Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

brave, disdaine not those that are base: thinke with yourselves that russet coates have their Christendome." Here the appearance of some special allusion is too definite to be set aside. And moreover the two passages strengthen each other; the double occurrence makes it more than doubly difficult to accept any explanation which only explains away. What is this "Christendom christening, or Christian character-which has been received by the russet coat (no less than by the lady's costly robe*)? Can it have been a custom to obtain the Church's blessing on new clothes? If there were such a custom, a reason for it would not be far to seek. It is an old and widespread superstition that smart clothes, and especially new clothes, attract the evil eye, which folk might naturally seek to avert by obtaining a priestly blessing on their clothes before they put them on. This is the merest conjecture, and I offer it for what it is worth. Perhaps some reader may be able to throw further light on the subject, or to give a better explanation of my two passages. On the matter of the superstition: I well remember hearing from Miss Whately, a lady well known for her work in Cairo, an account of some sickness or other trouble befalling a boy who attended her school, which his parents persistently attributed to an evil eye brought upon him by a pair of new boots procured for him by Miss Whately.

C. B. MOUNT.

SIR JOHN HAWKINS.-In Halkett and Laing's 'Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature, &c., The Principles and Power of Harmony, London, 1771, 4to., is ascribed to Sir John Hawkins. The authorities cited are Watt, 'Bibliotheca Britannica,' and Monthly Review, vol. xlv. Watt does so ascribe the book (s.v. "Principles" and s.v. "Hawkins"). The Monthly Review is silent as to the authorship. The credit of the book is also given to Sir John Hawkins, without any sign of hesitation, in the British Museum Catalogue (s.v. "Principles" and s.v. "Hawkins"). On_what ground the book is said to be by Sir John Hawkins I cannot find. Watt himself (s.v. "Stillingfleet") assigns it to Benjamin Stillingfleet, and so does Archdeacon Coxe in his 'Literary Life, &c., of Benjamin Stillingfleet,' London, 1811, 8vo. There (at vol. i. c. 13, pp. 205 sqq.) is a pretty full account of the book, which was rather an amplification than a translation of Tartini's Trattato di Musica.' Coxe says at p. 208n. that the book, though anonymous, attracted notice, and mentions the critique of it in the Monthly Review, November and December, 1771, the year of its publication. This is contained in vol. xlv. above mentioned, and it may be inferred that Coxe found nothing in it at variance with his own account of the authorship of the book. Dr.

[ocr errors]

* I suppose we may thus complete Lyly's sentence.

[blocks in formation]

It may be added that it was from the popularity of B. Stillingfleet at Mrs. Montagu's assemblies that the blue or grey worsted stockings worn by him gave their name to such assemblies, and so to the ladies who frequented them. As to this Mr. Coxe (i. p. 237n) quotes Bisset's 'Life of Burke,' p. 83 (vol. i. p. 126 in second edition), a reference which may be added to that given in the 'New English Dictionary,' s.v. "Blue-stocking."

J. POWER HICKS.

[blocks in formation]

KITTERING.-A man who has much to do with

courts of justice has many opportunities of hearing strange forms of expression, archaic or otherwise, and even coinages of words. These last are more common in the case of non-English-speaking folk, who apply the analogies of their mother tongue to the production of queerly sounding words. instance, a witness of German birth, giving his evidence in imperfect English, made use of the form "expensible" for expensive. But where there is no foreign influence at work we may find new

For

things. In the examination of a witness recently, he was asked how the boy crossed the street; to which he replied, “A little bit kittering, I should say." The presiding judge explained to the jury, "He means obliquely." I have ransacked many dictionaries, and cannot find any word at all resembling it, and therefore I send it to 'N. & Q.' for consideration, with the remark that, after all, it may be nothing more than a mispronunciation of the word " quartering." JOHN E. NORcross. Brooklyn, U.S.

"TROWSES."-This word is to be found in the translation of the 'Janua Linguarum' of Komensku, printed by John Redmayne, London, 1670. At p. 94 he says: "Who contented themselves to cover their head from the sun with a hood, their body

from the cold with trowses."

