As a man of the world his whole life was an exemplification of the second; for no one knew better than he how to be mad by rule. And as one of our greatest wits he was entitled to claim a near alliance to that madness which is characteristic of men of genius. It is clear, therefore, that, in the lines quoted above, he speaks of that total deprivation of reason, which is emphatically described as stark, staring madness; and hence the blunder. In point of fact, Dryden either knew the pleasure and happiness of which he speaks, as belonging to that sort of madness, or he did not know them. If he knew them, then by his own showing he was a madman. If he did not know them, how could he affirm that none but madmen knew them? Should my view of this matter be incorrect, I shall be thankful to any of your readers who will take the trouble to set me right. HENRY H. BREEN. St. Lucia, April 15. 1851. Minor Notes. _Lord Edward Fitzgerald's Mother._--A highly respectable woman, recently living in my service, and who was born and bred in the household of the late Duke of Leinster, told me that, when she was a child, she was much about the person of "the old Duchess;" and that she had often seen the bloody handkerchief that was taken off Lord Edward Fitzgerald, after he had been shot at his capture. This relic of her unfortunate son the venerable and noble lady always wore stitched inside her dress. The peerage states that she was a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, was married in 1746-7, and bore seventeen children. As the arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald was not until 1798, she must have been full seventy years old when she thus mourned; reminding one in the sternness of her grief of the "Ladye of Branksome." A. G. _Chaucer and Gray._--Of all the oft-quoted lines from Gray's _Elegy_, there is not one which is more frequently introduced than the well-known "E'en, in our ashes live their wonted fires." Now Gray was an antiquary, and there is no doubt too well read in Chaucer. Is it too much, therefore, to suggest that he owed this line to one in Chaucer's "Reves Prologue:" "Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken." In Chaucer the sentiment it embodies is satirical:-- "For whan we may not don, than wol we speken, Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken." In Gray, on the other hand, it is the moralist who solemnly declares: "E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires." But the coincidence cannot surely be accidental. WILLIAM J. THOMS. _Shakspeare Family._--In the _Rotulorum Patentium et Clausorum Cancellariæ Hiberniæ Calendarium_, vol. i. pars i. p. 99 b. is an entry, which shows that one Thomas _Shakespere_ and Richard Portyngale were appointed Comptrollers of Customs in the port of Youghal, in Ireland, in the fifty-first year of Edward III. J. F. F.