Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/433

 i. APRIL so, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

357

mare's nest in the supposed inconsistency between the pronunciation of ankle, anJci/losis, <fec., and such words as inquire, inconvenient, inconsistent. There is no possible relation between the two classes of words. The latter are compound words, consisting of a verb and a prefix, as "in" and "qusero," while the former are merely the arbitrary English methods of spelling Greek words which are believed to have been pronounced, so far as this particular sound is concerned, as we usually pronounce the consonant ng. Why the sup- posed Greek pronunciation, for example, of dyKuAwcris should govern that of compound words derived from the Latin it is difficult to see. J. FOSTER PALMER.

BURNS ANTICIPATED (10 th S. i. 286). In reference to the very striking and interesting parallel furnished by him, W. I. R. V. says, "Whether this anticipation of Burns has been previously noticed in print I am not aware."

I may say that it appears in an interesting article on 'Parallel Ideas of Nations,' contri- buted to Chambers^ Edinburgh Journal for 3 February, 1844 (New Series, No. 5, p. 70). It is also given in Bartlett's 'Familiar Quota- tions,' p. 226.

The context of the above article also gives two other anticipations of Burns worth transcribing :

The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man 's the gowd for a' that.

Wycherley says, in 'The Plain Dealer,' "I weigh the man, not his title : 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better or heavier."

This, too, is given in Bartlett :

Whoe'er thou art, O reader, know

That Death has murdered Johnie ; And here his body lies fu' low

For saul, he ne'er had ony.

" In a rare old work, ' Nugas Venales, sive

Thesaurus ridendi et jocandi,' &c., bearing date

1663, but without place or publisher's name, is a

Latin epigram turning upon exactly the same jest :

Oh Deus omnipotens, vituli miserere Joannis,

Quern mors prasveniens npn sinit esse bovem : Corpus in Italia est, habet intestina Brabantus, Ast animam nemo: Cur? quia non habuit."

To the parallel from 'Cupid's Whirligig,' anticipating

Her prentice ban' she tried on man, &c., I may here add one less close, but similar enough to be interesting. Steele, in his ' Christian Hero,' says of Adam awaking and seeing Eve : " He beheld his own rougher make softened into sweetness, and tempered with smiles : he saw a creature who had, as it were, Heaven's second thought in her forma- tion." Here we may, I suppose, see a tacit

allusion to the saying, " Second thoughts are best."

The similarity, at least in form, between Burns's 'Twa Dogs' and the immortal ' Coloquio de los Perros ' of Cervantes, in the ' Novelas Ejemplares,' has probably been often noted. C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

LESLIE STEPHEN'S 'ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY' (10 tn S. i. 288). The Maxwell who gave a description of the very essence of garden was probably Sir William Stirling Maxwell, whose description of the island garden of Aranjuez is quoted at pp. 286-7 in 'The Praise of Gardens,' by Albert Forbes Sieveking, pub- lished by Dent & Co. in 1899.

JAMES WATSON.

Folkestone.

'JOHN INGLESANT' (10 th S. i. 289). Much information is given in the articles (princi- pally by the late CUTHBERT BEDE) at 6 th S. vii. 341, 387, 457, 481.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Scots Peerage. Founded on Wood's Edition of Sir Robert Douglas's ' Peerage of Scotland.' Edited by Sir James Balfour Paul, Lord Lyon King of Arms. Vol.1. (Edinburgh, Douglas.) To a |ociety of genealogists and men of letters is owing what bids fair to be one of the most important genealogical and heraldic works of modern times. The society in question, which numbers many well- known writers and heraldic experts, is presided over by Lyon as editor, and has, accordingly, a cachet of authority. How intricate and difficult are questions of Scottish descent is generally known. Our own pages overflow with correspondence and controversy on a subject which, in a time happily past, led to some bickering. For the basis of the great work now undertaken has been accepted John Philip Wood's edition of ' The Peerage of Scotland,' by Sir Robert Douglas, Bart., a work which, in spite of the castigation it received from Riddell, is recognized as sound, painstaking, and, considering the state of knowledge at the time, authoritative that is, as nearly authoritative as it could be expected to be. First published in 1764, in a thick folio of over seven hundred pages, it appeared in an enlarged form, in two volumes folio, in 1813, with the additions of Wood. Much of the original matter has been re- written so much, indeed, as to justify the editor in giving the work an altered title. Himself a member of an old Scottish family, Sir Robert Douglas found open to him the records of the principal Scottish houses, and his book was anotable advance upon that of George Crawfurd, published almost half a century earlier. That it could have been final, even as regards the period reached, no one with the slightest familiarity with Scottish pedigrees could have