RALPH N. JAMES.

or would emigrate, because he had strongly marked
veins on his nose. At his birth the peculiarity had
been noticed, and a fear expressed as to his future.
Is this bit of folk-lore common?
W. D. SWEETING.

Maxey, Market Deeping.

BEZONIAN.-The following use of the word is two years earlier than the earliest given in the Philological Society's 'New English Dictionary: "But the cowardlie besonions" (Sir Roger Williams, 'A Briefe Discourse of Warre,' London, 1590, 8vo., p. 9, third line from bottom). W. H. SPARLING.

[ocr errors]

ANONYMOUS AID.-Some time prior to the year 1424, when Androw of Wyntoun was writing his Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland,' there was sent to him a large contribution narrating the history of Scotland from 1323 to 1390. Wyntoun did not BENT OR BENNET.-The meaning of this word reject this product of another's pen; on the contrary, is not quite correctly given in the New English he tells us he "was rycht glade" and "ekyd it Dictionary. A bent in North Derbyshire is a tuft to his own work. It was an instalment of prime or "tussock" of coarse grass, left untouched by importance, and fills thirty-five chapters; indeed, cattle in a pasture. That being so, the meaning considering that Wyntoun's chronicle ends in 1408, of such place-names as Bentley, The Bents, Bents leaving only eighteen years for his own story of Green, Totley Bents, Benty Field, &c., is clear. his own time, it is not too much to say that, viewed These tufts are very conspicuous in the pastures of as history, this borrowed part as a contemporary moorland farms, or in places newly brought into record of events by an eye-witness is the most imcultivation, and one can therefore easily under-portant of the whole. There is not a shadow of stand how the place-name would arise.

Sheffield.

S. O. ADDY.

"THE ONE" AND "THE OTHER."-When two subjects are referred to, the last mentioned, as the nearest in thought, is referred to as "the one," the first mentioned, as the furthest in thought, is referred to as 66 the other."

Till within a comparatively recent period (and by recent period I mean the second half of this century) the rule which I have formulated was observed without exception by all who wrote or who spoke correctly. Now, I am safe to say, the rule is so habitually reversed that any one writing or speaking correctly is pretty sure to be misunderstood. Of the correct form, now flagrantly departed from, I give a notable instance from that purest type of English, the Authorized Version of the Bible:

"We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life."-2 Cor. ii. 15, 16. R. M. SPENCE, M. A.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.

[See 5th S. xii. 205; 6th S. viii. 444.] VEINS IN THE NOSE. —A young man belonging to this parish was drowned while bathing last summer. I was told afterwards that it had always been expected that he would come to an untimely end,

plagiarism in the case; the gift was freely made, it was unreservedly accepted, and it could not have been more handsomely acknowledged :

:

Qwha that it dytyt,* nevyrtheles,
He shawyd hym off mare cunnandnes,
Than me, commendis this tretis.

Bk. ix. ch. x. 1. 1161.

Yet Wyntoun did not know who was the writer, for (expressing himself this time in the third person) he says:

Qwha that dyde, he wyst rycht noucht;
Bot that till hym on cas wes browcht,
And in till that ilk dytet
Consequenter he gert wryt.

Bk. viii. ch. xix. 1. 2959.

It was no mere body of facts which was thus sent him as raw material for his muse; the instalment, a finished production in verse of the same style and metre as his own :

Before hym wryttyn he redy fand.

Bk. viii, ch. xix. 1. 2956. And as such he simply incorporated it, making, as we have seen, the most generous recognition. Does literary history record many similar entirely honest appropriations of anonymous labours where the part appropriated bears so large a proportion to the value of the whole ? GEO. NEILSON.

