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Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text.
{565}
NOTES AND QUERIES:
A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.
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"When found, make a note of."—CAPTAIN CUTTLE.
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No. 189.] Saturday, June 11, 1853. [Price Fourpence. Stamped Edition 5d.
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CONTENTS.
NOTES:— Page Tom Moore's First! 565 Notes on several Misunderstood Words, by the Rev. W. R. Arrowsmith 566 Verney Papers: the Capuchin Friars, &c., by Thompson Cooper 568 Early Satirical Poem 568 The Letters of Atticus, by William Cramp 569
MINOR NOTES:—Irish Bishops as English Suffragans— Pope and Buchanan—Scarce MSS. in the British Museum—The Royal Garden at Holyrood Palace— The Old Ship "Royal Escape" 569
QUERIES:— "The Light of Brittaine" 570
MINOR QUERIES:—Thirteen an unlucky Number— Quotations—"Other-some" and "Unneath"— Newx, &c.—"A Joabi Alloquio"—Illuminations— Heraldic Queries—John's Spoils from Peterborough and Crowland—"Elementa sex." &c.—Jack and Gill: Sir Hubbard de Hoy—Humphrey Hawarden—"Populus vult decipi"—Sheriffs of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire—Harris 571
REPLIES:— Bishop Butler, by J. H. Markland, &c. 572 Mitigation of Capital Punishment to Forgers 573 Mythe versus Myth, by Charles Thiriold 575 "Inquiry into the State of the Union, by the Wednesday Club in Friday Street," by James Crossley 576 Unpublished Epigram by Sir Walter Scott, by William Williams, &c. 576 Church Catechism 577 Jacob Bobart, &c., by Dr. E. F. Rimbault 578 "Its," by W. B. Rye 578 Bohn's Edition of Hoveden, by Henry T. Riley 579 Books of Emblems, by J. B. Yates, &c. 579
PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE:—Mr. Pollock's Directions for obtaining Positive Photographs upon albumenised Paper—Test for Lenses—Washing Collodion Pictures 581
REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES:—Cremonas—James Chaloner —Irish Convocation—St. Paul's Epistle to Seneca —Captain Ayloff—Plan of London—Syriac Scriptures —Meaning of "Worth"—Khond Fable—Collar of S3. —Chaucer's Knowledge of Italian—Pic Nic—Canker or Brier Rose—Door-head Inscriptions—"Time and I"—Lowbell—Overseers of Wills—Detached Belfry Towers—Vincent Family, &c. 582
MISCELLANEOUS:— Books and Odd Volumes wanted 586 Notices to Correspondents 586 Advertisements 587
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Notes.
TOM MOORE'S FIRST!
It is now generally understood that the first poetic effusion of Thomas Moore was entrusted to a publication entitled Anthologia Hibernica, which held its monthly existence from Jan. 1793 to December 1794, and is now a repertorium of the spirited efforts made in Ireland in that day to establish periodical literature. The set is complete in four volumes: and being anxious to see if I could trace the "fine Roman" hand of him whom his noble poetic satirist, and after fast friend, Byron, styled the "young Catullus of his day," I went to the volumes, and give you the result.
No trace of Moore appears in the volume containing the first six months of the publication; but in the "List of Subscribers" in the second, we see "Master Thomas Moore;" and as we find this designation changed in the fourth volume to "Mr. Thomas Moore, Trinity College, Dublin!" (a boy with a black ribband in his collar, being as a collegian an "ex officio man!"), we may take it for ascertained that we have arrived at the well-spring of those effusions which have since flowed in such sparkling volumes among the poetry of the day.
Moore's first contribution is easily identified; for it is prefaced by a note, dated "Aungier Street, Sept. 11, 1793," which contains the usual request of insertion for "the attempts of a youthful muse," &c., and is signed in the semi-incognito style, "Th-m-s M—re;" the writer fearing, doubtless, lest his fond mamma should fail to recognise in his own copy of the periodical the performance of her little precocious Apollo.
This contribution consists of two pieces, of which we have room but for the first: which is a striking exemplification (in subject at least) of Wordsworth's aphorism, that "the child is father to the man." It is a sonnet addressed to "Zelia," "On her charging the author with writing too much on Love!" Who Zelia was—whether a lineal ancestress of Dickens's "Mrs. Harris," or some actual grown up young lady, who was teased by, and tried to check the chirpings of the little {566} precocious singing bird—does not appear: but we suspect the former, for this sonnet is immediately followed by "A Pastoral Ballad!" calling upon some Celia unknown to "pity his tears and complaint," &c., in the usual namby-pamby style of these compositions. To any one who considers the smart, espiegle, highly artificial style of "Tom Moore's" after compositions, his "Pastoral Ballad" will be what Coleridge called his Vision, a "psychological curiosity."
Passing on through the volumes, in the Number for February 1794 we find a paraphrase of the Fifth Ode of Anacreon, by "Thomas Moore;" another short poem in June 1794, "To the Memory of Francis Perry, Esq.," signed "T. M.," and dated "Aungier Street." These are all which can be identified by outward and visible signs, without danger of mistake: but there are a number of others scattered through the volumes which I conjecture may be his; they are under different signatures, generally T. L., which may be taken to stand for the alias "Thomas Little," by which Moore afterwards made himself so well known. There is an "Ode to Morning," in the Number for March 1794, above the ordinary run of magazine poetry. And in the Number for May following are "Imitations from the Greek" and Italian, all under this same signature. And this last being derived from some words in Petrarch's will, bequeathing his lute to a friend, is the more curious; and may the more probably be supposed Moore's, as it contains a thought which is not unlikely to have suggested in after years the idea of his celebrated melody, entitled the "Bard's Legacy." The Number for Nov. 1794, last but one in the fourth volume, contains a little piece on "Variety," which independent of a T. M. signature, I would almost swear, from internal evidence, to be Moore's; it is the last in the series, and indicates such progress as two years might be supposed to give the youthful poet, from the lack-a-daisical style of his first attempts, towards that light, brilliant, sportive vein of humour in which he afterwards wrote "What the Bee is to the Flowret," &c., and other similar compositions. I now give Moore's first sonnet, including its footnote, reminding us of the child's usual explanatory addition to his first drawing of some amorphous animal—"This is a horse!" or "a bear!" as the case may be. Neither the metre nor the matter would prepare us for the height to which the writer afterwards scaled "the mountain's height of Parnassus:"
"TO ZELIA.
(On her charging the Author with writing too much on Love.)
'Tis true my Muse to love inclines, And wreaths of Cypria's myrtle twines; Quits all aspiring, lofty views, And chaunts what Nature's gifts infuse: Timid to try the mountain's* height, Beneath she strays, retir'd from sight, Careless, culling amorous flowers; Or quaffing mirth in Bacchus' bowers. When first she raised her simplest lays In Cupid's never-ceasing praise, The God a faithful promise gave— That never should she feel Love's stings, Never to burning passion be a slave, But feel the purer joy thy friendship brings.
* Parnassus!"
If you think this fruit of a research into a now almost forgotten work, which however contains many matters of interest (among the rest, "The Baviad of Gifford"), worth insertion, please put it among "N. & Q.;" it may incite others to look more closely, and perhaps trace other "disjecta membra poetae."
A. B. R.
Belmont.
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NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS.
(Continued from p. 544.)
Let no one say that a tithe of these instances would have sufficed. Whoever thinks so, little understands the vitality of error. Most things die when the brains are out: error has no brains, though it has more heads than the hydra. Who could have believed it possible that after Steevens's heaped-up proofs in support of the authentic reading, "carded his state" (King Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2.), Warburton's corruption, 'scarded, i. e. discarded, was again to be foisted into the text on the authority of some nameless and apocryphal commentator? Let me be pardoned if I prefer Shakspeare's genuine text, backed by the masterly illustrations of his ablest glossarist, before the wishy-washy adulterations of Nobody: and as a small contribution to his abundant avouchment of the original reading, the underwritten passage may be flung in, by way of make-weight:
"Carded his state (says King Henry), Mingled his royaltie with carping fooles."
"Since which it hath been and is his daily practice, either to broach doctrinas novas et peregrinas, new imaginations never heard of before, or to revive the old and new dress them. And these—for that by themselves they will not utter—to mingle and to card with the Apostles' doctrine, &c., that at the least yet he may so vent them."—One of the Sermons upon the Second Commandment, preached in the Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on the Ninth of January, A.D. MDXCII.: Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 55. Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
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Trash, to shred or lop.—So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of {567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a horizontal course. Overrun, overshoot, overslip, are terms in hunting, overtop never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild huntsman of the Alps. Trash occurs as a verb in the sense above given, Act I. Sc. 2. of the Tempest: "Who t'aduance, and who to trash for over-topping." I have never met with the verb in that sense elsewhere, but overtop is evermore the appropriate term in arboriculture. To quote examples of that is needless. Of it metaphorically applied, just as in Shakspeare, take the following example:
"Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in a manner doth overtop the rest, and like a foregrown member depriveth the other of their proportion of growth."—Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
Have we not the substantive trash in the sense of shreddings, at p. 542. book iii. of a Discourse of Forest Trees, by John Evelyn? The extract that contains the word is this:
"Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and ends with trash and short sticks, which had been omitted in the former statute."
Possibly some of the statutes referred to by Evelyn may contain examples of the verb. In the meantime it will not be impertinent to remark, that what appears to be nothing more than a dialectic variety of the word, namely trouse, is of every-day use in this county of Hereford for trimmings of hedges; that it is given by Grose as a verb in use in Warwickshire for trimming off the superfluous branches; and lastly, that it is employed as a substantive to signify shreddings by Philemon Holland, who, if I rightly remember, was many years head master of Coventry Grammar School:
"Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with stone; and for want thereof, laid with green willow bastons, and for default of them, with vine cuttings, or such trousse, so that they lie halfe a foot thicke."—The Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's Naturall History, chap. xi. p. 513.: London, 1634.
