THE ARMORIE Or ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND.
IF the number and variety of works that have been recently pub- lished on the Peerage, Baronets, Knights, and other Dignitaries, and on Precedency, Honours, and Heraldry, be a criterion of pub- lic taste, it must be inferred that the love of aristocratic chstine-.
tions, and the interest felt by that part of the community which knows little of Lords besides their names, so far from being on the decline, has rather increased among us.
Few, comparatively speaking, as are the associates or friends of the aristocracy, nearly every one is, or believes himself, possessed of a "coat of arms" ; and where all pretension to that distinc- tion by hereditary right is hopeless, an application for a "new coat," so admirably ridiculed by M. Sun in his late work of Ma- thilde, is rarely unsuccessful. In the days of CHARLES the Second, ALEXANDER BROME said, that
"The herald gives Arms, not for merit but store; Gives Coats unto such as did sell coats before;
If their pockets be lin'd but with argent and or :"
and it is on the arms then given that many families now plume themselves. But there must be a founder of all noble families ; and it is fortunate when the ambition of the nouveau riche finds so harmless a vent, and even more so when the humble merits of the ancestor have been imitated, if not excelled, by his descendants.
Presuming, and we have no doubt safely, on the prevailing taste, the Messrs. BURKE have been induced to give us, under the quaint, but not inappropriate title of "The Armorie" of the Three King- doms, the best and most comprehensive collection of Arms of Bri- tish, Scottish, and Irish families, yet compiled. Though there were already several works of this kind, by EDMONDSON, NIS- BETT, ROBSON, BERRY, &c., and though each compiler, while he availed himself of the labours of his predecessors, added more or less from his own stores, none of those books are equal either in extent or correctness to the Messrs. BURKES' Armorie, notwith- standing they are all of far greater bulk and much higher price. The editors fairly acknowledge that they have drawn largely from similar compilations : they say—." The authors of the General Armorie have built in like manner upon other men's foundations"; but, they add, with a striking flight of fancy, "they have done so that the structure they were about to raise might rest upon solidity and strength—that being assured of the groundwork, they might advance with greater confidence to the battlement "!
In alphabetical order is the blazon or description of the Arms of many thousand families, often also with that of their crests, and of their supporters if they possess them. Sometimes is added the name and station of the present representative, with a slight notice of his pedigree ; the latter being usually taken from the Messrs. BURKES' Commoners of Great Britain—a work which, with all its occasional absurdities, is extremely useful. Prefixed to this general Dictionary of Arms, is an essay on Heraldry ; containing nothing new, and remarkable only for its inflated and bombastic style. The wood-cuts illustrating the various terms of the science are very neatly and correctly executed ; as are also the Arms of the several Sovereigns of England, and the apocryphal Coats of the Royal Tribes of Wales.
On glancing the eye over these closely-printed pages, two things did at first greatly surprise us,—the immense number of English families to whom arms are attributed, and the infinite variety of the charges. Many of those families are, however, extinct in the male line, and their arms are only now borne as " quarterings" by persons whose ancestors married the heiresses: and the wonder that the heralds could have devised such a variety of coats disap- peared, when we remembered that every thing in animate or inani- mate nature is at their command; that when these fail, they have drawn on fable and imagination for monsters—dragons, wyverns, salamanders, harpies, cockatrices, &c.; that when "called from the vasty deep," Mermaids and Mermen, Tritons and Neptunes, an- swer their summons ; that not only do they clothe animals in co- lours and forms which, if any such existed, would double the revenue of the Zoological Gardens, but that they add or subtract a head or a tail ad libitum ; that a difference in the colour of the shield or charge, and a combination with any other bearing or ordinary forms a distinct coat ; in a word, that all the eye of man has seen or the mind of man conceived may be placed in an heraldic kaleido- scope, and any combination selected for "a coat of arms."
• Although the Messrs. BURKE have produced a most useful, and of its kind the best book, their labours are still incomplete. Like a dictionary of a language which has two divisions—" English and Latin," "Latin and English "—the .Armorie merely tells half of what is required. It informs us (perhaps in common with previous compilations) what are the arms of HANLEY, HAMMER, JOWITY, REMPE, &c.; but it does not enable us to ascertain to whom any particular coat belongs,—an object which is almost as constantly required as is the coat of any particular family. For example, a seal or a carriage, which it is wished to identify with its owner, may show " a blue shield with six stars," but it may be necessary, probably, to read through the Armorie (a task not more agreeable than a careful perusal of an octavo Johnson's Dictionary would prove) before the fact could be discovered. The Armorie requires the heraldic desideratum—for it has never yet been properly com- piled—called an "Ordinary," or complete classification of the dif- ferent bearings or charges ; to which a supplement should be added, of some, at least, of the numerous arms which, notwith- standing the editors' industry and research, are omitted in this volume.
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