D.N.B. and a Dory phore
Star-Thanks to Mr. Harold Nicolson's marginal comment on the D.N.B., my friends tell me that I am a doryphorous, glistening and hardshclled beetle. And all this because filial piety has sometimes led me to " deni- grate" the D.N.B. for its inaccuracy. With only two of the illustrious dead can I claim affinity, neighbouring artists in Vol. XII, David Cox and Alexander Cozens. Both biographies contain distressingly inaccurate refer- ences to my ancestresses. In the first, my great-great-grandmother, Margaret Agg of Broadway, becomes, as Cox's mother-in-law, a " widow named Ragg " with two daughters. Actually she had six, all in the family Bible, but no matter. The other is a more serious business, for it concerns not her name but her fair name. My great-great-great-great-grandmother Mary Cozens (née Davenport), of St. Petersburg, is described as "an Englishwoman from Deptford. The Czar took her to Russia," Peter the Great was at Deptford in 1698 ; Alexander Cozens was born 1719 ; Mary's youngest child, Sally, later Mrs. John Cayley, was born 1732. The Dept- ford story just will not fit. Children were precocious, no doubt. But Mary Davenport can scarcely have charmed Czar Peter thirty-three years before Sally's birth. And it is equally improbable that the Czar sent Cozens to "study painting in Italy" before he was six years old. For Peter died in 1725. If my experiences are typical, actuaries can work out the probable frequency of inaccuracies in this great and attractive work. But I remain impenitent. Should I, myself, ever find a place in some future volume, and not even your acceptance of this letter could secure that for me, I hope that amongst the immortal statesmen and palaeo- botanists I may be designated, as I now subscribe myself.—Your obedient servant, HILLS JOHN, impenitent doryphore. Crossways, Bradfield, Berkshire.
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