Trash no one denies to be a kennel term for hampering a dog, but it does not presently follow that the word bore no other signification; indeed, there is no more fruitful mother of confusion than homonomy.
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Clamor, to curb, restrain (the tongue):
"Clamor your tongues, and not a word more." The Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.
Most judiciously does NARES reject Gifford's corruption of this word into charm, nor will the suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one jot contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe discipline of many years' study, and the daily access of accumulating knowledge, have schooled into a wholesome sense of their extreme fallibility in such matters. Without adding any comment, I now quote, for the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts:
"For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he chaumbreed his tongue in season, ther should ere lōg bee one oxe the fewer for hym."—Apoptheymis of Erasmus, translated by Nicolas Vdall, MCCCCCXLII, the First Booke, p. 10.
"From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he refrein or chaumbre the tauntying of his tongue."—Id., p. 76.
After so many Notes, one Query. In the second folio edition of Shakspeare (my first folio wants the whole play), I find in Cymbeline, Act V. Sc. 3., the next beautiful passage:
"Post. Still going? This is a lord: Oh noble misery To be ith' field, and aske what newes of me: To-day how many would have given their honors To have sav'd their carkasses? Tooke heele to doo't, And yet dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd, Could not find death, where I did heare him groane, Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly monster, 'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds, Sweet words; or hath moe ministers then we That draw his knives ith' war. Well I will finde him: For being now a favourer to the Britaine, No more a Britaine, I have resum'd againe The part I came in."
In the antepenultimate line, Britaine was more than a century ago changed by Hanmer into Roman, therefore retained by Warburton, again rejected by Steevens and Johnson, once more replaced by Knight and Collier, with one of his usual happy notes by the former of the two, without comment by the latter, finally left unnoticed by Dyce. My Query then is this. What amount of obtuseness will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tinkering and cobbling the noblest passages of thought that ever issued from mortal brain, while at the same time he stumbles and bungles in sentences of that simplicity and grammatical clearness, as not to tax the powers of a third-form schoolboy to explain?[1] If editors, commentators, {568} critics, and all the countless throng who are ambitious to daub with their un-tempered mortar, or scribble their names upon the most majestic edifice of genius that the world ever saw, lack the little discernment necessary to interpret aright the above extract from Cymbeline, for the last hundred years racked and tortured in vain, let them at length learn henceforth to distrust their judgment altogether.
W. R. ARROWSMITH.
P.S.—In article of No. 180. p. 353., a rather important misprint occurs, viz. date of 4to. King Richard II. with unusual title-page, which should be 1608, not 1605. Other little errors the reader may silently amend for himself.
[Footnote 1: In a passage from L. L. L., lately winnowed in the pages of "N. & Q.," divers attempts at elucidation (whereof not one, in my judgment, was successful) having been made, it was gravely, almost magisterially proposed by one of the disputants, to corrupt the concluding lines (MR. COLLIER having already once before corrupted the preceding ones by substituting a plural for a singular verb, in which lay the true key to the right construction) by altering "their" the pronoun into "there" the adverb, because (shade of Murray!) the commentator could not discover of what noun "their" could possibly be the pronoun in these lines following:
"When great things labouring perish in their birth, Their form confounded makes most form in mirth."
And it was left to MR. KEIGHTLEY to bless the world with the information that it was "things."]
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VERNEY PAPERS—THE CAPUCHIN FRIARS, ETC.
In the appendix to Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, edited by Mr. Bruce for the Camden Society in 1845, are "Notes written in a Cipher," which Mr. Bruce gives in the hope that the ingenuity of some reader will discover their meaning. I venture thus to decypher the same:
"The Capuchin's house to be dissolued. No extracts of letters to be aloued in this house. The prince is now come to Greenhich three lette. Three greate ships staied in France. Gersea a letter from Lord S^t Albones. L11 per diem Hull. The king's answert to our petition about the militia. If a king offer to kil himselfe, wee must not only advise but wrest the weapon from. A similitude of a depilat. Consciences corrupted."
I ought to state that in one or two instances the wrong cypher has evidently been used by mistake, and this has of course increased the difficulty of decyphering the notes.
With reference to the note "The Capuchins' House to be dissolued," may I be allowed to refer to the following votes in the House of Commons, of the date 26th February, 1641-2:
"Ordered, That Mr. Peard, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Pideaux, Mr. Selden, Mr. Young, Mr. Hill, do presently withdraw, to peruse the statutes now in force against priests and Jesuits.
"Ordered, That Mr. Whittacre, Mr. Morley, do presently go to Denmarke House.
"Resolved, That the Capuchines shall be forthwith apprehended and taken into safe custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms attending on this house; and there kept till this house take farther order."
The Capuchins were under the protection of the Queen Henrietta Maria; Denmark House was the name by which Somerset House was at the period known.
Under date 2nd March, 1641-2, are the following entries in the Commons' Journal:
"Mr. Holles brings this answer from the French Ambassador, That the Capuchins being sent hither by Articles of Treaty between the Two Crowns, he durst not of himself send them without Order from the King his Master, or the King and Queen here: And said farther, That the Queen had left an express Command for their stay here; and that he would be ever ready to do any good Office for this House, and to keep a good Correspondency between the Two Crowns; and if this House pleased, he would undertake to keep them safe Prisoners at Somersett House; and that the chapel there shall have the doors locked, and no Mass be said there.
"Ordered, That Mr. Hollis do acquaint the French Ambassador, that this House doth accept of his Offer in securing the Persons of the Capuchins, till this House take farther Order: and that the Doors be locked, and made fast, at the Chapel at Somersett House; and that no Mass be said there.
"Ordered, That the Lord Cramborne and Mr. Hollis shall acquaint the French Ambassador with the desires of this House, that the Capuchins be forthwith sent away; and to know if he will undertake to send them away; and, if he will, that then they be forthwith delivered unto him.
"That Mr. Hollis do go up to the Lords, to acquaint them with the Resolutions of this House, concerning the Capuchins, and desire their Lordships' concurrence therein."
Some particulars of the proceedings of the parliament against the Capuchins may be found in "Memoirs of the Mission in England of the Capuchin Friars of the Province of Paris by Father Cyprian Gamache," in The Court and Times of Charles I., vol. ii. pp. 344. 354.
THOMPSON COOPER.
Cambridge.
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EARLY SATIRICAL POEM.
On the turning over the pages of an old printed copy of Durand's Rationale Divinorum Officiorus, edited by Bonetus de locatellis bergomensis, and printed at Lyons in 1506, by Natalis Brabam, for Jaques Huguetan, I found the following copy of verses written on the fly-leaf. They are written in a hand which I am inclined to assign to a date {569} not much later than that of the book. There is no clue to the author. If they are thought worthy of insertion in "N. & Q.," I beg to inquire, through the medium of your columns, whether they are to be found in any collection of early English poems? and whether the author is known?
The ungallant sentiment of the first three stanzas is obvious. The fourth is not so plain; nor is its connexion with the others evident, though it is written without anything to mark separation; and the word "finis" is placed below it, as if to apply to the whole. I should be obliged if some one of your readers would give some explanation of it.
W. H. G.
Winchester.
"Wen [sic] nettylles in wynter bryngythe forthe rosses red, And a thorne bryngythe figges naturally, And grase berrythe appulles in every mede, And lorrel cherrys on his crope so hye, And okkys berrythe datys plentyusly, And kykkys gyvythe hony in superfluans, The put in women yower trust and confydenc.
"When whythynges walke forrestys hartyse for to chase, And herrings in parkkys the hornnys boldly bloc, And marlyons[2] ... hernys in morrys doo unbrace, And gomards shut ryllyons owght of a crose boow, And goslyngs goo a howntyng the wolf to overthrow, And sparlyns bere sperrys and arms for defenc, Then put yn women yower trust and confydenc.
"When sparrowes byld chorchys and styppyllys of a hyght, And corlewys carry tymber yn howsys for to dyght, Wrennys bere sakkys to the myll, And symgis[3] bryng butter to the market to sell, And wodcokkys were wodknyffys the crane for to kyll, And gryffyns to goslynges doo obedienc, Then put in women yower trust and confydenc.
"O ye imps of Chynner, ye Lydgatys pene, With the spryght of bookkas ye goodly inspyrryd, Ye Ynglyshe poet, excydyng other men, With musyk wyne yower tong yn syrryd, Ye roll in yower rellatyvys as a horse immyrryd, With Ovyddes penner ye are gretly in favor, Ye bere boys incorne, God dyld yow for yower labor. Finis."
[Footnote 2: Merlin's hawks.]
[Footnote 3: Doubtful; but perhaps for syngies, an old name for the finch.]
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THE LETTERS OF ATTICUS.
The editor of the Grenville Papers has alluded to some "very judicious and pertinent remarks in the 'N. & Q.'" respecting the Letters of Atticus, and as most of your readers will probably agree with him that the authenticity of these letters is "a curious and interesting question, and one that deserves very particular attention," I beg to correct an error into which he and others have fallen, as to the date when Junius ceased to write under the signature Atticus. The Atticus forwarded by Junius to George Grenville on the 19th October, 1768, was, there is every reason to believe, the last from the pen of that writer, who was then preparing to come before the public in a more prominent character. When another correspondent adopted the signature Atticus, Woodfall gave his readers warning by inserting the following notice into the Public Advertiser:
"The Address to the Freeholders of the county of Middlesex, signed Atticus, in our next. The Printer thinks it his duty to acquaint his readers that this letter is not by the same hand as some letters in this paper a little time since, under the signature Atticus."—Pub. Ad., March 19, 1769.
The printer took the like course when writers attempted to "impose upon the public" by using the signatures Lucius and C., and then freely inserted their letters; but when the same trick was tried with Junius, the printer did not scruple to alter the signature, or reject the contribution as spurious.
