watching the sepulchre, eight pence."

The last entry occurs in "Anno 1554, Mariæ primo," but Fuller adds,
"though what meant thereby, I know not." Can any satisfactory
information be furnished which will explain the custom here alluded to?
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2. In the same work, page 278., a passage occurs, which not only
explains the meaning of the term factotum, but furnishes matter for
another query. The passage is this; speaking of "eminent persons
buried" at Waltham Abbey, he says: "we spoil all, if we forget Robert
Passellew, who was dominus fac totum in the middle--and fac nihil
towards the end--of the reign of Henry III." Some parasites extolled
him by allusion to his name, _pass-le-eau_, (that is "passing the pure
water,") the wits of those days thus descanting upon him:
"Est aqua lenis, et est aqua dulcis, et est aqua clara, Tu præcellis aquam,
nam leni lenior es tu, Dulci dulcior es tu, clara clarior es tu; Mente
quidem lenis, re dulcis, sanguine clarus." _Camden's MSS._ Cott. Lib.
The learned Dr. Whitaker, in his History of Whalley, says, that "the
word Paslew was of Norman origin (Pass-le-eau), and afforded a
subject for some rhyming monkish verses, not devoid of ingenuity,
which the curious reader may find in Weever's Funeral Monuments, p.
645;" and a question now arises whether the Passellew mentioned by
Fuller belongs to the same family as the "Paslews of Wiswall," alluded
to by Dr. Whitaker, one of whom, "John, Abbot of Whalley" was
executed for the part he took in the "Pilgrimage of Grace." when it is
stated that the Paslews of Wiswall bore "Argent a fess between three
mullets Sable pierced of the field, a crescent for difference," probably
some of your readers will be able to give some particulars respecting
"Robert Passelew," and also identify the families if possible.
T.W.
Burnley, Lancashire, Feb. 23, 1850.
* * * * *
MINOR QUERIES.

_Conrad of Salisbury's Descritio utriusque Britanniæ._--A good many
years since I had a communication from the Baron de Penhouet, a
Breton Antiquary, respecting a work which