Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/26

 18

NOTES AND QUERIES. po s, XL JAN. 2, 1009.

Do not the words quoted by M., " bolted an old apple-woman into the parcel-post,"

' D.N.B.,' to which I am myself referred).. The work is constantly quoted by compilers

_ A i p ft -- J.J.v^ Vi *v AU' vv/J..ft.K7i/Mi*...i/.L y \_t u.*_r vv^vt. *_/ y x/vsj3L.|^jLJ.v/.l. o 1

refer to a post for parcels-some form of, of i aw. bo oks among others, by J. J. S..


 * T.^-vw4-^w'n */-iC*4- V I I \t -Ho T -T^-r-vv-n^n-J OT-T^*T- r>/-\ir-*T -win 1 * CTT > T ^-4 l

Wharton in his Law Lexicon,, and Cowei in his ' Interpreter.'

porter's rest ? The flat-topped street corner posts were, I always understood, used as parcel rests, hence " parcel post."

ALECK ABBAHAMS.

HENRY HALLIWELL, B.D. (10 S. x. 426). My friend COL. FISHWICK will find, if he refers to ' D.N.B.,' that this scholar is duly recorded in that work. C. W. SUTTON.

'LIGHTS IN LYRICS' (10 S. x. 430). Our firm published this book some fifty years ago, but we cannot now trace the author's name. J. D. POTTER.

145, Minories, E.

MANOR HOUSE c. 1300 (10 S. x. 450). One of these, Upton Court, Bucks, is de- scribed by the Rev. P. W. Phipps (in his ^History of Upton-curn-Chalvey,' p. 11) in the following words : " Few more pic- turesque buildings exist in England, and its roof is the admiration of artists." It has also been described by Jesse, G. A. Sala, and more recently by Mr. J. J. Hissey.

R. B.

Upton.

Mr. S. O. Addy in his ' Evolution of the English House,' 1898, specifies two manor houses of about this period, viz., a house at Charney Basset, near Wantage, Berkshire (p. 146), and Padley Hall, near Hathersage, Derbyshire (pp. 135-46). W. B. GERISH.

Bishop's Stortt'ord.

TRUSS-FAIL (10 S. x. 490). This was a kind of leapfrog. In Nares's ' Glossary ' Halliwell and Wright quote from Cleveland (1613-58)

Or do the Juncto leap at truss-a-fail ?

H. P. L.

HARRIS, SILVER-BUCKLE MAKER (10 S. x. 449). FOOTGEAR should apply to the Secre- tary of the Association of Royal Warrant- Holders. F. HOWARD COLLINS.

FLEET PRISON (10 S. x. 110, 258, 478). If Q. V. will visit the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, he will find there the original work of " Fleta " among the Cot- tonian MSS. (Julius B. viii.), Of course, in the words of Q. V., " there ain't no sich person " now ; but that his identity is concealed under the name of " Fleta " is unquestioned. Under this name the Latin textbook of English law is supposed to have been projected by one of the corrupt judges whom Edward I. imprisoned (cf. the

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Oxford Thackeray* With Illustrations. Edited'

by George Saintsbury. Vols. VII. -XVII. (Oxford

University Press.)

SINCE onr notice of the first six volumes of this* edition (ante, p. 259), two more batches of books have appeared, which complete the whole issue of seventeen volumes. Readers can now secure at a moderate cost an edition which is well" printed, well edited, and exceptionally well provided with illustrations, and abundance of those pictures which Thackeray threw off in his inimitable style. All the volumes are priced at two shillings net, though in older days publishers would have had no' hesitation in charging more for, say, 'The Virginians ' and ' The Newcomes,' which both run to over 1,000 pages of Introduction, Text, and Appendix. The last feature is one of special interest,, for it gives us the passages which Thackeray thought it well to reject in his latest revision. Among the illustrations must be men- tioned the charming initial letters with which Thackeray adorned his chapters. Many artists^ have tried their hand on Becky Sharp, but none has- come up to Thackeray, who is seen here as his owm best illustrator, though Dicky Doyle is his equal ini ' The Newcomes,' and reigns unsurpassable in ' The Rose and the Ring.'

Prof. Saintsbury's introductions are full of know- ledge and enthusiasm tor his author. He seems to us to spend too much time and energy in refuting opinions and views which are not seriously regarded, and he often adopts an exaggerated strain, which pro- vokes combat. We wish, too, that he would write more intelligibly for the average reader ; we should' prefer to see in plain English such a sentence as this: "But variations 'from the blue bed to the brown' like 'infantile' for 'infantine' are liardly- tanti."

It is right that an admirer should edit a great author, even if he is apt to strike, rather than listen to, detractors. The sort of knock-down blow which indicates that if any one disapproves of such-and-such a work, he knows nothing about it, and should not be heeded, is a handicap to proper criticism, and is occasionally to be discovered here. But as a whole the Professor is admirable in his- appreciations, especially of the big novels, which are the eternal delights of the world of men and the world of letters alike. He is singularly unacademic in hi* use of slang, and of daring and unusual' words, such as "triplicity " and "triumfeminate " r but he achieves a pungency of expression which, perhaps, justifies his boldness. Such things are- imderstandable, but the wit which depends on references to funny stories and allusions which are dragged into their context is unnecessary. When he writes in a straightforward and un- adorned style abouti Becky Sharp or Ethel New-