ngton Hunt, Sussex.

_Matthew Lewis._--Allow me to solicit information, through the medium of
"N. & Q.," where I can see a pedigree of Matthew Lewis, Esq., Deputy
Secretary of War for many years under the Right Hon. William Windham, then
M.P. for Norwich, and other Secretaries-at-War. I rather think Mr. Lewis
married a daughter of Sir Thomas Sewell, Kt., Master of the Rolls from 1764
to 1784; and had a son, Matthew Gregory Lewis, known as _Monk_ Lewis, who
was M.P. for Hindon at the close of the last century: a very clever but
eccentric young man. I also believe Lieut.-Gen. John Whitelocke, and Gen.
Sir Thos. Brownrigg, G.C.B., who died in 1838, were connected by marriage
with the Sewell or Lewis families.

C. H. F.

_Paradise Lost._--In _A Treatise on the Dramatic Literature of the Greeks_,
by the Rev. J. R. Darley, I read the following remark:

"In our own literature also, the efforts of our early dramatists were
directed to subjects derived from religion; even the _Paradise Lost_ is
composed of a series of minor pieces, originally cast in dramatic form,
of which the creation and fall of man, and the several episodes which
were introduced subordinately to these grand events, were the
subject-matter."

This statement being at variance with the received opinion, that Milton,
from his early youth, had meditated the composition of an epic poem, I
would inquire whether there is any evidence to support Mr. Darley's view?
Milton has been charged with having borrowed the design of _Paradise Lost_
from some Italian author; and this allegation, coupled with that made by
Mr. Darley, would, if founded, reduce our great national epic to what
Hazlitt has described as "patchwork and plagiarism, the beggarly
copiousness of borrowed wealth."

HENRY H. BREEN.

St. Lucia.

_Colonel Hyde Seymour._--Who was "Colonel Hyde Seymour?" I find his name
written in a book, _The Life of William the Third_, 1703.

H. T. ELLACOMBE.

_Vault at Richmond, Yorkshire._--In Speed's plan of Richmond, in Yorkshire,
is represented the mouth of a "vault that goeth under the river, and
ascendeth up into the Castell." Was there ever such a vault, and how came
it to be destroyed or lost sight of? One who knows Richmond well tells me
that he never heard of it.

O. L. R. G.

_Poems published at Manchester._--Can any contributor to "N. & Q." inform
me who was the author of a volume of _Poems on Several Occasions_,
published b