The genuine Letters of Atticus have had a narrow escape lately of being laughed out of their celebrity by writers in some of our most respectable periodicals. The authenticity of these letters up to the 19th October, 1768, is now fully established. The undecided question of the authorship of Junius requires that every statement should be carefully examined, and (as far as possible) only well-authenticated facts be admitted as evidence in future.
WILLIAM CRAMP.
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Minor Notes.
Irish Bishops as English Suffragans.—In compliance with the suggestion of J. M. D. in your last volume, p. 385., I abridge from The Record of March 17th the following particulars:
"At a recent meeting of the Archaeolgical Society the Rev. W. Gunner stated that from a research among the archives of the bishops and of the college of Winchester, he had found that many Irish bishops, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were merely titular bishops, bearing the titles of sees in Ireland, while they acted as suffragans to bishops in England. A Bishop of Achonry, for instance, appeared to have been frequently deputed by William of Wykeham to consecrate churches, and to perform other episcopal duties, in his diocese; and the Bishops of Achonry seemed frequently to have been suffragans of those of Winchester. No see exhibits more instances of this expatriation than Dromore, lying as it did in an unsettled and tumultuous country. Richard Messing, who succeeded to Dromore bishopric in 1408, was suffragan to the Archbishop of York; and so died at {570} York within a year after his appointment. His successor John became a suffragan to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and died such in 1420. Thomas Scrope, a divine from Leicestershire, was appointed by the Pope to this see in 1430: he could not live in peace with the Irish, and therefore became vicar-general to the Bishop of Norwich. Thomas Radcliffe, his successor, never lived in Ireland: 'the profits of his see did not extend to 30l. sterling, and for its extreme poverty it is void and desolate, and almost extincted, in so much as none will own the same, or abide therein.' Dr. Radcliffe was therefore obliged to become a suffragan to the Bishop of Durham. William, who followed him in the Dromore succession in 1500, lived in York, and was suffragan to its archbishop; and it would seem his successors were also suffragans in England, until the plantation of Ulster improved the circumstances of that province."
AN OXFORD B. C. L.
Pope and Buchanan.—I beg to suggest as a Query, whether Pope did not borrow the opening of his Essay on Man from that of the second book of Buchanan's Latin poem De Sphaera. Let us compare them.
Buchanan:
"Jam mihi Timoleon, animo majora capaci Concipe; nec terras semper mirare jacentes; Excute degeneres circum mortalia curas, Et mecum ingentes coeli spatiare per auras."
Pope:
"Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings; Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die, Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man."
I do not remember the comparison to have been made before.
WM. EWART.
University Club.
Scarce MSS. in the British Museum.—In Cotton MSS., Titus, B 1., will be found a curious and valuable collection of papers entitled "Cromwell's Remembrances." These comprise:
1. A period from about the death of Anne Boleyn to his attainder.
2. They are very miscellaneous, consisting of memoranda of subjects for conference with the king. Notices of persons to be remembered for offices. Sale of lands. Diplomacy, and various other particulars. Notes relative to the dissolution of monasteries; their riches, revenues, and pensions to abbots, &c. The reception of Anne Cleves, and the alteration of the royal household thereupon. Privy council and parliamentary notes. Foreign alliances. Scotch and Irish affairs, consequent on the dissolution of abbeys, &c.
These curious materials for history are in the rough and confused state in which they were left by their author, and, to render them available, would require an index to the whole.
The "Remembrances" are in some degree illustrated by Harl. MS. 604., which is a very curious volume of monastic affairs at the dissolution. Also by 605, 606, and 607. The last two belong to the reign of Philip and Mary, and contain an official account of the lands sold by them belonging to the crown in the third and fourth years of their reign.
E. G. BALLARD.
The Royal Garden at Holyrood Palace.—I cannot help noticing a disgraceful fact, which has only lately come to my knowledge. There is, adjoining the Palace of Holyrood, an ancient garden of the old kings of Scotland: in it is a curious sundial, with Queen Mary's name on it. There is a pear-tree planted by her hands, and there are many other deeply interesting traces of the royal race, who little dreamed how their old stately places were to be profaned, after they themselves were laid in the dust. The garden of the Royal Stuarts is now let to a market gardener! Are there no true-hearted Scotchmen left, who will redeem it from such desecration?
L. M. M. R.
The Old Ship "Royal Escape."—The following extract from the Norwich Mercury of Aug. 21, 1819, under the head of "Yarmouth News," will probably be gratifying to your querist ANON, Vol. vii., p. 380.:
"On the 13th inst. put into this port (Yarmouth), having been grounded on the Barnard Sand, The Royal Escape, government hoy, with horses for his royal highness at Hanover. This vessel is the same that King Charles II. made his escape in from Brighthelmstone."
JOSEPH DAVEY.
* * * * *
Queries.
"THE LIGHT OF BRITTAINE."
I should be glad, through the medium of "N. & Q.," to be favoured with some particulars regarding this work, and its author, Maister Henry Lyte, of Lytescarie, Esq. He presented the said work with his own hand to "our late soveraigne queene and matchlesse mistresse, on the day when shee came, in royall manner, to Paule's Church." I shall also be glad of any information about his son, Maister Thomas Lyte, of Lytescarie, Esq., "a true immitator and heyre to his father's vertues," and who
"Presented to the Majestie of King James, (with) an excellent mappe or genealogicall table (contayning the bredth and circumference of twenty large sheets of paper), which he entitleth Brittaines Monarchy, approuing Brute's History, and the whole succession of this our nation, from the very original, with the just observation of al times, changes, and occasions therein happening. This worthy worke, having cost above {571} seaven yeares labour, beside great charges and expense, his highnesse hath made very gracious acceptance of, and to witnesse the same, in court it hangeth in an especiall place of eminence. Pitty it is, that this phoenix (as yet) affordeth not a fellowe, or that from privacie it might not bee made more generall; but, as his Majestie has granted him priviledge, so, that the world might be woorthie to enjoy it, whereto, if friendship may prevaile, as he hath been already, so shall he be still as earnestly sollicited."
These two works appear to have been written towards the close of the sixteenth century. Is anything more known of them, and their respective authors?
TRAJA-NOVA.
* * * * *
Minor Queries.
Thirteen an unlucky Number.—Is there not at Dantzic a clock, which at 12 admits, through a door, Christ and the Eleven, shutting out Judas, who is admitted at 1?
A. C.
Quotations.—
"I saw a man, who saw a man, who said he saw the king."
Whence?
"Look not mournfully into the past; it comes not back again," &c.—Motto of Hyperion.
Whence?
A. A. D.
"Other-some" and "Unneath."—I do not recollect having ever seen these expressions, until reading Parnell's Fairy Tale. They occur in the following stanzas:
"But now, to please the fairy king, Full every deal they laugh and sing, And antic feats devise; Some wind and tumble like an ape, And other-some transmute their shape In Edwin's wondering eyes.
"Till one at last, that Robin hight, Renown'd for pinching maids by night, Has bent him up aloof; And full against the beam he flung, Where by the back the youth he hung To sprawl unneath the roof."
As the author professes the poem to be "in the ancient English style," are these words veritable ancient English? If so, some correspondent of "N. & Q." may perhaps be able to give instances of their recurrence.
ROBERT WRIGHT.
Newx, &c.—Can any of your readers give me the unde derivatur of the word newx, or noux, or knoux? It is a very old word, used for the last hundred years, as fag is at our public schools, for a young cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. When I was there, some twenty-five or twenty-seven years ago, the noux was the youngest cadet of the four who slept in one room: and a precious life of it he led. But this, I hope, is altered now. I have often wanted to find out from whence this term is derived, and I suppose that your paper will find some among your numerous correspondents who will be able to enlighten me.
T. W. N.
Malta.
"A Joabi Alloquio."—Who can explain the following, and point out its source? I copy from the work of a Lutheran divine, Conrad Dieteric, Analysis Evangeliorum, 1631, p. 188.:
"A Joabi Alloquio, A Thyestis Convivio, Ab Iscariotis 'Ave,' A Diasii 'Salve' Ab Herodis 'Redite' A Gallorum 'Venite.' Libera nos Domine."
The fourth and sixth line I do not understand.
B. H. C.
Illuminations.—When were illuminations in cities first introduced? Is there any allusion to them in classic authors?
CAPE.
Heraldic Queries.—Will some correspondent versed in heraldry answer me the following questions?
1. What is the origin and meaning of women of all ranks, except the sovereign, being now debarred from bearing their arms in shields, and having to bear them in lozenges? Formerly, all ladies of rank bore shields upon their seals, e.g. the seal of Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, who deceased A.D. 1399; and of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and mother of Henry VIII., who deceased A.D. 1509. These shields are figured in the Glossary of Heraldry, pp. 285, 286.
2. Is it, heraldically speaking, wrong to inscribe the motto upon a circle (not a garter) or ribbon round the shield? So says the Glossary, p. 227. If wrong, on what principle?
3. Was it ever the custom in this country, as on the Continent to this day, for ecclesiastics to bear their arms in a circular or oval panel?—the martial form of the shield being considered inconsistent with their spiritual character. If so, when did the custom commence, and where may instances be seen either on monuments or in illustrated works?
CEYREP.
John's Spoils from Peterborough and Crowland.—Clement Spelman, in his Preface to the reader, with which he introduces his father's treatise De non temerandis Ecclesiis, says (edit. Oxford, 1841, p.45.):
"I cannot omit the sacrilege and punishment of King John, who in the seventeenth year of his reign, among other churches, rifled the abbeys of {572} Peterborough and Croyland, and after attempts to carry his sacrilegious wealth from Lynn to Lincoln; but, passing the Washes, the earth in the midst of the waters opens her mouth (as for Korah and his company), and at once swallows up both carts, carriage, and horses, all his treasure, all his regalities, all his church spoil, and all the church spoilers; not one escapes to bring the king word," &c.
