Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/67

 s. i. JAN. 16, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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tions have been usually omitted or com- pressed as far as possible, because Mr. Wrench so extensively deals with that department in his admirable work"; the word "toys" is, however, one of the few exceptions to which a derivation is attached, that given being " Fr. toise = & fathom, the space allotted to each man in College." Right or wrong, the Beetleites clearly preferred this derivation.

I. B. B.

"FISCAL" (9 th S. xii. 444). Every word, no less than every dog, has its day, and now is the chance of fiscal. It has a close competi- tor in dump, but it manages to maintain pre-eminence. The use of it has increased a thousandfold, and tongues utter it glibly, under eyes that but a year ago hardly knew the word by sight. Not long ago the keeper (fern.) of a registry office informed a lady who was in search of a kitchen-maid that the fiscal conditions of domestic service had entirely changed in recent times.

ST. SWITHIN.

DR. PARKINS (9 th S. xii. 349 ; 10 th S. i. 15). Besides the books mentioned in Mr. Beale's contribution to the Grantham Journal, John Parkins was the author of ' The Holy Temple of Wisdom,' an edition of Culpeper's 'Eng- lish Physician,' 1810, 1814, and ' The Universal Fortune-Teller,' 1810, 1814; 1822. He has already figured in 4 th S. ix. 76, where other books are mentioned. I have seen none but
 * The Universal Fortune-Teller.' W. C. B.

In the 'History of Ufton Court,' by A. M. Sharp (1892, 4to), there is at p. 239 a pedigree (Grantham, co. Lincoln) of this branch of the Perkins or Parkins family, from the Visita- tion of Lincoln, 1654, with additions from parish registers. There is another of Parkins of Ashby, parish of Bottesford ; but the pedigrees are not carried down to the dates mentioned of publication of books by Dr. Parkins. VICAR.

[MR. E. H. COLKMAX also sends a list of Parkins's works.]

SHAKESPEARE'S GEOGRAPHY (9 th S. xi. 208, 333, 416, 469 ; xiL 90, 191). MR. STRONACH selects from my letters a few sentences, and takes no notice of the rest. I gave reasons for what I wrote, and if MR. STRONACH is blind to them, I may suppose that other readers of ' N. & Q.' will not be so. I pointed out to MR. STRONACH that Shakspeare thought Milan to be on the sea. It is impossible that Bacon, a traveller on the Continent, and a man of genera] knowledge, could have made this mistake. I have formed my own opinions from my own reading, and it is not necessary

to refer me to others, who cannot have con- sidered the question under discussion more thoroughly than I have done. There have been, and are, many competent critics who differ from the views of the gentlemen whom MR. STRONACH names. Shakspeare had enough Latin to know the meaning of the very simple hackneyed quotations which are found in those plays that are undoubtedly his. Xobody ever said the contrary. Shak- speare apparently must have known some- thing of Plautus. But he might have got his Knowledge indirectly, without having read the Latin. He might have obtained the plot of ' The Comedy of Errors ' in more ways than one. Possibly he rewrote the play of somebody else. Ritson has said :

"Shakspeare was not under the slightest obliga- tion, in forming this comedy, to Warner's trans- lation of the 'Menaechmi.' He has not a name,

line, or word from the old play, nor any one inci- dent but what must of course be common to every

translation This comedy, though boasting the

embellishments of our author's genius, was not originally his, but proceeded from some inferior playwright, who was capable of reading the ' Menechmi ' without the aid of a translation."

I have noticed one difference between Bacon and Shakspeare. In reading Bacon's 'Essays ' I find that he invariably has the conjunctive mood after if. Shakspeare in his chief plays uses the indicative or the conjunctive mood, without distinction, after this conjunction. I must have counted at least a hundred instances of if with the indicative in his plays ; and I am sure that there must be very many more instances. It may, however, be said that Bacon supervised his 'Essays,' and that the author of the plays did not do so.

E. YARDLEY. [This discussion must now close.]

GLASS MANUFACTURE (9 th S. xii. 428, 515). The inquiry under this heading was whether country gentlemen were occupied in glass-making. In Joseph Hunter's ' South Yorkshire, Deanery of Doncaster,' ii. 99, it is stated that

" in the time of the first Earl of Strafford the manufacture of glass was introduced at Wentworth, and a glass-house erected. The memory of it is still preserved in the name Glass-house Green, now enclosed."

In the same volume, p. 35, we read, under Catcliffe, in the parish of Rotherham ; that "a glass-house was established here in 1740, by a company of persons who had been previously em- ployed in the glass-house near Bolsterstone, then in high reputation."

From original documents I am able to add some of the later history of the Catcliffe works. In 1764 John May, glass 'manu-