rather convincing reasons for the assumption The Chinese Gallery was at Hyde Park that Handley Cross was meant for Chelten- Corner. The South African Exhibition there ham, and that the person who suggested is advertised in The Illustrated London News, Jorrocks to Mr. Surtees's mind-for it is 4 May, 1850, p. 302. FREDERIC BOASE. stated that the author was visiting in the [LADY RUSSELL, MR. W. DOUGLAS, and MR. neighbourhood of Cheltenham when he out- R. PIERPOINT also thanked for replies.] lined the novel-was a double Gloucester welter-weight farmer named Paul Crump, who hunted a pack of harriers, and resided at Coomb Hill, near Tewkesbury.

"golden handed" sun, the lavish distributor every attention is paid by the acting manager of the countless benefits which his light and to the accommodation and entertainment of the publick." heat confer upon man; and among the Slavs, HORACE BLEACKLEY. the Lithuanians, the old Prussians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hindus the first conditions of worship were that the sacred fire should be transmitted from father to son (see further Marriage in Celtic Britain in the Brit. Archeol. Assoc., circa 1892).

Journ.

The "Christmas Braun is certainly the "Yule-brand," or "brun"; in Wexford, the West Riding, and in South Worcestershire, a "Christmas brun"; in Somersetshire, 'bran"; and in Devonshire, 66 and “braund " brawn." "2 Hence our phrases"fire-brand" and bran-new," i.c., fire new, or fire-brand new.

66

J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

Wroxton Grange, Folkestone.

An article on Christmas Eve' in Chambers's Book of Days,' ii. 733-7, makes it evident that the superstition referred to by DUNHEVED is not confined to Cornwall. It quotes some verses from Herrick, including

the stanza :

With the last year's brand
Light the new block, and,

For good success in his spending,

On your psalteries play

That sweet luck may

Come while the log is ateending.

THE CANADIAN BOAT SONG' (11 S. i. 81, 136). One rises from reading MR. BAYNE's reply with a feeling akin to despair. If we have not yet learnt at this late day to disentangle fact from fiction in the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' or to distinguish between Lockhart in earnest and Lockhart at play, our critical methods of interpretation and textual annotations of classical works are assuredly not worth the writing. Long ago Prof. Ferrier pointed out that the dialogues of the Noctes' are "conversations on men and manners, life and literature," that is to say, conversations on actual men and manners, on real life and literature. The element of mystification does not enter into the subjects discussed, but has respect only to the persons supposed to be discussing them around Ambrose's jovial board. No doubt the dialogues are variously treated, some being serious and others broadly farcical. It is comparatively easy to discriminate between them. No one who will take a little trouble need be at any loss to say whether politics, when they turn up, are considered in a spirit of savage satire or in a mood of sombre melancholy. In the September Noctes' of 1829, admittedly written by Lockhart, 'The Canadian Boat Song' is introduced in connexion with a discussion of the Highland clearances or evictions going on for years, which had depopu lated many parts of the Highlands. parties taking a share in the discussion are mainly the Shepherd, Tickler, Macrabin or Patrick Robertson, and Lockhart, masquerading for the time being as Christopher North. The speakers are evidently in sober earnest. Would a fastidious writer like Lockhart have been guilty of a device so inartistic as the introduction of a needless mystification into a serious discussion? Such a mystification would have been clumsy and quite unnecessary. Instead of dragging in a friend in Upper Canada, sailing down rivers for days on end, listening to Gaelic songs," he needed but to say a friend sent me the lines," and the mystification, if mystification were intended, would have been far more effectually achieved. But undoubtedly "The Theatre Royal, built about three years Lockhart had no mystification in view. On ago, is a neat and elegant structure after the the contrary, he was taking peculiar pains to model of Covent Garden; its scenery was exe- indicate who the author was. cuted by Mr. Hodgins; the Patentees, Mate doubtless, tinkered Galt's lines and imparted He had, & Robson, are not wanting in anything that can render their new undertaking worthy of support; to them a flavour of Prof. Wilson. But, at good actors are retained at large salaries, and the same time, he indicated in no obscure

W. SCOTT.

The Yule log-or clog," as we called it in Derbyshire-was, when I was a child, brought to my home in much the same way; but we had no fire-place large enough to hold it in one piece, so two of the men, with a double-handed saw, made it into more convenient logs and some loose bits of wood were laid on, amongst which was a piece of the previous Christmas clog. A piece of the last clog burnt on Christmas Day was always put aside for the Christmas to come. THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop.