Is the precise spot known where this catastrophe occurred, or have any relics been since recovered to give evidence of the fact?
J. SANSOM.
"Elementa sex," &c.—Perhaps one of your readers, given to such trifles, will hazard a guess at the solution, if not at the author, of the subjoined:
"Elementa sex me proferent totam tibi; Totam hanc, lucernis si tepent fungi, vides, Accisa senibus suppetit saltantibus, Levetur, armis adfremunt Horatii; Facienda res est omnibus, si fit minor, Es, quod relinquis deinde, si subtraxeris; Si rite tandem quaeritas originem, Ad sibilum, vix ad sonum, reverteris."
EFFIGY.
Jack and Gill—Sir Hubbard de Hoy.—Having recently amused myself by a dive into old Tusser's Husbandrie, the following passages suggested themselves as fitting Queries for your pages:
Jack and Gill.—
"Let Jack nor Gill Fetch corn at will."
Can the "Jack and Gill" of our nursery tales be traced to an earlier date than Tusser's time?
Hobble de Hoy.—Speaking of the periods of a man's life, Tusser's advice, from the age of fourteen years to twenty-one, is to "Keep under Sir Hubbard de Hoy." Is it known whether there ever existed a personage so named, either as a legend or a myth? And if not, what is the origin of the modern term "Hobble de Hoy" as a designation for a stripling? Bailey omits it in his Dictionary.
L. A. M.
Humphrey Hawarden.—Information is solicited respecting this individual, who was a Doctor of Laws, and living in 1494. Also, of a Justice Port, living about the same period.
T. HUGHES.
Chester.
"Populus vult decipi."—
"Populus } { Mundus } vult decipi { et decipiatur, Vulgus } { decipiatur ergo."
Who was the author of the maxim? which is its correct form? and where is it to be found? It seems to present another curious instance of our ignorance of things with which we are familiar. I have put the question to a dozen scholars, fellows of colleges, barristers, &c. &c., and none has been able to give me an answer. One only thinks it was a dictum of some Pope.
HARRY LEROY TEMPLE.
Sheriffs of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire.—Where can any list of the sheriffs for these counties be found, previous to the list given by Fuller from the time of Henry VIII.?
D.
Harris.—The Rev. William Harris, B.A., was presented, by Thomas Pindar, Esq., to the vicarage of Luddington, Lincolnshire, on the 7th August, 1722. Mr. Harris died here in June, 1748, aged eighty-two. On his tomb is inscribed,—
"Illi satis licuit Nunc veterum libris, nunc Somno, et inertibus horis Ducere solicitae jucunda oblivio vitae."
A tradition of his being a wizard still lingers in the village, and I should be very glad to receive any particulars respecting him. From an inspection of his will at Lincoln, it appears that he used the coat of the ancient family of Harris of Radford, Devon, and that his wife's name was Honora, a Christian name not infrequent about that period in families of the West of England also, as, for instance, Honora, daughter of Sir Richard Rogers of Bryanstone, who married Edward Lord Beauchamp, and had a daughter Honora, who married Sir Ferdinand Sutton; Honora, the wife of Harry Conway, Esq., of Bodrhyddan, Flint; Honora, daughter of Edward Fortescue of Fallapit; besides others.
W. H. LAMMIN.
Fulham.
* * * * *
Replies.
BISHOP BUTLER.
(Vol. vii., p. 528.)
"Charity thinketh no evil;" but we must feel both surprise and regret that any one should, in 1853, consider it a doubtful question whether Bishop Butler died in the communion of the Church of England. The bishop has now been in his grave more than a hundred years; but Warburton says truly, "How light a matter very often subjects the best-established characters to the suspicions of posterity—how ready is a remote age to catch at a low revived slander, which the times that brought it forth saw despised and forgotten almost in its birth."
X. Y. Z. says he would be glad to have this charge (originally brought forward in 1767) sifted. He will find that it has been sifted, and in the most full and satisfactory manner, by persons of no less distinction than Archbishop Secker and Bishop Halifax. The strong language employed by the archbishop, when refuting what he terms {573} a "gross and scandalous falsehood," and when asserting the bishops "abhorrence of popery," need not here be quoted, as "N.& Q." is not the most proper channel for the discussion of theological subjects; but it is alleged that every man of sense and candour was convinced at the time that the charge should be retracted; and it must be a satisfaction to your correspondent to know, that as Bishop Butler lived so he died, in full communion with that Church, which he adorned equally by his matchless writings, sanctity of manners, and spotless life.[4]
J. H. MARKLAND.
Bath.
[Footnote 4: Your correspondent may be referred to Memoirs of the Life of Bishop Butler, by a connexion of his own, the Rev. Thomas Bartlett, A.M., published in 1839; and to a review of the same work in the Quarterly Review, vol. lxiv. p. 331.]
In reference to the Query by X. Y. Z., as to whether Bishop Butler died in the Roman Catholic communion, allow me to refer your correspondent to the contents of the letters from Dr. Forster and Bishop Benson to Secker, then Bishop of Oxford, concerning the last illness and death of the prelate in question, deposited at Lambeth amongst the private MSS. of Archbishop Seeker, "as negative arguments against the calumny of his dying a Papist."
Than the allegations that Butler died with a Roman Catholic book of devotion in his hand, and that the last person in whose company he was seen was a priest of that persuasion, nothing can be more unreasonable, if at least it be meant to deduce from these unproved statements that the bishop agreed with the one and held communion with the other. Dr. Forster, his chaplain, was with him at his death, which happened about 11 A.M., June 16; and this witness observes (in a letter to the Bishop of Oxford, June 18) that "the last four-and-twenty hours preceding which [i. e. his death] were divided between short broken slumbers, and intervals of a calm but disordered talk when awake." Again (letter to Ditto, June 17), Forster says that Bishop Butler, "when, for a day or two before his death, he had in a great measure lost the use of his faculties, was perpetually talking of writing to your lordship, though without seeming to have anything which, at least, he was at all capable of communicating to you." Bishop Benson writes to the Bishop of Oxford (June 12) that Butler's "attention to any one or anything is immediately lost and gone;" and, "my lord is incapable, not only of reading, but attending to anything read or said." And again, "his attention to anything is very little or none."
There was certainly an interval between this time (June 12) and "the last four-and-twenty hours" preceding his death, during which, writes Bishop Benson (June 17), Butler "said kind and affecting things more than I could bear." Yet, on the whole, I submit that these extracts, if fully weighed and considered with all the attending circumstances, contain enough of even positive evidence to refute conclusively the injurious suspicions alluded to by X. Y. Z., if such are still current.
J. R. C.
* * * * *
MITIGATION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT TO FORGERS.
(Vol. iv., p. 434., &c.)
I have asked many questions, and turned over many volumes and files of newspapers, to get at the real facts of the cases of mitigation stated in "N. & Q." Having winnowed the chaff as thoroughly as I could, I send the very few grains I have found. Those only who have searched annual registers, magazines, and journals for the foundation of stories defective in names and dates, will appreciate my difficulties.
I have not found any printed account of the "Jeannie Deans" case, "N. & Q.," Vol. iv., p. 434.; Vol. v., p. 444.; Vol. vi., p. 153. I have inquired of the older members of the Northern Circuit, and they never heard of it. Still a young man may have been convicted of forgery "about thirty-five years ago:" his sister may have presented a well-signed petition to the judges, and the sentence may have been commuted without the tradition surviving on the circuit. All however agree, that no man who ever sat on the bench deserved the imputation of "obduracy" less than Baron Graham. I should not have noticed the anecdote but for its mythic accompaniments, which I disposed of in "N. & Q.," Vol. v., p. 444.
In Vol. vi., p. 496., W. W. cites from Wade's British History:
"July 22, 1814. Admiral William B——y found guilty of forging letters to defraud the revenue. He was sentenced to death, which was commuted to banishment."
The case is reported in The Sun, July 25, 1814; and the subsequent facts are in The Times, July 30, and August 16 and 20. It was tried before Mr. Justice Dampier at the Winchester Summer Assizes. There were five bills against the prisoner for forgery, and one for a fraud. That on which he was convicted, was for defrauding the post-master of Gosport of 3l. 8s. 6d. He took to the post-office a packet of 114 letters, which he said were "ship letters," from the "Mary and Jane." He received the postage, and signed the receipt "W. Johnstone." The letters were fictitious. The case was fully proved, and he received sentence of death. He was respited for a fortnight, and afterwards during the pleasure of the Prince Regent. He was struck off the list of retired {574} rear-admirals. It was proved at the trial, that, in 1809, he commanded "The Plantagenet;" but, from the unsettled state of his mind, the command had been given up to the first lieutenant, and that he was shortly after superseded. This, and the good character he received, were probably held to excuse the pardon.
I now come to the great case of George III. and Mr. Fawcett. I much regret that WHUNSIDE has not replied in your pages to my question (Vol. vii., p. 163.), as I could then have commented upon the facts, and his means of knowing them, with more freedom. I have a private communication from him, which is ample and candid. He objects to bring his name before the public, and I have no right to press that point. He is not quite certain as to the convict's name, but can procure it for me. He would rather that it should not be published, as it might give pain to a respectable family. Appreciating the objection, and having no use for it except to publish, I have declined to ask it of him.
The case occurred in 1802 or 1803, when WHUNSIDE was a pupil of Mr. Fawcett. He says:
"Occasionally Mr. Fawcett used to allow certain portions of a weekly newspaper to be read to the boys on a Saturday evening. This case was read to us, I think from the Leeds Mercury; and though Mr. Fawcett's name was not mentioned, we were all aware who the minister was."
Thus we have no direct evidence of the amount of Mr. Fawcett's communications with George III. How much of the story as it is now told was read to the boys, we do not know; but that it came to them first through a weekly paper, is rather against than for it.
