Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/431

 io s. XL MAY i, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

355

had a profound knowledge of the literary WESTMINSTEB ABBEY ALMSMEN : WAB-

xi. 227).

history of the United Kingdom during the BANT FOB APPOINTMENT (10 S. period that connected Pope with Goldsmith. Owing to the proof of my note following me Besides several books from Col. Grant's to the hospital during the time I was under- library, including his extra-illustrated copy going treatment for cataract, when it was of Carruthers's ' Life of Pope ' in two huge impossible for me to get at my_copy, I regret folio volumes, I have in my possession two large scrapbooks, '' one containing the numerous reviews which he wrote for The Athenaeum, and the other his contributions to ' N. & Q.,' with a great number of news- paper cuttings relating to the period on which he was an expert. Col. Grant did

that an error has crept in. The fifth word of the twelfth line of the warrant should read " command," instead of " desire."

W. E. HABLAND-OXLEY.

" PXJNT " IN FOOTBALL (10 S. xi. 187, 257, 315). Except in his manner of punting, MB.

not confine his studies" to eighteenth-century H ' . D - ELMS is not so muc h_ m disagreement literature, but was also interested in that phase of French Bohemianism which

was

represented by Murger and the Cenacle. He had also, as befitted the son of a President of the Royal Academy, an hereditary aptitude for art-criticism. W. F. PBIDEATJX.

Grand Hotel, Locarno.

ATJTHOB OF QUOTATION WANTED (10 S. xi. 308). The lines desired by J. R. are from the ' Polyolbion ' of Michael Drayton, giving the poet's account of the battle of Blore Heath, fought on 23 Sept., 1459, between the Lancastrians under James Touchet, Lord Audley, and the Yorkists under Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury :

There Button, Button kills ; a Done doth kill a Done ;

A Booth, a Booth ; and Leigh by Leigh is over- thrown ;

A Venables against a Venables doth stand,

A Troutbeck fighteth with a Troutbeck hand to hand ;

There Molineux doth make a Molineux to die,

And Egerton the strength of Egerton doth try.

O ! Cheshire, wert thou mad, of thine owu native gore,

So much until this day thou never shed'st before. R. C. BOSTOCK.

with me as he supposes. His derivation of " punt " from " pound " (in some dialects "pun"), or "punch," would confirm my statement that a punt is not a true kick ; but the best proof of this is that a goal could never be scored by a punt, but only by a kick from a placed, dropped, or rolling ball.

I of course agree with the REV. C. S. TAYLOB that a short punt was often useful to lift the ball into touch over the heads of a mob of opponents at close quarters. I was referring to punting as a method of making the ball travel ; and when head of a side I always checked the tendency, which sometimes cropped up in recruits from schools unaccustomed to the oval ball, to punt when they ought to drop. Rule XVII., quoted, had reference to bringing the ball out after a " run-in," and the punt in that connexion was only a matter of inches, and the need for it has been abolished under Rugby Union rules.

Too much reliance should not be placed upon descriptions in ' Recollections of Rugby,' written by C. H. Newmarch, who left school for the merchant service at an

i early age, and is unlikely to have had much {Several other correspondents thanked for replies.] knowledge of the game. A. T. M.

LAWBENCE THE WIT (10 S. xi. 309).
 * CoL. PBIDEAUX asks, with much reason, who

io fv,^ " Lawrence " whom Macaulay men- a letter to Whewell as one of the

What, I think, SIB JAMES MUBBAY wants to know is the derivation of the word " punt," and not what it is (or was) in football par- lance, which I should scarcely have imagined

is the tions in

wittiest men of his time. The fact is that to be a vexata qucestio. the name is wrongly spelt in the letter to I was at Rugby 1860-64, and in my day Whewell, as inserted in the ' Life of Ma- j " punt-about," i.e., practice kicking, was caulay ' ; and, at this great distance of allowed on the " Pontines," a low-lying part time, I am unable to say how the mistake of the School Close, or playground, which I came about. Macaulay undoubtedly ro- have no doubt derived its name from the ferred to French Laurence, member for Pontine Marshes. I have suggested this to Peterborough for some years from 1796 SIB JAMES MTJBBAY as a possible derivation onwards. As for his wit, it is the case that of the word " punt," but I am told that Dr. Macaulay regarded him as the second-best Jex Blake, Dean of Wells and late Head- of the writers in ' The Rolliad ' not very j Master of Rugby, will not have it at any much inferior to Richard Fitzpatrick himself, j price. For all that, I think it is a possible G. O. TBEVELYAN. , solution.