THEATRICALS IN MARGATE (11 S. i. 167).— I take the following description of the “ new theatre" at Margate, mentioned by W. J. M., from Hall's New Margate and Ramsgate Guide for 1790, p. 12 :

66

The

fashion that the author was, or had lately
been on business in Upper Canada. When
we remember that the Blackwood group com-
prised only a limited number of contributors,
and that among them all there is but one,
so far as we know, who satisfies the required
conditions of authorship, the conclusion
to my mind seems irresistible that Lockhart
had no other than John Galt in view.
Readers who are cognizant of the peculiar
position held by Galt while in Upper Canada
will be at no loss to understand why his
name is not directly mentioned as the author
of The Canadian Boat Song.'
WALTER SCOTT.

John Galt has been suggested as the
author of this song. I am a descendant of
Galt's, and I know his life and his character
well. He had great gifts, and his work as a
Canadian pioneer has never been justly
recognized. But he was a typical Lowland
Scot whose sympathies were all diametrically
anti-Celtic and anti-Highland. He could no
more have written that poem than he could
have written Ossian, as Macpherson did.
His whole tone of mind was opposed to the
spirit of the thing. If Lockhart was not
the sole author if he touched up some-
thing by somebody else that somebody
else was probably Mrs. Grant of Loggan.
W. MUIR.

79, Coleman Street, E.C.

66

22 MORAL POCKETHANDKERCHIEFS (11 S. i. 146, 196).-I remember buying one of these in Liverpool as a child in 1861. It contained a picture of two navvies, a drunken and a sober one, and recorded their conversation on the subject of total abstinence. On showing it at home I was told that it was ' vulgar." Lerwick.

J. WILLCOCK.

child of their issue with a name which might fairly be said to have proved fatal " to the child's elder brothers (or sisters, as the case might be). Although registered extracts to that effect are not contained in my notes at present, I regard it as certain that each of the two elder sons of Dr. Freeman had deceased prior to the christening of the next in line. I realize that I am not without blame for failing to make this clear when writing formerly. WILLIAM MCMURRAY.

Amongst the instances quoted of children of the same family bearing one and the same Christian name, I do not think the following passage from Gibbon's 'Autobiography has been noted :

"So feeble was my constitution, so precarious my life, that, in the baptism of each of my brothers, my father's prudence successively repeated my Christian name of Edward, that, in case of the departure of the eldest son, this patronymic appellation might be still perpetuated in the family," Gibbon was the eldest of six sons.

is

SPINNEY" (11 S. i. 145).—There something to be said in favour of the Latin Even if the word cannot origin of this word. be found in literature before 1228 A.D., it must not be taken as proved that the word was not in use in this country before that date or before the arrival of the Normans. During the civil and military administration CHILDREN WITH THE SAME CHRISTIAN of Britain by the Romans, lasting about NAME (10 S. xii. 365; 11 S. i. 35, 79, 112, 400 years, a large number of Latin words 157).—With reference to the remarks of were incorporated into the British language; MR. STAPLETON, ante, p. 112, I have to it was inevitable, just in the same way as confess to having wandered in my reply from during the past 300 years a number of English the point of the original note without making words have been incorporated into the the circumstance apparent. Although the languages of India. I need only mention contrary would appear to be the case from one such word: "pont is quite common my communication at the second reference, even now in Welsh names of places; and it is not my impression that so unpractical no one, I suppose, will seriously contend a custom as that of bestowing an individual that it is not of Roman origin. The chief Christian name upon two (or more) sur- argument in favour of the word "spinney viving children of the same parents was con- being of similar origin is that it lingers in the tinued to Dr. Samuel Freeman's time. West, whither the British inhabitants were What I was in reality seeking to illustrate driven. The old dictionary-makers treated was the insistence which sundry persons it as a provincial colloquialism, and did not have displayed in naming each successive mention it.

22

FRANK PENNY.

22

I venture to suggest that Spennythorne abolition of the slave trade, had sat for the and Spennymoor are local names which may county for twenty-three years without being be considered in connexion with the word opposed; but on this occasion he was "spinney." ST. SWITHIN.

