Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/106

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NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. x. A i, isos

Observing that these technical words used by Querard had never been collected, a learned Belgian doctor of medicine and writer, Claude Charles Pierquin de Gem- bloux (1798-187- ?), made a list of them, which Querard published in his magazine Le Querard (p. 154) in 1855.

Pierquin says he compiled his list from the ' Supercheries,' and he quotes Comte Daru, who said, " Si vous n'inventez rien, creez des mots nouveaux." This he says Querard did in creating these technical words ; but besides this Pierquin credits him with introducing the English word " retrospective " to the French in 1832 (see 10 S. viii. 206).

When I published * A Notice of the Life of J. M. Querard ' in 1867, I printed a translation or adaptation of Pierquin' s list, with additions. Probably no notice would have been taken of my list had I not been seized with the idea of writing an English book on pseudonyms. This work appeared in 1868, and was the first of its kind in the English language ; it is the one already mentioned, the * Hand- book of Fictitious Names.' In it I made use of many of these terms to designate the kind of pseudonym. Thus after " A bird at Bromsgrove " I put " ironym " ; after " One who is but an attorney " I put " enigmatic phraseonym," and so on.

Pierquin dwells on the need for technical words in justification of Querard' s use of them. Querard had very few technical terms at first ; it is not until the fourth volume that we find those nice distinctions on which De Le Court remarks.

Lately Mr. W. P. Courtney, the author of ' A Register of National Bibliography,' informed me he proposed to reprint my list in a work he was writing about English anonymous and pseudonymous literature* ; and he asked me if I could supply English examples where lacking in my list. I set to work, but soon found that the list of terms required re-editing that it would be archaic and an anachronism simply to reprint it as it is,- with errors committed by Querard, by Pierquin, and myself, and (worse still) without correcting those who reprinted my list. Forty years had made a great difference. The result is that I have recompiled the present list from the various books I cite.

ago. Mr. Courtney has since informed me that his book is in the press, and will be published at the end of the year (1908).
 * The present article was written about a year

One of Querard' s mistakes if indeed' it was a mistake was giving the word " polyonym " as " pplynym," until he came to ' Societe litteraire de jolies femmes.*" When next he uses the word it is as " polyo- nym," for ' Vrais Catholiques franais.' Querard' s mistake is remarkable because- in 1846 he published a ' Dictionnaire des Ouvrages polyonymes et anonymes.'

However, Pierquin has " polynym," and thus I was misled and those who copied me. If I had known Greek, I should have- no doubt corrected it ; and if Pierquin had known English, he would not have translated " A. Known " as " un inconnu."

My list was first reprinted by John Power [b. 1820 d. 1872) in his ' Handybook about Books ' in 1870. For years before, and while that book was going through the- press, Power was ill, and quite unfit to do- the work he had undertaken. He told me- hie had sent me proofs, but they never- reached me. Luckily, he acknowledged the source of the words ; if he had not,, the subsequent copyists would all have- adopted the list as their original, and I should have been ignored, as the information in my ' Handbook ' always has been : in a great measure due to a periodical stealing my information and printing it without acknowledgment.

In 1882 a book called ' Authorship and! Publication [with] bibliographical appen- dix ' was published by Wyman & Sons,, the well-known printers. The first portion of the appendix, treating of ' Anonymous; Books and how to describe them,' says :

" The following vocabulary, compiled from various- more or less accessible sources, may be useful to authors who wish to define correctly any degree- of anonymity [read pseudonymity] in authorship. It is also of practical utility, in suggesting the multii'arious devices by which the personality of an author may be concealed or disguised." The " various sources " consist of one,, namely, the list in my Querard,. from which it is copied. Messrs. Wyman, the publishers, and printers of the book, were no doubt unaware of this piece of plagiarism.

Next it was a pleasure to find that several 1 of the words were included in one of the most authentic and satisfactorily executed works ever published, * The Oxford English Dictionary,' edited in chief by Dr. Sir J. A. H. Murray, 1885 (still in progress).

Being unable to invent anything, I have unwittingly followed Comte Daru's advice.. I have suggested the word "anonyma"r: first in * N. & Q.' on 2 May, 1896 (8 S. ix.. 342). Two of the words introduced to the English language through my list