Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/241

 10 s. XL MAR. 6, 1909.J NOTES AND QUERIES.

197

under 22 March, 1830. Emerson's ' Conduct of Life ' appeared only in 1860, but I have just come across two earlier instances of the expression in his ' Essay on Self-Re- liance,' published in 1841 :

" Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet .... but the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corre- sponds to the force which built a tower or sculp- tured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien or forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, ' Who are you, sir ? ' Yet they all are suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture, waits for my verdict ; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise."

And towards the close of the essay :

" The civilised man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so, being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky."

From a comparison of dates, then, and inasmuch as Emerson visited England in 1833, and was received into the highest literary circles, it is fair to conclude that he adopted the phrase from Greville, who asserts that it was then a cant term in use at Newmarket among sporting men to denote, as one may suppose, the outside man, ever alert to learn the secrets of jockeys and the results of private trials.

N. W. HILL.

New York.

HERALDRY (10 S. xi. 9). The shield of arms in a church window mentioned by U. V. W. may be the arms of Richard II., impaling; those of his first consort, Anne of Bohemia. IXION.

Will it be a help to U. V. W. to remind him that Joan, one of the daughters of Edward I., married a Monthermer ? S. D. C.

MONKEYS STEALING FROM A PEDLAR (10 S. vi. 448 ; vii. 13, 256 ; x. 373). I find that this subject was anything but new in Coryat's day. In ' Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages ' Mr. Cutts observes :

"In a late thirteenth -century MS. Royal 10 Edward IV. are some illuminations of a mediaeval story which afford us very curious illustrations of a pedlar and his pack. At f. 149 the pedlar is asleep under a tree, and monkeys are stealing his pack, which is a large bundle bound across and across with rope, with a red strap attached to the rope by which it is slung over the shoulder. On the next page the monkeys have opened the wrapper, showing that it covered

a kind of box, and the mischievous creatures are running off with the contents, among which we can distinguish a shirt and some circular mirrors. On_f. 150 the monkeys have conveyed their spoil up into the tree, and we make out a purse and belt, a musical pipe, a belt and dagger, a pair of slippers, a hood and gloves, and a mirror. On the next page, a continuation of the same subject, we see a pair of gloves, a man's hat, a woman's head-kerchief ; and again on p. [f ?] 151 we have, in addition, a mirror, a woman's head- dress, and a man's hood." Pp. 516-17.

ST. SWITHIN.

" SERASKIER " : ITS PRONUNCIATION (10 S. xi. 144). I venture to think that Ogilvie and other modern dictionaries are right in laying the stress upon the second syllable of this word. Seraskier is not a Turkish word, but a Perso-Arabic compound, adopted by the Osmanli : sar-'askar, which literally means the Head of the Soldiery. The accent is correctly placed on the first syllable of 'askar. The Turkish pronunciation comes from a way the Osmanli have of pronouncing k as ki before a, o, or u. The name of the late Grand Vizier, Kiamil Pasha, was pro- perly Kamil, an Arabic word meaning " per- fect." W. F. PRIDE AUX.

" MAY I THROUGHOUT THIS DAY OF THTNE "'

(10 S. xi. 108) is hymn 825 of C. Wesley's ' Short Hymns,' 1 762, and is foxmded upon Rev. i. 10. Needless to say, the hymn is far older than Dr. Robert Newton's time.

H. J. F.

"HANDSOME TRACY" (10 S. ix. 188). The following description of Robert Tracy, the beau, which I take from a scarce work entitled ' Nocturnal Revels ; or, The History of King's Place,' 2 vols., 1779, printed for M. Goadby, Paternoster Row, may be of interest to the original inquirer :

" He was about five feet nine inches high, of an Herculean form, with a remarkably agree- able countenance ; and on account of the ex- travagance of his dress, he was justly entitled to the appellation of Beau Tracey. Abstract him from women, and he was a man far above medio- crity, with regard to sense and learning. He was a tolerable good scholar, had a very pretty library, and was so fond of reading that whilst he was under the hairdresser's hands he constantly perused some favourite author."

The account goes on to say that he " de- stroyed himself by his vices, before he had attained his thirtieth year, though he possessed an excellent constitution." It is stated also that he was one of the early patrons of Charlotte Hayes, the famous procuress, who eventually married Denis O' Kelly, the owner of the race-horse Eclipse. HORACE BLEACKLEY.