We all know the tendency of good stories to pick up additions as they go. I have read that the first edition of the Life of Loyola was without miracles. This anecdote seems to have reached its full growth in 1823, in Pearson's Life of W. Hey, Esq., and probably in the two lives of George III., published after his death, and mentioned by WHUNSIDE. Pearson, as cited in "N. & Q.," Vol. vi., p. 276., says, that by some means the Essay on Anger had been recommended to the notice of George III., who would have made the author a bishop had he not been a dissenter; that he signified his wish to serve Mr. Fawcett, &c. That on the conviction of H——, Mr. Fawcett wrote to the king; and a letter soon arrived, conveying the welcome intelligence, "You may rest assured that his life is safe," &c.
It is not stated that this was "private and confidential:" if it was, Mr. Fawcett had no right to mention it; if it was not, he had no reason for concealing what was so much to his honour, and so extraordinary as the king's personal interference in a matter invariably left to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. If, however, Mr. Fawcett was silent from modesty, his biographers had no inducement to be so; yet, let us see how they state the case. The Account of the Life, Writings, and Ministry of the late Rev. John Fawcett: London, 1818, cited in "N. & Q.," Vol. vi., p. 229., says:
"He was induced, in conjunction with others, to solicit the exercise of royal clemency in mitigating the severity of that punishment which the law denounces: and it gladdened the sympathetic feelings of his heart to know that these petitions were not unavailing; but the modesty of his character made him regret the publicity which had been given to this subject."
The fifth edition of the Essay on Anger, printed for the Book Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge, London, no date, has a memoir of the author. The "incident" is said not to have been circulated in any publication by the family; but "it was one of the secrets which obtain a wider circulation from the reserve with which one relator invariably retails it to another." That is exactly my view. Secrecy contributes to diffusion, but not to accuracy. At the risk of being thought tedious, I must copy the rest of this statement:
"Soon after the publication of this treatise, the author took an opportunity of presenting a copy to our late much revered sovereign; whose ear was always accessible to merit, however obscure the individual in whom it was found. Contrary to the fate of most publications laid at the feet of royalty, it was diligently perused and admired; and a communication of this approbation was afterwards made known to the author. It happened some time afterwards, a relative of one of his friends was convicted of a capital crime, for which he was left for execution. Application was instantly made for an extension of royal favour in his behalf; and, among others, one was made by Mr. Fawcett: and his majesty, no doubt recollecting the pleasure he had derived from the perusal of his Essay on Anger, and believing that he would not recommend an improper person to royal favour, was most graciously pleased to answer the prayer of the petition; but as to precisely how far the name of Mr. Fawcett might have contributed to this successful application must await the great disclosures of a future judgment."
The reader will sift this jumble of inferences and facts, and perhaps will not go so far as to have "no doubt."
WHUNSIDE tells me, that about 1807 he employed a bookbinder from Halifax; who, on hearing that he had been a pupil of Mr. Fawcett, said he had seen two copies of the Essay on Anger, most beautifully bound, to be sent to the king.
The conclusion to which I come is, that Mr. Fawcett sent a copy of the Essay on Anger to the king; that the receipt of it was acknowledged, possibly in some way more complimentary than the ordinary circular; that a young man was convicted of forgery; that Mr. Fawcett and others petitioned for his pardon, and that he was {575} pardoned. All the rest I hold to be mere rumours, not countenanced by Mr. Fawcett or his family, and not asserted by his biographers.
H. B. C.
U. U. Club.
* * * * *
MYTHE VERSUS MYTH.
(Vol. vii., p. 326.)
MR. KEIGHTLEY'S rule is only partially true, and in the part which is true is not fully stated. The following rules, qualified by the accompanying remarks, will I trust be found substantially correct.
English monosyllables, formed from Greek or Latin monosyllabic roots,
(1.) When the root ends in a single consonant preceded by a vowel, require the lengthening e.
(2.) When the root ends in a single consonant preceded by a diphthong, or in more than one consonant preceded by a vowel, reject the e.
1. Examples from the Greek:—[Greek: schem-a], scheme; [Greek: lur-a] (lyr-a), lyre; [Greek: zon-e] (zon-a), zon-e; [Greek: bas-is], base; [Greek: phras-is], phras-e; [Greek: trop-os], trop-e. From Latin, ros-a, ros-e; fin-is, fin-e; fum-us, fum-e; pur-us, pur-e; grad-us, grad-e. Compare, in verbs, ced-o, ced-e.
Remarks.—This rule admits of a modification; e.g. we form from [Greek: zel-os] zeal (the sound hardly perceptibly differing from zel-e); from [Greek: hor-a] (hor-a), hour; from flos (flor-is), flower and flour (the long sound communicated to the vowel in the other words by the added e, being in these already contained in the diphthong). Add ven-a, vein; van-us, vain; sol-um, soil, &c.; and compare -ceed in proceed, succeed, formed from compounds of ced-o. Some, but not all, of these words have come to us through the French.
2. Examples from the Greek:—[Greek: rheum-a], rheum; [Greek: chasm-a], chasm; [Greek: murr-a], myrrh; [Greek: gloss-a], gloss; [Greek: numph-e] (nymph-a), nymph; [Greek: disk-os], (disc-us), disk; [Greek: plinth-os], plinth; [Greek: psalm-os], psalm. From Latin, fraus (fraud-is), fraud; laus (laud-is), laud; plant-a, plant; orb-is, orb; plumb-um, plumb; long-us, long, flux-us, flux; port-us, port. Compare, in verbs, damn-o, damn; err-o, err; add-o, add; vex-o, vex.
Remarks.—From roots ending in the same consonant doubled, our derived words ordinarily drop one of them; e.g. [Greek: stemm-a], stem; gemm-a, gem; summ-a, sum; penn-a, pen; carr-us, car. (Note this tendency of our language, by comparing our man with the German mann.)
If the root ends in s or v preceded by a diphthong, or in a consonant +s[5] or +v preceded by a vowel, our derived words add e, as [Greek: paus-is] (paus-a), paus-e; caus-a, cause-e; naev-a, nav-e; puls-us, puls-e; dens-us, dens-e; [Greek: haps-is], aps-e; laps-us, laps-e; vers-us, vers-e; valv-a, valv-e; nerv-us, nerv-e.[6] The cause of this lies in the genius of our language, which totally rejects the ending v, and uses s (single) very sparingly in the singular number, except in the ending ous, the genitive case, the third person of the present tense, the obsolete wis, and was. Other words are, the interjection alas; pronouns or pronominal particles; proper names, as Thomas, Chaos; compounds, as Lammas, Christmas; plural adverbs, as towards, thereabouts; and the (perhaps) plural—it ought to be so—alms.[7]
From roots ending in a mute +a liquid, our derived words also end in e, and are then in fact dissyllables; e.g. [Greek: bibl-os], bible; [Greek: kukl-os], cycl-e; [Greek: mitr-a], mitr-e; [Greek: nitr-on], nitr-e; [Greek: petr-os], petr-e. In this class of words the final letters (after the analogy of Latin) have sometimes become transposed; e.g. [Greek: lepr-os], lep-er. So now-a-days, cent-er as well as centr-e. Compare metr-e, diamet-er.
To apply our rules to the words required to be formed in an English shape from [Greek: muth-os].
Very few words in our language end in th which are not of purely native growth. Frith is questionable exception. Besides the monosyllable plinth, we have imported from the Greek colocynth, hyacinth, labyrinth, with the proper names Corinth, Erymanth, all terminating in nth.
In the ending the our language does not rejoice. Most of such words are verbs, so distinguished from their cognate substantives, as wreathe from wreath. We have, as substantives, lathe (A.-S. [Saxon: leeth]), hythe ([Saxon: hyeth]), scythe (more properly sithe, [Saxon: siethe]), tythe ([Saxon: tyethe]); as adjectives, blithe ([Saxon: bliethe]), lithe ([Saxon: lieth]). There may be one or two more.
In all these the sounds is [Saxon: eth] (th in this) not [Saxon: ] (th in thick). This appears worth notice.
On the whole, I should venture to say that so uncouth a slip as mythe, when set in our soil, was unlikely to thrive. Still myth is objectionable, though we at Cambridge might quote gyp However I may seem to be a breaker of my own laws, I suggest, if we must have an English form of the word, that we should write and pronounce mȳth. Several words ending in th have the preceding vowel lengthened, e.g. both, sloth, ruth, truth (though with the inconsistency attributed to us, one, by the way, generally of orthography rather than pronunciation, we shorten the diphthong in breath, death). Compare also the sound of the endings ild and ind.
I have already troubled you with a very long Note; but, before I close, allow me to add that in what I have advanced I have had in view only our modern mode of spelling, without binding {576} myself to an opinion of its inferiority or superiority to that of our forefathers. I beg also to protest against MR. KEIGHTLEY'S wish to banish mythical from our vocabulary. It may be hybrid, but equally so are critical, grammatical, musical, physical, poetical, with a long string of et ceteras.
CHARLES THIRIOLD.
[Footnote 5: Except x (=cs). Compare flax, wax, ox.]
[Footnote 6: From serv-us (after the French) we form serf.]
[Footnote 7: Rebus, overplus, and surplus may, if not satisfied, take an omnibus, bring their action at the Nisi Prius, and meet there with a nonplus.]
* * * * *
"INQUIRY INTO THE STATE OF THE UNION, BY THE WEDNESDAY CLUB IN FRIDAY STREET."
(Vol. vii., pp. 261. 409.)