CHARLES II. AND HIS DOGS.-These two advertisements appeared in Mercurius Publicus directly * Wrote. † Writing.

after the Restoration. The first was no doubt drawn up by the John Ellis who is mentioned in it. The second must have been written by the king himself:

"A Smooth Black Dog, less then a Grey-hound, with white under his breast, belonging to the King's Majesty, was taken from Whitehal the eighteenth day of this instant June, or thereabout. If any one can give notice to John Ellis, one of his Majesties Servants, or to his Majesties Back-stayrs, shall be well rewarded for their labour."-June 21-28, 1660.

"We must call upon you again for a Black Dog, between a Greyhound and a Spaniel, no white about him, onely a streak on his Brest, and his Tayl a little bobbed. It is His Majesties own Dog, and doubtless was stoln, for the Dog was not born nor bred in England, and would never forsake His Master. Whosoever findes him may acquaint any at Whitehal, for the Dog was better known at Court, than those who stole him. Will they never leave robbing His Majesty? Must he not keep a Dog? This Dog's place (though better then some imagine) is the only place which nobody offers to beg."-June 28-July 5, 1660.

Possibly this was the "dog that the King loved,", which came ashore with Pepys at Dover (Diary,' May 25, 1660). Or it may have been the dog to which Rochester refers in one of his satires against Charles II. :—

His very dog at Connal-board

Sits grave and wise as any lord.

'History of Insipids.' Unfortunately the newspapers do not tell us whether the king's advertisement was answered, and the fate of the dog remains unknown. The unhappy monarch continued to lose his dogs. In the Intelligencer for Jan. 9, 1664/5, is the following notice :

"Lost on the 6th instant a black and white Bitch (one of his Majesties Hounds). She has a cross on the right shoulder and a C. R. burnt upon her left ear, behind her right ear upon her neck (which is white) she has a black spot about the breadth of a silver crown. Whoever shall bring or send her to the back stairs at Whitehall shall be well rewarded for his pains."

C. H. FIRTH.

BOULEVARDS FOR LONDON.-A good deal has been written lately in the Times, Telegraph, and other daily papers about the Marylebone Road as a boulevard for the north-west of London; but no one has drawn attention to the fact that the design of such a boulevard was due to the late Mr. J. C. Loudoun, the horticulturist, at whose suggestion Oxford and Cambridge Terraces were laid out as a continuation of the Marylebone Road, with a view of a grand boulevard some miles in length to be carried through Kensington, Chelsea, Vauxhall, Brixton, &c., to Blackheath and Greenwich, while the City Road was to be continued eastwards and south-westwards to the Isle of Dogs. A full account of this design will be found in Old and New London,' vol. v. p. 265. SUUM CUIQUE.

SNOB. In 'N. & Q.,' 7th S. iv. 127, I gave an instance of the use of this word in 1831. I have

now found it employed in 1824. In an article called The Confessions of a Cantab,' which appears in the sixteenth volume of Blackwood's Magazine, p. 461, the following passage occurs :

"The gownsmen looked, smiled, and passed on; the snobs stood still and grinned."

A note at the bottom of the page runs as follows:"For the benefit of the unsophisticated reader, a snob is, at Cambridge, everybody who is not a gownsman." EDWARD PEACOCK. Bottesford Manor, Brigg.

STORY CONCERNING CROMWELL.-There is an absurd story, to be found in nearly every life of Oliver Cromwell, as to his having, when a little boy, been run away with by a monkey. Carlyle refers to it in chap. iv. of the Letters and Speeches,' vol. i. p. 27, ed. 1857. I have just come upon a similar tale, told of Christian, the tyrant of Sweden :

tian's infancy, a large ape snatched him from his nurse's arms, and ascended with him to the roof of the palace, whence, however, unluckily for humanity, the animal, after a time, brought him down again in safety.”

"It is recorded that on one occasion, during Chris

ANON.

RELICS OF CHARLES I.-Under the above heading in the Times of December 17, 1888, the following notice appeared :

"The Prince of Wales on Thursday visited St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and replaced in the vault containing the coffin of Charles I. certain relics of that monarch which had been removed during some investigations more than seventy years ago. These relics having ultimately come into the possession of the Prince of Wales, he decided, with the sanction of the Queen, to replace them in the vault from which they had been taken, but not to disturb the coffin of the king. The Dean of Windsor was present."

