Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/145

 10* s. i. FEB. e, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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card which accompanied a pack of cards, and I have always understood that a firm of American cardmakers, finding that their customers made use of the blank card instead of immediately throwing it away, imprinted thereon their device of a jester, and from this circumstance the card came to be known as the joker. I cannot find any reference to the wordier before 1880. I remember being shown such cards as a novelty about 1878. F. JESSEL.

NOTES ON BOOKS, 4o.

The Works of Thomas Nashe. Edited by Ronald

B. McKerrow. Vol. I. (Bullen.) A BOOK to the student of Tudor literature greater than a reissue of the works of Thomas Nashe is scarcely to be hoped until Mr. Bullen gives us his long-meditated and long-postponed edition of Beau- mont and Fletcher. Though not to be counted among the most potent spirits of the Elizabethan epoch, Nashe is an interesting and, considering his brief life, a fairly voluminous writer, and is closely connected with the literary development of his period. Best known as a controversialist and satirist, he is entitled to a place among poets and dramatists, and is one of the most vivacious chro- niclers of the follies and fantasies of his day. In their original shape his works are all rare and costly. Some of them have been reprinted in more or less expensive forms. Others are included in the publications of the first Shakespeare Society and in the eminently valuable and scholarly col- lections of Prof. Arber. In the " Huth Library," meantime, Dr. Grosart gave the whole of Nashe's works that could, in his judgment, be set before a modern public. Like almost all Grosart's pub- lications, the issue of Nashe was in a very limited edition, and is seldom to be found except in im- portant libraries. It occupies six volumes, and is, as we can abundantly testify, a work of much interest.

The present handsome and attractive reprint wil be in four volumes, of \yhich three will be occupied by text, with the addition of prefatory notes chiefly bibliographical, while the fourth will be occupiec with a memoir, notes, and a glossary, the last namec

jublic or private libraries. Nothing that can con- ribute to the advantage or delight of the reader is wanting, and the edition seems m everyway prefer- able to that of Grosart. Where we have compared etter the same, except that in the edition now issued the short is substituted for the long s of early printing, so apt to be confounded with the/. What will be the contents of subsequent volumes we know not as yet. ' Martin's Month's Minde ' is rejected as presumably not by Nashe. We may also assume that the kriiptadia, still in manuscript, which Nashe wrote for the delight of the young rufSers of the Court and for the filling of his own very ill-garnished pockets, will not be printed. Mr. McKerrow's task, so far as it is accomplished, is admirably dis- charged. The most important portion of it has yet to be awaited.
 * he texts we find them word for word and letter for

Memorials of Old Oxfordshire. Edited by P. H.

Ditchfield. (Bemrose & Sons.) THE editor is fortunate in his county and, on the whole, in his coadjutors in this volume. Apart from the glories of Oxford itself, the theme is spacious, and the more remote regions described may be said to have been but recently discovered as far as modern literature is concerned, or, at any rate, to have been revived with the enthusiasm which they merit. Mr. Ditchfield opens his volume with a summary of ' Historic Oxfordshire,' which, though brief, shows considerable accomplishment. The next paper, however, by Mr. A. J. Evans, on ' The Rollright Stones and their Folk-lore,' is the most striking in the volume, and well worth perusal. Mr. Evans has made careful research in the neigh- bouring villages, for the stones themselves stand in solitude on a hPl, and gathered from Long Compton, and Great and Little Rollright, a body of remarkable tradition, which is fast dying put in consequence of increased facilities for going to London and other ;populous, but less romantic spots. Outside the main circle of stones, which has been of recent years encumbered with an iron railing, there stands, on the other side of an ancient road, a single stone called " the King." This monarch was nearly in view of Long Compton, according to tradition and Mr. Evans, when a witch (it was always Mother Shipton in the version we heard) said to him :

If Long Compton thou canst see, King of England thou shalt be.

But he failed to reach the necessary point on the hill, and with all his men and the Queen which is,

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indispensable in the case of Nashe. Beginning with we may add, the local title of the biggest stone of ' '

'The Anatomie of Absurditie,' the first volume contains ' A Covntercvffe given to Martin Jvnior,' ' The Retvrne of Pasqvill,' ' The First Parte of Pas- qvil's Applogie,' ' Pierce Penilesse, his Svpplication to the Divell,' 'Strange Newes,' <fec., and 'The Terrors of the Night.' Many of these belong to the famous Martin Marprelate controversy. ' Pierce Penilesse ' is, perhaps, the best known of Nashe's works, and is full of autobiographical revelations. There are, indeed, few works of the writer that do not reveal the abject state in which he lived, bowed down by poverty and disease, and unable to pre- serve the esteem or patronage of those whom his wit attracted. The edition is in all respects critical, the various

the circle nearest the road was turned to stone. A Long Compton man, not so long dead, had seen, he used to say, the fairies dance round the King stone ; his widow, now between seventy and eighty, was the daughter of a woman who was murdered as a witch. The writer of these lines has himself been introduced to a reputed witch (male, as in old English) in a neighbouring parish, but the chief reputation of this man was apparently due to the fact that he had made a little money, and, oddly enough, kept it. A minor poet put this district into fashion for a while, as if it was all that was most charming. So it is, in a way ; yet it has disadvantages. We recall the parson who said of his damp vicarage, rather ruefully : " Oh, yes ! it is

readings being supplied at the foot of the page, and \ a nice place, except that moss will grow on the facsimile lithographs being given from copies in front stairs." It is a bleak district, but offers a