This very able and valuable work, as to which your correspondent inquires, was written by Wm. Paterson, the projector of the Bank of England and the Darien scheme; a great and memorable name, but which, to the discredit of British biography, will be sought for in vain in Chalmers's or our other biographical dictionaries. The book above noticed appears to be a continuation of another tract by the same author, entitled An Inquiry into the Reasonableness and Consequences of an Union with Scotland, containing a brief Deduction of what hath been done, designed, or proposed in the Matter of the Union during the last Age, a Scheme of an Union as accommodated to the present Circumstances of the two Nations, also States of the respective Revenues, Debts, Weights, Measures, Taxes, and Impositions, and of other Facts of moment: with Observations thereupon, as communicated to Laurence Philips, Esq., near York: London, printed and sold by R. Bragg, 1706, 8vo., 160 pages. This was preceded by an earlier tract by the same author: Conferences on the Public Debts, by the Wednesday's Club in Friday Street: London, 1695, 4to. The last is noticed, with a short account of the author, by Mr. M^cCulloch (Lib. of Political Economy, p. 159.), but he has not mentioned the two other works previously adverted to. In all of them the author adopts the form of a report of the proceedings of a club; but, without attempting to deny the actual existence of a Wednesday's club in Friday Street (the designation he assumes for it), nothing can be more clear to any one who reads the three tracts than that the conversations, proceedings, and personages mentioned are all the creatures of his own fertile invention, and made use of, more conveniently to bring out his facts, arguments, and statements. The dramatic form he gives them makes even the dry details of finance amusing; and abounding, as they do, in information and thought, these works may always be consulted with profit and pleasure. The Inquiry into the State of the Union, 1717, 8vo., for which Walpole is said to have furnished some of the materials, was answered, but rather feebly, in an anonymous pamphlet entitled Wednesday Club Law; or the Injustice, Dishonour, and Ill Policy of breaking into Parliamentary Contracts for public Debts: London, printed for E. Smith, 1717, 8vo., pp. 38. The author of this pamphlet appears to have been a Mr. Broome. Those who would wish see one of the financial questions discussed in the Inquiry treated with equal force and ability, and with similar views, by a great cotemporary of Paterson, whose pamphlet came out simultaneously, may read Fair Payment no Spunge; or some Considerations on the Unreasonableness of refusing to receive back Money lent on public Securities, and the Necessity of setting the Nation free from the unsupportable Burthen of Debt and Taxes, with a View of the great Advantage and Benefit which will arise to Trade and to the Landed Interest, as well as to the Poor, by having these heavy Grievances taken off: London, printed and sold by Brotherton: Meadows and Roberts, 1717, 8vo., pp. 79. This is one of the pamphlets which, though it has been sometimes erroneously assigned to Paterson, both on external and internal evidence may be confidently attributed to Defoe, but which has unaccountably escaped the notice of all his biographers.
JAMES CROSSLEY.
* * * * *
UNPUBLISHED EPIGRAM BY SIR W. SCOTT (?).
(Vol. vii., p. 498.)
The lines which your correspondent R. VINCENT attributes to Sir Walter Scott are part of an old English inscription which Longfellow quotes in Outremer, p. 66., and thus describes in a note:
"I subjoin this relic of old English verse entire.... It is copied from a book whose title I have forgotten, and of which I have but a single leaf, containing the poem. In describing the antiquities of the church of Stratford-upon-Avon, the writer gives the following account of a very old painting upon the wall, and of the poem which served as its motto. The painting is no longer visible, having been effaced in repairing the church:
"'Against the west wall of the nave, on the south side of the arch, was painted the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket, while kneeling at the altar of St. Benedict, in Canterbury Cathedral. Below this was the figure of an angel, probably St. Michael, supporting a long scroll, upon which were seven stanzas in old English, being an allegory of mortality.'"
The lines given at p. 498. of "N. & Q." seem to be taken from the two following stanzas, which stand third and fourth in the old inscription:
"Erth apon erth wynnys castellys and towrys, Then seth erth unto erth thys ys all owrys. When erth apon erth hath bylde hys bowrys, Then schall erth for erth suffur many hard schowrys.
"Erth goth apon erth as man apon mowld, Lyke as erth apon erth never goo schold, Erth goth apon erth as gelsteryng gold, And yet schall erth unto erth rather than he wold."
{577}
Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 517., tells us that John de Stratford, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Edward III., built a chapel on the south side of the church, "to the honour of God and of St. Thomas the Martyr;" and as at p. 521. he describes it as "in the south ile of the said church," the west wall of this chapel answers very well the description of the position of the painting, and inscription. But in The Beauties of England and Wales, vol. xv. p. 238., the chapel of the gild of the Holy Cross, in the centre of the town, is mentioned as the place in which the pictures were discovered, during some repairs which it underwent in the year 1804.
I have since ascertained that the work to which Longfellow refers is Weaver's Account of Stratford-upon-Avon.
ERICA.
As a companion to the unpublished epigram in No. 186. of "N. & Q.," I beg to hand you the following epitaph, copied by myself about thirty years since, and referring, as I believe, to an old brass in the church of St. Helen's, London:
"Here lyeth y^e bodyes of James Pomley, y^e sonne of ould Dominick Pomley and Jane his Wyfe: y^e said James deceased y^e 7^{th} day of Januarie Anno Domini 1592 he beyng of y^e age of 88 years, and y^e sayd Jane deceased y^e —— day of —— D——.
Earth goeth upō earth as moulde upō moulde; Earth goeth upō earth all glittering as golde, As though earth to y^e earth never turne shoulde; And yet shall earth to y^e earth sooner than he woulde."
WILLIAM WILLIAMS.
* * * * *
CHURCH CATECHISM.
(Vol. vii., pp. 190. 463.)
In accordance with the request of Z. E. R., I have pleasure in forwarding the extracts from the Catechismus brevis et Catholicus, referred to at pp. 190. 463. of the present volume. It is needful to premise, 1. That the pages of the catechism are not numbered. This will account for the absence of precise references. 2. That only so much is quoted as may exhibit the parallelism; and, 3. That the citations are not consecutive in the original, but arranged in the order of the questions and answers of the Church Catechism, beginning with the fourteenth question, "How many sacraments hath Christ ordained in His Church?"
Q. 14. How many, &c.
"Quot sunt Ecclesiae Catholicae Sacramenta?
Septem sunt in universum," &c.
"Quis instituit Baptismum?
Ipse Servator ac Dominus noster Jesus Christus."
[Similarly of the Eucharist.]
Q. 15. What meanest thou, &c.
"Ecquur haec ipsa—et dicantur et sint Sacramenta?
Sacramenta sunt et dicuntur quia sacra atque efficacia sunt signa divinae erga nos voluntatis."
Q. 16. How many parts, &c.
"Habetque unumquodque horum (quod sacramentis peculiare est verbum) Elementum, et Gratiam invisibilem. Quod verbum nos docet, et promittit nobis, hoc Elementum seu visibile signum similitudine quadam demonstrat, hoc idem Gratia quoque (nisi tamen obicem objiciat homo) in anima invisibiliter operatur.
Da paucis singulorum Sacramentorum signa et invisibilem gratiam?"
Q. 17. What is the outward, &c.
"In Baptismo signum externum Aqua est."
Q. 18. What is the inward, &c.
"Quid efficit seu prodest Baptismus?
"Res seu gratia est renovatio et sanctificatio animae, ablutio omnium peccatorum, adoptio baptizati in filium Dei.
'Baptizatus sum in Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.'
"Tinctione illa aquae, operationeque Spiritus Sancti, eripitur baptizatus a regno et tyrannide diaboli, donatur remissione peccatorum ac innocentia, addicitur perpetuo uni veroque Deo Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, hujus denique filius atque haeres instituitur."
Q. 19. What is required, &c.
"Requiritur in eo (adulto), et verus fidei usus, et vita professione Christiana, Baptismique voto digna: hoc est ut corde credat, et ore fidem confiteatur, utque peccatis mortificatis in vitae ambulet novitate.
Proba sacrae Scripturae testimoniis, quod Fides in Baptizato requiratur."
Q. 20. Why then are infants, &c.
"Sed quomodo infantes possunt credere, ut qui nondum usum habeant rationis?
His fides Ecclesiae et susceptorum suffragatur, donec idonei fiant suo illam assensu percipere, adhaec et fidei gratiam in Baptismo ii consequuntur."
Q. 21. Why was the Sacrament, &c.
"Quur vero sacram Eucharistiam Christus instituit?
... Ut suae passionis ac mortis recordemur, eamque annuntiemus perpetuo."
Q. 22. What is the outward, &c.
Q. 23. What is the inward, &c.
"Da paucis ... signa et invisibilem gratiam.
In Eucharistia, Elementum est panis ac vini species: res autem, verum corpus, et verus Christi sanguis est, fructusque dignam sumptionem sequentes."
{578}
Q. 24. What are the benefits, &c.
"Jam recense paucis quinam fructus dignam Eucharistae sumptionem sequantur?
Principio quidem virtute escae hujus confirmamur in fide, munimur adversus peccata, ad bonorum operum studium excitamur, et ad charitatem inflammamur. Hinc vero per eam incorporamur adjungimurque capiti nostro Christo, ut unum cum ipso constituamus corpus," &c.
Q. 25. What is required, &c.
"Quonam pacto digne sumitur Eucharistia?
Digna sumptio, omnium primum requirit, ut homo peccata sua agnoscat ex animo ob ea vere doleat—ac firmum etiam animo concipiat amplius non peccandi propositum. Deinde exigit etiam digna sumptio, ut communicaturus simultatem omnem odiumque animo eximat: reconcilietur laeso, et charitatis contra viscera induat. Postremo vero et fides cum primis in sumente requiritur ... ut credat corpus Christi pro se esse traditum mortem, et sanguinem ejus in remissionem peccatorum suorum vere effusum," &c.
I fear the unavoidable length of the previous extracts will be against the insertion of the full title of the book, and one remark. The title is,—
"Catechismus brevis et Catholicus in gratiam Juventutis conscriptus, Autore Iacobo Schoeppero, Ecclesiasta Tremoniano. Cui accessit Pium diurnarum precum Enchiridion, ex quo pueri toto die cum Deo colloqui discant. Antverpiae, apud Ioan. Bellerum ad insigne Falconis, 1555."