It would be interesting to know what the "certain relics" referred to consist of. The coffin of Charles I. was discovered during some alterations which were effected at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, many years ago, and was opened in the presence of King George IV., who was attended by his physician, Sir Henry Halford; but the king gave positive directions that no particulars of what took place should be divulged during his lifetime.

Soon after the death of George IV.—that is, late in the year 1830 or early in 1831-a detailed account of all that took place when the coffin was opened appeared in print, and was attributed to the pen of Sir Henry Halford, if it was not actually signed by him.

Can any of your readers favour me by stating how and by whom the article in question was published, giving also the exact date?

GEORGE J. T. MERRY. 35, Warwick Road, Earl's Court, S.W.

THE WORD "CHALET."-May I call attention to the hideous degradation to which this poor word,

associated in most minds with much that is pic-don, Printed for J. Budd, Bookseller to H.R. H. turesque and charming in Switzerland, has, during the last two or three years, been subjected in London? It is now applied to a kind of street lavatory. F. CHANCE. Sydenham Hill.

Queries.

We must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest, to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

"THE COURT SECRET: A NOVEL. Part I. [and II.]. Written by P. B., Gent. London : Printed by R. E. for R. Baldwin, near the Black Bull in the Old Baily. 1659."-This work, concerning which I find no particulars in Lowndes, Halkett and Laing, or other bibliographers, repeats, in the form of a novel, the libellous accusation against Mary of Modena, Louis XIV., and other historical personages contained in 'The Amours of Messaline,' concerning which I sought vainly for information 7th S. vi. 404. In the address to the reader, prefixed to the second part, the author says that some "malicious persons" gave out that he was the author of 'The Amours of Messalina.' key to both parts is given with the second part. Who was P. B.? Is anything known of the book? It is not, I think, to be confounded with 'Court Secrets,' by Edward Curll. URBAN.

A

[blocks in formation]

the Prince Regent, No. 100, Pall Mall, 1811, 8vo.")? It is attributed in Halkett and Laing to Herries (vol. iii. 2198). Possibly this was John. Charles Herries, afterwards Chancellor of the Ex-chequer in Goderich's administration. G. F. R. B.

DYER, OF SHARPHAM.-I should be very glad if any of your readers could tell me whether there are any known living descendants of the family of Dyer, of Sharpham Park, co. Somerset, a large and numer ous one, whose pedigree is given in the Heralds' Visitation of Somerset in 1623 (Harleian MSS., British Museum), and several members of which were in their day celebrated men, viz., Sir James Dyer, Knt., Lord Chief Justice Common Pleas, born 1512; Sir Edward Dyer, poet and historian, one of the favourites of Queen Elizabeth. A line of baronets also sprang from this family in the person of Sir Richard Dyer (or Deyer as they spelt it), grandson of John Dyer, of Roundhill and Wincanton, co. Somerset, and great-grandson of John Dyer, of Sharpham, which baronetcy became extinct in the person of Sir Ludovick Dyer through default of issue, and whose estate being sequestered, he died in a workhouse. The first baronet, Sir Richard Dyer, lived at Great Staughton, in Huntingdonshire, and is buried in the parish church, where there is a mural tablet to his memory.

The Dyers of Somerset strongly espoused the cause of King Charles, and on the success of Fairfax in the West of England they were turned out of their estates, and there was a great break up of the family in the seventeenth century, at which point most of them disappear from view, and probably from impecuniosity sank into humble life.

There is no doubt, I think, that many of the Dyers living in the West of England now are descendants of this numerous family.

S. R. DYER, M.D. 242, Trinity Road, Wandsworth Common, S.W.

birth and parentage of Sir Robert Norter, who is SIR ROBERT NORTER.-Can any one give the stated to have been a Secretary of State in the time of Charles I. ? His daughter married the first Lord Dunkeld. MAC ROBERT.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE CLERGY.-Who was the author of the threefold division of the clergy into Platitudinarians, Latitudinarians, and Attitudinarians? It appeared about 1866. G. L. G.