66

challenged by the two great Yorkshire houses of Fitzwilliam and Lascelles. The poll lasted for fifteen days, the final return being :

Wilberforce, 11,806.
Lord Milton, 11,177.
Lascelles, 10,989.

22 'HEM OF A NOISE (11 S. i. 108).—With reference to MR. MAYHEW'S query as to the meaning of this phrase, quoted in the Rev. J. Coker Egerton's amusing work 'Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways,' I would venture to suggest that it is merely a toning-down To contend with the weight of money of the expression "hell of a noise." The latter expression is in those against him, Wilberforce's supporters got strata of society where expressive vigour up a national subscription, and it is said that rather than refinement is aimed at in con- An interesting account of this election will in ten days over 40,000l. was subscribed. versation, and I have often heard men be found in the current number of The Pall Mall Magazine, p. 441.

common

who would in the ordinary way have used

66

the world" hell" substitute "hem " when addressing those whose susceptibilities might be shocked by the use of the stronger expression. Hem," indeed, may be said to serve the same purpose in rural conversation that expressive dashes do in the columns of newspapers in reporting policeLEONARD J. HODSON.

court cases.

Robertsbridge, Sussex.

In the old days of army enlistment by the queen's shilling there was a story current in Kent of a stage-coachman driving through Chatham who nearly ran down a drunken soldier, who went reeling across the street just in front of the horses. The coachman bawled out: "Now then! Out of the way, sojer! You only costs a shilling, but they'd kick up a hem of a shine if I ran over you." Amongst Kentish people the word “ hem" was always considered to be a euphemistic form of the word "hell."

WALTER B. KINGSFORD.

United University Club.
[MR. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL, OLD SARUM,
MR. T. RATCLIFFE, MR. H. A. C. SAUNDERS, and
MR. W. SCOTT also thanked for replies.]

MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTION (11 S. i. 107, 191). The famous election for Yorkshire in 1807 if not the most expensive on record, was certainly one of the most costly ever fought. Wilberforce, the champion of the

66

T. F. D.

(11 S. i. 150). This will be found to occur, Bob's-a-dying," in the E.D.D.' in forms "bob's-a-dial,' bobs-a-dilo," in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Dorset, and Devon. Its meaning is " a great row or racket; boisterous merriment"; but the origin is not given. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

2

OSBALDISTONE: ITS PRONUNCIATION (11 S. i. 85, 132).-The abbreviated form Osbaston has its counterpart in Barniston, an abbreviated form of Barnardistone. In the Fort St. George records there are many references to members of this family; sometimes the name is spelt Burniston. They were related to the Aislabies and Scattergoods, so that there seems to be no doubt that they belonged to the Barnardistone family.

FRANK PENNY.

'A LAD OF THE O'FRIELS' (11 S. i. 46).— I do not know enough about Irish names to say whether O'Friel is the same as Friel. The latter is certainly a surname. About two years ago I met a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Mr. Ralph Friel, who is now in the Indian Civil Service. He pronounced his frill and freel. name almost as frill, or midway between V. CHATTOPÁDHYAYA.

MOHACS: THE BATTLE (11 S. i. 87, 177).— There is a common Hungarian saying, which has become almost a proverb, But more was lost on Mohacs field," implying that no disaster is unparalleled. An old song referring to the battle has been translated into English, and the traditional air arranged by Francis Korbay. In this song the phrase above quoted occurs as a refrain. FRANK SCHLOESSER.

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Eighteenth Century Literature: an Oxford Miscellany. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

WE find no introduction to this volume, and there is, apparently, no general editor controlling the whole. Editorial and prefatory apologies and explanations being much overdone nowadays, we are not ill pleased at starting after a table of contents straight on the eight essays which make up the book. None of the authors represented is known to us, but we imagine that most of them are young-in that state of studentship, perhaps, when cleverness appears particularly desirable, and a thing seems the better for being smartly said. Certainly, the book is remarkably bright in style throughout, and a tribute to that art of neat expression which is cultivated at Oxford, and wins credit for young essayists.