My remark is, that some of the coincidences above enumerated are at least singular, though they do not perhaps prove that the compiler of the Church Catechism, in the places referred to, had them before him.
B. H. C.
* * * * *
JACOB BOBART, ETC.
(Vol. vii., p. 428.)
Of old Jacob Bobart, who originally came from Brunswick, Granger (Biog. Hist., vol. v. p. 287., edit. 1824) gives us the following account:
"Jacob Bobart, a German, whom Plot styles 'an excellent gardener and botanist,' was, by the Earl of Danby, founder of the physic-garden at Oxford, appointed the first keeper of it. He was author of Catalogus Plantarum Horti Medici Oxoniensis, scil. Latino-Anglicus et Anglico-Latinus: Oxon. 1648, 8vo. One singularity I have heard of him from a gentleman of unquestionable veracity, that on rejoicing days he used to have his beard tagged with silver. The same gentleman informed me, that there is a portrait of him in the possession of one of the corporation at Woodstock. He died the 4th of February, 1679, in the eighty-first year of his age. He had two sons, Tillemant and Jacob, who both belonged to the physic-garden. It appears that the latter succeeded him in his office."
There is a very fine print of the elder Bobart, now extremely scarce, "D. Loggan del., M. Burghers, sculp." It is a quarto of the largest size. Beneath the head, which is dated 1675, is this distich:
"Thou German prince of plants, each year to thee Thousands of subjects grant a subsidy."
In John Evelyn's Diary, under the date Oct. 24, 1664, is the following entry:
"Next to Wadham, and the physic garden, where were two large locust-trees, and as many platani (plane-trees), and some rare plants under the culture of old Bobart."
The editor of the last edition, after repeating part of Granger's note, and mentioning the portrait, adds:
"There is a small whole-length in the frontispiece of Vertumnus, a poem on that garden. In this he is dressed in a long vest, with a beard. One of his family was bred up at college in Oxford; but quitted his studies for the profession of the whip, driving one of the Oxford coaches (his own property) for many years with great credit. In 1813 he broke his leg by an accident; and in 1814, from the respect he had acquired by his good conduct, he was appointed by the University to the place of one of the Esquire Beadles."
Vertumnus, the poem mentioned in the above note, was addressed to Mr. Jacob Bobart, in 1713, by Dr. Evans. It is a laudatory epistle on the botanical knowledge of the Bobarts; and we learn from it that Jacob, the younger, collected a Hortus Siccus (a collection of plants pasted upon paper, and kept dry in a book) in twenty volumes.
"Thy Hortus Siccus ... In tomes twice ten, that world immense! By thee compiled at vast expense."
The broadsides about which H. T. BOBART inquires are of the greatest possible rarity. They were the production of Edmund Gayton, the author of Festivious Notes on Don Quixote, &c. Copies may be seen in the Ashmolean Library, under the press-marks Nos. 423. and 438., but I think not in any other repository of a like nature.
Among the Ashmolean MSS. (No. 36, art. 296.) is a poem of 110 lines "Upon the most hopeful and ever-flourishing Sprouts of Valour, the indefatigable Centrys of the Physick-Garden." This, I apprehend, is a MS. copy of the first broadside mentioned by your correspondent.
I shall merely add, the Bobarts, father and son, were personal friends of Ashmole and Ray, and that, in all probability, among their correspondence much curious and minute information might be obtained.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
* * * * *
"ITS."
(Vol. vii., p. 510.)
I was somewhat surprised to find, in No. 186. of "N. & Q.," two instances quoted of the use of the {579} word "its" in the version of the Bible. It has long been an established opinion that this word did not exist in it; and the fact has been recently referred to by two different authorities, MR. KEIGHTLEY in "N. & Q.," Vol. vii., p. 160., and Mr. Watts of the British Museum, in a paper "On some philological peculiarities in the English authorised Version of the Bible," read before the Philological Society on December 10, 1852.
Feeling curious on the subject, I have taken the trouble of referring to several different versions of the Bible in the British Museum, and the following variorum readings of the verses quoted by your correspondent B. H. C. are the result:
1. The Wickliffite version, before 1390 (edit. Forshall and Wadden):
"And he shal ben as a tree, that is plauntid beside the doun rennyngis of watris; that his frut shal [gh]ive in his time."—Ps. i. 3.
"Duke of the weie thou were in his (sc. the vine) si[gh]t; and thou plauntidist his rootis, and it fulfilde the erthe."—Ps. lxxx. 10.
2. Coverdale's Bible, 1536:
"Y^t brīgeth forth his frute in due season."
"Thou maydest rowme for it, and caused it to take rote, so y^t it fylled the lōde."
3. Matthews, 1537:
"That bryngeth forth his frute in due season."
"Thou madest rowme for it, and caused it to take rote, so that it fylled the lande."
4. Cranmer, 1539:
"Y^t wyll brynge forth hys frute in due season."
"Thou madest rowme for it, and whan it had taken rote it fylled y^e lande."
5. The Bishops' Bible, 1568:
"That bryngeth foorth her fruite in due season."
"Thou madst roome before it, thou causedst it to take roote, and it hath filled the lande."
6. Geneva Bible, 1578. In this there are two translations, one "according to the Ebrewe," the other "used in the Common Prayer":
i. "That wil bring forth her fruite in due season."
ii. "That will bring forth his fruite in due season."
i. "Thou madest roome for it, and when it had taken roote, it filled the lande."
ii. "Thou madest roume for it, and didest cause it to take roote, and it filled the land."
7. The Douay Bible (Roman Catholic version), 1609-10:
"Which shal geue his fruite in his time."
"Thou wast the guide of the way in the sight thereof; thou didst plant the rootes thereof, and it filled the earth."
8. Authorised version, 1611:
"That bringeth forth his fruit in his season."
"Thou preparedst roome before it, and didst cause it to take deepe roote, and it filled the land."
It will thus be perceived that "its" is wanting in all the above passages, and that "his," "her," and "thereof" invariably supply its place. I have been equally unsuccessful in detecting the word in the Common Prayer-Book version of the Psalms, which is well known to be that of the "Great Bible," or Cranmer's edition of 1539, and which has remained in use without alteration ever since. May I therefore ask B. H. C. to be so good as to point out the particular "Old version of the Psalms" from which he has derived his quotation?
W. B. RYE.
* * * * *
BOHN'S EDITION OF HOVEDEN.
(Vol. vii., p. 495.)
In reply to your correspondent's remarks (May 21) on my translation of Hoveden, I beg to state that, in suggesting Cork, I did not allude to the city of Cork, but the territory of Desmond or Cork, which probably extended to within a short distance of Waterford. Hoveden more than once, in his foreign geography, confounds places with territories or kingdoms; this fact, and the similarity of the names, Croch and Corch, as the kingdom of Cork is elsewhere called by him, led me to believe that a landing in the territory of Cork was meant. "Crook," "Hook Point," or "The Crook," is only supposed to have been the place of landing on this occasion. I confess that I was not aware that "Erupolis" was an alias of the diocese of Ossory: I cannot find it mentioned as such in the dictionaries at my command. My Note, however, was worded in such a way as to give offence to no reasonable person: and, among the many hundreds, perhaps thousands of suggestions, made in the notes (in a proper spirit, I hope,) I should be greatly surprised to find that I had miscarried in none. For your correspondent's information, I beg to state, that I am not an Irishman either by birth or descent; and that I have never had the good fortune to pay a visit to that country. Were I inclined to follow his example in making remarks upon the "ominousness" of names, I might perhaps retaliate upon him with interest.
Why I have forfeited all claim to be treated by this gentleman with courtesy or common politeness, I am quite at a loss to conceive; but I beg to remind him that vituperation does not carry conviction, and that criticism is enfeebled by an alliance with abuse.
HENRY T. RILEY.
* * * * *
BOOKS OF EMBLEMS.
(Vol. vii., p. 469.)
In your 185th Number, two or three Queries are proposed by the REV. MR. CORSER in {580} connexion with that interesting branch of literature called Books of Emblems. To these it shall be my endeavour to reply.
First. Some years ago I made particular inquiry from the surviving relatives of the late Rev. William Beloe, whether among his manuscripts there had been found any "Treatise on Emblems," or any notices which had a bearing on the subject? They informed me that they had made search, but without success.
Second. Of Thomas Combe, mentioned by Meres in his Palladis Tamia, I have been unable to learn anything.
Third. It appears certain that Bunyan never published any Book of Emblems, whatever may have been hawked under his name; nor can I find, in the Account of his Life and Writings just published in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, or in any preceding edition of his works, that such a production was ever contemplated by him.
Fourth. In the extensive and valuable "English Books of Emblems" furnished (chiefly from his own library) by MR. CORSER, he mentions R. Burton's Choice Emblems, Divine and Moral; or Delights for the Ingenious, &c., 12mo. 1721. Perhaps my learned and accomplished friend may not be aware that Burton is an assumed name, placed in the title-pages of several cheap books which appeared at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, but which were thought to have been written by a Mr. Nathaniel Crouch, a bookseller, who sold them. I have a sixth edition of these "choice emblems," dated 1732, which was then sold for "two shillings bound." The work is merely a collection of fifty emblems, taken, without acknowledgment, from George Wither, the copper-plate engravings being poor copies from those of Depasse. To this sixth edition there is prefixed a portrait of K. Charles I., with eight pages of sympathising verses.
MR. CORSER'S list of English works is very complete. I possess, however, an unpublished manuscript translation of Alciato into English verse. It is of the time of James I., and possesses much merit; but it has unfortunately been mutilated.
I also possess the following:
"Amorum Emblemata figuris aeneis incisa studio Othonis Vaeni, Batavo-Lugdunensis. Emblemes of Love, with verses in Latin, English, and Italian, obl. 4to.: Antverpiae, 1608."
