Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/369

 10 s. XL APRIL IT, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

301

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1909.

CONTENTS. No. '277.

NOTES: -John Noorthouck, 301 -London: Origin of the Name, 302 Hanging Alive in Chains, 303 Edward Fitz- Gerald, 304 Mechanical Road Carriages " High Life" in Modern Greek Father Angus "Tha'woodin image" Shakespeare Allusion Aunt Sallee : Sallee, 305 Rail- ways in the Forties -Rule of the Road Rev. Thomas Nicolson : Death's Head Ring Grenadier Guards' Band Glamorgan John Clayton : William Clayton, Lord Sundon, 306 William Leybourn " Stick to your tut " Hatchments in Churches" Hawser," 307.

QUERIES -.The Rhine a French Boundary Tobacconist's Highlander : his Bat, 307 Holt Castle Author Wanted Shairp and Mordaunt Families James Burney, Portrait Painter Spencer Cowper, Justice of the Common Pleas Sir Arthur Hesilrige Fecamp Abbey : Brede Manor St. Amelia and Santa Guglielma, Queens of Hungary, 308 Cole's ' Calendar of Huntingdon 'Lawrence the Wit " La pierre qui rage " " Pickshaft," a Measure Sainte- Beuve on Castor and Pollux Football at Scone, 309 Salt-Cellars wiih Raised Lobster and Shells Hare fore- casting Fire Seventh Light Dragoons Collar of SS (Ireland) Thomas Shakspeare, 1613, 310.

REPLIES: Pimlico: Eyebright, 310 Polhill Family: Cromwell Descent, 314 "Punt" in Football, 315 "Master Pipe Maker" Jews in Fiction Authors of Quotations Wanted, 316 "Though lost to sight," <fec. Dickens Quotation William Clayton, Baron Sundon Tyrrell's March : Tyrrell's Pass " Before one can say Jack Robinson," 317 Burial half within and half without a Church - Bruges : its Pronunciation "Kersey" Ben Meir's Chronicles, 318.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-'The People of the Polar North.' Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

JOHN NOORTHOUCK. I HAVE just had placed in my hands by Mr. Hugh Spottiswoode, of the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode, a box that was delivered one hundred years ago to the then head of that firm Mr. Andrew Strahan. Within, on a piece of paper, black with age, is the following inscription :

I earnestly beg that this Box, with all its contents, may be carefully corded up in Bass matting, and sent directed

To Andrew Strahan, Esq r - Fruiter's street, Gough square, London.

The original owner of the box was John Noorthouck, to whom the ' Dictionary of National Biography ' devotes nearly a column from the pen of Mr. Warwick Wroth. Mr. Wroth tells us that Noorthouck gained his livelihood as an index-maker and cor- rector of the press, and was very intimately associated with William Strahan, the printer. In Timperley's ' Dictionary of Printers,' indeed, there is a poem from the pen of J. Noorthouck, addressed to the memory of William Strahan, upon his death in 1785.

A considerable section of Mr. Wroth's bio- graphy is an extract from ' N. & Q.,' which runs as follows :

" In a bookseller's catalogue issued by John Russell Smith in London, April, 1852, ' the original autograph manuscript of the life of John Noorth- ouck, author of the " History of the Man after God's own Heart," " History of London," &c.,' was offered for sale, and was there described as an unprinted autobiography containing many curious literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century (Notes and Queries, 1st Ser. xii. 204)."

I am afraid that the information here con- veyed about this autograph manuscript makes it quite clear that in 1852 the box which I have had the privilege of opening, and which seemed to have a hundred years of dust upon it, had really been opened 57 years ago, and that the sole contents that were considered of value was this auto- biography, the fate of which one would like to know. It is clear that John Noorthouck perhaps on his death-bed forwarded this box to Mr. Andrew Strahan, in the hope, I imagine, that he would publish after his death second editions of some of his works, and perhaps a collection of his pamphlets. Both the ' Classical Dictionary ' and the ' History of London ' had been prepared by their author for new editions. The copies before me bear a thousand annotations, including revised title-pages. These new editions, however, never came, and the memory of John Noorthouck is virtually dead, not again, one imagines, to be resuscitated.

It may, however, have some small value, from a bibliographical point of view, if I give a list of Noorthouck's various works, as contained in the box in question. Only two of them the ' History of London ' and the ' Classical Dictionary ' are under his name in the British Museum Library.

1. A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Chandler : From the Writer of the ' History of the Man after God's own Heart.' Procul 6, procul este Profani, Conclamat Vates, totoque absistite luco (Virgil). The Simple believeth every word : but the Prudent Man looketh well to his going (Proverbs xiv. 15). London : Printed for R. Freeman, in Pater-noster Row. 1762.

2. A Philosophical Survey of Nature : in which the Long Agitated Question concerning Human Liberty and Necessity is endeavoured to be Fully Determined from Incontestable Phsenomena. Price One Shilling and Sixpence. London. 1763.

3. The Alphabet of Reason : Being An Essay towards constructing a Plan to facilitate the Art of Swift Writing, commonly called Short-Hand upon Rational Principles. London. Printed for the Author and sold by T. Becket and P. A. De Handt in the Strand ; C. Henderson, under the Royal Exchange, and W. Nicoll, in St. Paul's Churchyard. 1763. Price One Shilling and Six- pence.