In my copy of the _Fugitive Pieces_ (the Strawberry Hill edition, presented by Walpole to Cole), I find the following manuscript note by Cole; _an amplification of the_ passage from Walpole's letters quoted at p. 306.:--
"Being at Strawberry Hill in April, 1773, I saw there a copy of the picture commonly attributed to the old Countess of Desmond; but Mr. Walpole told me that there is sufficient proof that it is a painter's mother, I think Rembrandt's. However, by a letter from Mr. Lort, April 15, 1774, he assures me that on Mr. Pennant's calling at Strawberry Hill to see this picture, he was much chagrined at having a print of it engraved for his book, till Mr. Lort revived him by carrying him to a garret in Devonshire House, where was a picture of this same countess with her name on it, exactly corresponding to his engraved print. I remember a tolerable good old picture of her at Mr. Dicey's, prebendary of Bristol, at Walton in Bucks."
Walpole could not dismiss Pennant without a disparaging remark. He is "a superficial man, and knows little of history or antiquity; but he has a violent rage for being an author." Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones: Pennant would not have displayed the ignorance which Walpole exhibits in the instance before us. In an inscription, which the latter gives, on a Countess of Desmond buried at Sligo, occurs the following contraction: "Desmoniæ _Noie_ Elizabetha." Walpole says (_Fugitive Pieces_, p. 204.), "This word I can make no sense of, but _sic originale_; I take it to be redundancy of the carver. It seems to be a repetition of the last three syllables of Desmoniæ!"
The sarcastic observations which Walpole passes on the Society of Antiquaries, its members, and its publications, are so frequent and so bitter, that they must have been founded on some offence not to be pardoned. Were the remarks on the "Historic Doubts" by the president, Dean Milles, and by the Rev. Robert Masters (printed in the first two volumes of the _Archæologia_), regarded as satisfactorily confuting Walpole's arguments; or did he aim, but unsuccessfully, at the president's chair?
There have been many attempts to explain the puzzling VCRIMDR, on the supposition that a Latin sentence was concealed under these letters. Pinkerton suggested "Voluntate Cæsaris Romani Imperatoris Maximi Domini, Rex." I hope to offer a better solution, which, although not new, has been passed over, I believe, by all subsequent writers. The Rev. George North, in the _Museum Meadianum_, p. 97., gives the following note: "Apud Arabes accepi verbum Karama significare Honoravit, a quo Ucrima, et Ucrim; quo sensu respondet hoc Arabicum Τῷ Σεβαστῷ apud Græcos." On applying to a well-known scholar and linguist here, I found that from the verb _Karama_ there was derived the adjective _Kar[=i]mat_ (nobilis), from which again the superlative _Akram_ comes. There can, I think, be little doubt that the word VCRIMDR is originally derived from this verb _Karama_, and that it is most probably equivalent to _Nobilissimus_, a title so common shortly afterwards, as applied to the heirs to the empire.[3]