Prefixed is an English dedication "to the most Honourable and Worthy Brothers William, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Montgomerie, Patrons of Learning and Chevalrie," whose coat of arms also is given.
"The Doctrine of Morality, or a View of Human Life according to the Stoic Philosophy, &c. A translation, by T. M. Gibbs, from the French of M. De Gomberville, with 103 copper plates by Daret, folio: London, 1721."
To each engraving are appended quotations from Horace, &c., with English translations: but both engravings and quotations have been pirated (without the least acknowledgment) from Van Veen's Horatia Emblemata.
It must be admitted that a comprehensive work on European Books of Emblems, illustrated with fac-similes of the various engravings, &c., is a great desideratum in modern literature. I feel highly flattered by the kind commendations which MR. CORSER has bestowed upon my two small attempts towards such a work, and by his encouraging me to proceed "to enlarge and complete" the same. Now, I do not altogether despair of enlarging it. But when my excellent friend puts forward a proposal to complete it, he should be informed that my library alone contains nearly 250 volumes strictly emblematical, and published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By far the greater part of these are in Latin. To carry forward a work of such magnitude to anything like completion must therefore be rather wished for than expected.
JOS. B. YATES.
West Dingle, near Liverpool.
Allow me to add the following to MR. CORSER'S list:
"The Christian's Divine Amusement, consisting of Emblems and Hieroglyphicks on a great Variety of Subjects, Moral and Divine, in four books. By the late Rev. Mr. J. Jones. Embellished with near 100 beautiful emblematical cuts, 12mo. pp. 191.: London, 1764."
I know not who the Rev. Mr. J. was, but his book is the old one of Francis Quarles. The author, or rather adapter, attacks and demolishes the fable as a method of instruction, and would substitute the emblems. In remodelling Quarles, Mr. Jones makes the following alterations, or improvements:—Instead of the Latin motto under each cut, he presents us with four lines of English verse, which contain a general explanation of the emblem. The page facing the cut he divides into two parts or sections of odes and hymns suited to common psalmody, and the moral, or application, also in a poetical dress.
A prose work belonging to the class under notice is an
"Emblematical Representation of the Paradise of God; showing the Nature of Spiritual Industry, in the similitude of a Garden well ordered, dressed, and kept. London, 1779."
The author of this was a visionary Scots gardener named Alexander Clark, who had been favoured with a special manifestation of divine glory, "by which," he says, "(to my own astonishment) I was enabled to see through every profound passage of Scripture, and to spiritualise every material thing;" but he belongs to my fanatical rather {581} than to my emblematical shelf, and may be worth a separate Note hereafter.
Under the name of Farlie, or Fairlie, MR. CORSER mixes up the titles of two distinct books; they are now before me, and divide themselves thus:
1. "Lychnocavsia, sive Moralia Facvm Emblemata. Light's Moral Emblems. Authore Roberto Farlaeo, Scoto-Britanno. 12mo.: London, Th. Cotes for M. Sparke, 1638."
Containing fifty-eight emblems in Latin and English, each with a cut, with a dedication in Latin to the Earl of Ancrum, and one in English to his Countess. There are also complimentary verses by J. Hooper, Christ. Drayton, Mr. Povey, Thos. Beedome, and Edm. Coleman.
2. "Kalendarium Humanae Vitae. The Kalendar of Man's Life. Authore R. F., S.-B. 12mo. London, for W. Hope, 1638."
With a Latin dedication to his patron the Earl of Ancrum. The book contains verses upon the various stages of man's life, under the heads of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; again subdivided into moralisations upon the months, as corresponding with the periods of life, as "August, or Man's Youth," &c. This has also a variety of curious cuts, and both have engraved emblematical titles, the latter bearing on its face "G. Glover fecit."
When book-rarities were in more request, these were costly little volumes; and I shall be glad if any of your correspondents can direct me where to find any notice of Robert Fairlie, the author of two of the most interesting of the emblematical series.
J. O.
* * * * *
PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE.
[The following paper, which has been kindly communicated to us by MR. POLLOCK at the request of DR. DIAMOND, describes a process which deserves the especial attention of our photographic friends, for the beauty and uniformity of its results.]
MR. POLLOCK'S DIRECTIONS FOR OBTAINING POSITIVE PHOTOGRAPHS UPON ALBUMENISED PAPER.
The paper should be carefully chosen, by holding up every sheet to the light, and only those sheets which are homogeneous in appearance and free from spots should be kept for use.
The albumen should be obtained from new-laid hens' eggs; twenty-four is a convenient number to use at a time: these will yield twenty-four ounces of albumen, to which should be added six ounces of distilled writer (making thirty ounces in all) and four per cent. of chloride of ammonium, viz. one ounce and a quarter.
The albumen water and chloride should be whipped with a silver fork for several minutes, and then put into a narrow tall jar, and allowed to stand for not less than two days (forty-eight hours). In cool weather it will keep well for eight days, at the end of which time the upper half of the albumen is to be poured off into a shallow vessel, rather larger than the sheets of paper intended to be albumenised.
To put the Albumen on the Paper.—Take a sheet by two opposite corners; turn one up; place the sheet boldly on the albumen, the centre first coming in contact with the albumen; lower the corners of the paper, gradually carefully excluding, the air. Let the sheet so placed remain four minutes: then take it by the turned up corner, and rip it from the albumen quickly, so as to carry up a quantity of the albumen with it. Let it drain for a minute or two, moving it so as not to allow the albumen to run in streaks; pin it to a piece of tape; and, when dry, pass a very hot iron over the back. This ends the albumenising process.
To make the Paper sensitive.—Place the albumenised side downwards, for four minutes, on the surface of a solution of nitrate of silver, of the strength of ninety grains to the ounce of distilled water; pin it up by one corner to dry, and keep it between pieces of blotting-paper. This must be done by yellow light, or the light of a candle.
To print from the Negative.—The simplest apparatus to have is a number of pieces of plate-glass a quarter of an inch thick, colourless, about twelve inches by ten in size.
The sensitive paper is to be placed on one of the plates of glass, sensitive side upwards, and the negative is to be placed firmly upon it, collodion side downwards; and a second glass plate is then to be placed on the negative, and the whole arrangement exposed to the light. The time for exposure is from three minutes to an hour. With a little practice the negative can be lifted up, and the positive viewed front time to time, without any risk of displacement.
The best rule is to print the lightest shade on the positive very decidedly darker than it would be wished that it should remain permanently.
To fix the Positive.—On removing it from the pressure frame, place it in a bath made as follows:
Water 6 oz. Hyposulphite of soda 1 oz. Nitrate of silver solution, 50 grs. to oz. 15 minims. Iodide of silver, dissolved in a saturated solution of hypo. 10 minims. Chloride of gold 2 grains. Chloride of silver (blackened by light) 5 grains. Acetic acid 2 drops.
Mix these: let them stand some hours; and filter before use. If the chloride of silver is omitted, the bath will do very well, but will very much improve with age, as it will acquire chloride of silver from the positives placed in it. {582}
The time to leave the positive in the fixing bath varies from one hour to twelve. To get good black and white tints, the average time is five or six hours. When the desired tint is obtained, remove it into a bath composed of
Water 6 oz. Hypo. 1 oz.
Leave in this for half an hour, and then keep it in running water for several hours. If the water is hot, the time of soaking may be lessened: boiling water is objectionable. Nearly dry the positive between sheets of clean blotting-paper, and finish it by passing a very hot iron over it.
General Remarks.—The albumenised paper will keep any length of time in a dry place.
When made sensitive, as directed, it will keep three days, always supposing that it is both prepared and kept most carefully excluded from white light. If, instead of a solution of nitrate of silver of ninety grains to the ounce, a weaker one be used, to make the paper sensitive, it will keep when sensitive a much longer time,—with a thirty-grain solution, a fortnight, or sometimes even a month; but then it does not give a positive of the same force and tone as that obtained with the stronger solution.
After the fixing bath has done its day's work, it should be poured back into the bottle from which it came, and the bottle be filled up from the finishing bath; and so the bath is kept always of the same quantity; and by adding from time to time chloride of gold, it is kept of the same quality.
The nitrate of silver and chloride of silver will never have to be renewed. The iodide of silver should be added as at first, viz. ten drops for about every two hundred positives fixed; and the acetic acid, viz. two drops for about every four hundred.
In a bath of twenty-four ounces, as many as thirty positives, five inches by four, may be placed at one time: but the dark tints will then appear very slowly and gradually.
To insure a good positive, next to having a good negative, it is most important to print of the right depth, neither too much nor too little. Great attention should be paid to this: for the finest tints are only to be obtained in positives exposed exactly the right time.
Positives printed in a bright sun quickly are always better than those obtained by longer exposure without sun.
H. P.
21. Maddox Street, Regent Street.
Test for Lenses.—In applying the methods recommended in your last Number for the purpose of testing lenses, there is one precaution absolutely necessary to be taken, but which all your correspondents have omitted to point out. The operator must take care that his focussing-glass is placed at precisely the same distance from the lens as the collodionised glass is. To insure this, my practice is to place a piece of ground glass in the dark frame, which is afterwards to receive the collodionised glass, and to obtain the focus of the lens on that; then to put in the proposed plate, and obtain an impression as described by MR. SHADBOLT. In this way I secure myself from what I believe is often a source of fallacy in these experiments, and am sure that I give the lens a fair trial.
E. S.
Washing Collodion Pictures.—I have never offered to your readers an opinion in photography without having bona fide tested it, to the best of my ability; and however correct my friend MR. SHADBOLT may be, chemically and theoretically, I am convinced that in practice so good a tone is never obtained in a positive collodion picture which has been washed, as in one which has been instantly fixed with the old saturated solution of hyposulphite of soda. The unpleasant tints obtained upon positive collodion pictures, I believe to be much dependent upon the frequent washings in the proofs. When a collodion picture is properly treated, it surpasses in pleasing effect every other photograph. |
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