'THE FLOWER GARDEN.'-Is it known who wrote the article in the Quarterly Review for 1842, republished in Murray's 'Reading for the Rail' in 1852 The same author contributed an essay on "The Poetry of Gardening' to the Carthusian, and this is also reprinted as a sort of appendix to 'The Flower Garden.' W. ROBERTS.

10, Charlotte Street, Bedford Square.

EDWARD BRISTOW.-Can any reader of ' N. & Q.' supply any particulars concerning the career and works of this artist? He formerly lived at Windsor, and during the latter part of his life in the High Street of Eton, where, I believe, he died. His Christian name was, I believe, Edward, and not Edmund, as stated in the last edition of Bryan. From Mr. Graves's 'Dictionary of Painters' it appears he exhibited twenty-seven pictures. C. B. STEVENS.

Reading.

COURT ROLLS.-I should be extremely glad to
know where the Court Rolls of the Honour of
Pontefract are to be found. Are they in London?
I could learn nothing of them in Yorkshire.
C. E. GILDERSOME-DICKINSON.

Eden Bridge, Kent.

TRIPLE CORD.-One of the sixteen ways of showing respect amongst Orientals is to put on the triple or sacred cord. Where shall I see this explained? C. A. WARD. Walthamstow,

TOURS CATHEDRAL.-Sir Walter Scott, in a very picturesque bit of landscape painting in "Quentin Durward,' chap. xiv., calls this "the most magnificent church in France." Does Scott mean that it was the most magnificent at the period of his story, or at the time in which he was writing? I have never seen Tours Cathedral, but I believe it is not equal in magnificence to the cathedrals of Amiens, Rheims, Chartres, or Notre Dame de Paris (all of which I have seen). No doubt it is, to a certain extent, a matter of personal taste. For my own part, of all the cathedrals I have ever seen, either at home or abroad, I think that which impressed me most was Amiens, and, next to that, Rheims. It does not, however, necessarily follow that other people would agree with this estimate. Possibly I might myself think that in the magnificence of her churches Italy "held the field "against France, if I had ever had the good fortune to see Milan:

miles. Bodmer took sketches everywhere. Among
Mandans, Arickarees, and divers other tribes the
prince spared no pains or expense to procure every
variety of national and characteristic articles. These
curios were a multitudinous collection, and were
transported by the gatherer to his home on the
Rhine. In the pheasantry at Neuwied they were
seen by the writer in 1842, and according to Bae-
deker they remained there till 1866, if not longer.
These curiosities I had supposed to be now in the
Berlin ethnographical department. According,
however, to Stackelberg's 'Life of the Queen of
Roumania,' they were sold some twenty years ago
to an American, and carried back to America.
Where is the real habitat of these aboriginal relics?
Is it Neuwied, or Berlin, or America? If in Ame-
rica, where ?
JAMES D. BUTLER.

Madison, Wis., U.S.

[blocks in formation]

A CURIOUS WORK.-I obtained not long ago a copy, imperfect, unfortunately, of a little work entitled A Guide to Grand Jurymen.' The titlepage in my copy is gone, so I cannot give either the full title or the date of the book. It was published probably in Charles I.'s reign, as the author speaks of our late sovereign James. The two dedications are signed Richard Bernard. It is a curious little work, dealing with witches and those posWill some of your readers who are well ac-sessed. Could any reader give me information requainted with the French cathedrals say what, in their opinion, is the merit of Tours compared with

The giant windows' blazoned fires,

The height, the space, the gloom, the glory, A mount of marble, a hundred spires.

that of the other cathedrals of France?

JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

[blocks in formation]

specting Richard Bernard, and tell me where I may see a perfect copy? E. E. EDGE-PARTINGTON.

Manchester.

[blocks in formation]
« ZurückWeiter »