We do not, however, wish to convey the impression that there is a want of sound work and thought in these pages. On the contrary, they impress us favourably when compared with more important criticisms of an older day, e.g., that of Bagehot on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and that of George Eliot on Edward Young, whose * Night Thoughts' are here considered by Michael West. Young's verse is discussed with considerable ingenuity, and derived from the heroic couplet of Pope. Indeed, it is shown that some of the blank verse, with the change of a single word which suggests itself at the end of the line readily, can be resolved into the characteristic Popian metre. At the beginning of this essay too much is said in praise of Young's style, if we may trust a re-reading we attempted in favourable circumstances last autumn. The depreciation which follows, however, reduces this impression. We doubt if an author who is "unreadably great is really great at all. Young was a deliberate poseur, and rhetoric in skilful hands almost deceives the elect into regarding it as poetry. That seems to us a plain statement of the case.

'Steele and the Sentimental Comedy,' by M. E. Hare, shows considerable powers both of criticism and epigram. Lady Winchelsea,' by Elsie Drew, recognizes Wordsworth's regard for the poetess, and gives a pleasant picture of her. Fielding's "Jonathan Wild," by G. T. Bispham, is a little commonplace here and there, but shows thought, though it does not always satisfy us in its analysis.

Horace Walpole's Views of Literature,' by J. E. Fairfax, seems to us weaker than the other papers, being more of a summary than a criticism. But we are grateful for a recognition of Walpole's good sense and critical power. The writer evidently knows Leslie Stephen's essay on the subject, and is sev on Macaulay's "insufferable view. Growing doubts in many quarters as to the soundness of Macaulay's splendid and imposing fabric of prose criticism here find outspoken expression. He is accused of "incompetence"; and we are informed that "an age that has ceased to admire the rhetoric will pay but scant honour to the caprice that in Macaulay's literary arsenal does service for good sense.'

Enthusiasm as understood in the eigheenth century, by J. E. V. Crofts, is one of the

most interesting papers of the series; but the
analogy "between the Greeks and Queen Anne's
men seems to us far-fetched and unsatisfactory.
We are told that "Homer's Iliad and Pope's
version of it are symptomatic of the same desire,"
which, we gather, is the desire of Greek sculpture,
to be "
cool, restrained, and of exquisite finish.'
The zeal for analogies carries this writer, like
others, beyond the natural scope of the subject.
Greek religion as compared with Christianity
demands more serious notice than is here accorded.
Quoting Byrom's line,

Despair is a cowardly thing,

the writer adds: "For the use of thing' in the first line compare Wordsworth, old, unhappy, far-off things." If the suggestion is that the later poet was indebted to Byrom for the word "thing" in this connexion, we may say that we do not believe it. The phrase in both cases is a natural piece of English which needs no pedigree in style. If one is needed, we might quote the Bible, Wisdom is the principal thing." The people who write the affected prose of to-day might do worse than study the Authorized Version, as well as such a model as R. L. Stevenson.

66

The author of the last essay, on William Lisle Bowles,' T. E. Carson, might express himself more naturally, but brings out satisfactorily the importance of Bowles, which is rather as an inspirer of others than as a poet. Still, the skilful selection of his verse shows that he could write really well at times.

The volume is excellently printed, and the quotations made are usually accurate, though a famous line of Horace (Ars Poetica,' 185) has got its words in the wrong order.

Upper Norwood Athenæum: the Record of the Winter and Summer Excursions, 1909. (Privately Printed.)

We have found in this little volume, as in all previous ones issued by the members of the Upper Norwood Athenæum, reading both useful and pleasant. The papers read show careful preparation, and a real desire to produce as far as possible fresh information regarding the places visited. Although the past year was not favourable for outdoor excursions, the ramblers were singularly fortunate in having only one wet day. The first winter visit was to Austin Friars. Church, when Mr. Frederick Higgs read a paper. The community is well-to-do, and supports a pastor, who consented to the ancient building being inspected, and the "well-informed verger, Mr. Rus, was quite delighted to show the building to visitors." Afterwards the members visited Carpenter's Hall, where they saw Wardens' caps or crowns dating from 1561, the Master's silver drinking cup dated 1611, and other plate. Another winter ramble, undertaken by Mr. Jonathan Downes, was to places of interest in Fleet. Street and the Strand.

The summer excursions opened with Penshurst Place, where the visitors were shown the original spinet presented by Elizabeth. The paper read by Mr. Charles Wheeler traced the history of Penshurst and the Sidneys. Rochester had been visited in 1899; but as that visit had been devoted chiefly to Dickens's residence at Gad's Hill, a second visit was made, conducted by Mr. W. T. Vincent. Mr. T. C. Thatcher took the ramblers to Godalming, and Mr. G. H. Lindsey-Renton