Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/201

 10* S.L FEB. 27,1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

161

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY tl, 130,',.

CONTENTS. -No. 9.

.NOTES : ' New Amsterdam ' Shakespeariana, 161 Bur- ton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' 163 The English in France Sir T. Wyatt's Riddle, 164 Crucifix at Old St. Paul's Chicago in 1853 A Relic of Chateaubriand, 165 Tennyson on Britain February 30 ' Nicholas Nickleby': Capt. Cuttle Skellat Bell: Mort Bell Our Oldest Public School, 166' The True Methodist,' 167.

QUERIES : " The Crown and Three Sugar Loaves " " He who knows not" Eleanor Mapletoft, 167 Authors of Quotations Arms of Ghent, 168 'Lord Bateman and his Sophia' Dorsetshire Snake-lore Mess Dress: Sergeants' Sashes Arms of Lincoln Is Golf Scandinavian ? Turner : Canaletto, 168 " Chevinier" Guide to Manor Rolls- Regicides of Charles I. Egerton-Warburton Ancient Britons" Bellamy's " " Ovah " Bubbles Immortality of Animals Jamaica Newspaper, 169.

REPLIES : Nelson's Sister Anne Curious Christian Names, 170 French Miniature Painter ' Memoirs of a Stomach,' 171 "Papers" Pannell Aylsham Cloth- Robin a Bobbin Robert Catesby Christmastide Folk- lore, 172 Court Posts under Stuart Kings Nameless Gravestone Batrome " Diabread " Bibliography of Epitaphs, 173 St. Patrick at Orvieto Reign of Terror "Acerbative" Trial of Queen Caroline The Cope Chauceriana General Stewart's Portrait, 174 Anatomic Vivante Peculiars "First catch your hare " Envelopes "Prior to" Moon Folk-lore, 175 Raleigh : its Pronun- ciation Smothering Hydrophobia Patients Tea as a Meal Chinese Ghosts, 176 Dolores, Musical Composer Marlborough and Shakespeare, 177.

NOTES ON BOOKS :' Great Masters' 'HierurgiaAngli- cana' 'Quarterly Review."

Death of Capt. Thorne George.

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

jjiatts,

'NEW AMSTERDAM.'

(See ante, p. 58.)

IN your notice of my work on 'New Amsterdam,' &c., I observe that you have inadvertently confounded the so-called Justus Danckers view of 1650, at the frontispiece of the book, with the "Hartgers view," of about 1630, at p. 2 of the work, in stating that I claim to have discovered that it was originally printed in a reversed form. As it stands that would be an entirely untenable claim, and if not corrected it will be quite likely to draw out adverse comment from this side of the water.

Both the Danckers view and the earlier Hartgers view were undoubtedly taken by means of a camera obscura, which instrument had been recently introduced into draughting operations at that period. This instrument, when unprovided with supplementary lenses, or with a reflecting mirror, takes in a reversed form, as is well known.

Now as to the Danckers view, I have the etching in its reversed or original form (the only print of the kind that I nave ever seen, although I have paid considerable attention to the subject), but I know that this view had been printed in proper form almost a

century ago. The explanation of this is that the view of 1650 contains well-known land- marks, and a person with the least know- ledge of the topography of the town could see at a glance that something was wrong with the view, and a little examination would suffice to show what the difficulty was.

With the Hartgers view, however, the case was different, and this was the view which I claim to have first placed in proper form. There can be little doubt that this was a mere engineer's sketch, to show the plan of the fort, and must have been made about 1628-30. At this time there were no land- marks which could be recognized without very intimate acquaintance with the localities. The peculiar position of the fort, upon a point of land with a river on each side of it, was the cause that the reversed view did not present an intrinsically absurd appearance ; and consequently, though every one saw that there was something strange about the view, this was usually ascribed oy writers to the unskilfulness in drawing of our ancestors. Hartgers, in publishing his ' Beschrijvingh van Virginia' in 1651, had found the view somewhere and inserted it just as it was.

Writers on the subject of the views of New Amsterdam, of whom there have been several, have taken the date of Hartgers' work as the period of the view, although the least knowledge of the conditions existing at that time would appear to have been suffi- cient to have prevented them from doing so. In their comments upon this view none of them appears to have had any suspicion that the view was not in proper form. People who did not claim to be original investigators made still worse work of it. As the build- ings, which were mostly upon the east or right hand looking towards the fort, appear in the original to be upon the left hand or west, one or two popular writers have announced that there stood the first houses in New Amsterdam, and there has actually been a tablet put up upon a building in that vicinity to the above effect, without appa- rently a scintilla of other evidence a disgrace to the city. J. H. INNES.

New York.

SHAKESPEARIANA.

" PRENZIE " IN ' MEASURE FOR MEASURE.' For more than fifty years the mystery of the presence of this apparently meaningless word in a famous passage in ' Measure for Measure ' (Act III. sc. i.) has been from time to time a subject of debate in the columns of ' N. & Q.,' but with no absolutely decisive result. (See 1 st S. iii. 401, 454, 499, 522 ; iv. 11,