Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/49

 to s. XL JAN. 9, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

Crocker, whom I also knew well. This son, who was a botanist, had been employed at Kew ; but, his health breaking down, he came back to Chichester, and succeeded his father as sexton of the Cathedral. He was, I think, consumptive, and he died in 1868. I do not remember much about his family, but know that he had a daughter who married her cousin Benford, son of the elder daughter, mentioned above. They are living in London now.

Of course Crocker's poems are of varying merit, and many different opinions have been passed on them. It has always been reported that Southey declared that ' The "Sonnet to the British Oak ' contained one of the finest ideas in such poetry, viz., that the Druids worshipped the oak from a prophetic knowledge of the part it was to play in the making of British naval supremacy. I do not know whether F. K. P. is speaking sarcastically when he calls Crocker of equal merit with " the Silkworm Hay ley " of Peter Pindar. The poem alluded to, 'The Ode to Kingley Vale,' whatever its merits, has had what I consider a disastrous effect upon the nomenclature of that wonderfully beautiful coombe of the South Downs. Up to the publication of that poem it was always known as "Kingley Bottom," but after that it was considered more genteel to adopt the poet's name. The fact that it was not a vale or valley at all, and that it was a true Sussex " bottom," had no effect whatever, and now only a few know the place by its true name. The first edition of Crocker's collected poems was published in 1830, the second in 1834, and the last in 1860, one year before his death.

E. E. STREET.

In the Sussex Collection of the Brighton Public Library is a volume of Crocker's poems, entitled ' The Vale of Obscurity, the Lavant, and other Poems,' Chichester, 1830.

In February, 1861, the spire of Chichester Cathedral fell, and Mark Antony Lower's ' Worthies of Sussex,' 1865, says that " the fall of Chichester spire killed but one man, and that man was Charles Crocker." He died on 6 Oct., 1861, at Chichester, and was buried in the Subdeanery Churchyard of that city. The two books I have quoted may be seen in the Reference Department here. A. CECIL PIPER.

Brighton Public Library.

SCOTTISH -is AND -ES IN PROPER NAMES

<10 S. x. 486). Regarding the name Forbes

a word may be added to what is said at the

' above reference. In Scotland it used to

be generally pronounced as a word of two syllables, after the manner illustrated by Scott when alluding as follows (in the intro- duction to ' Marmion,' Canto IV.) to the death of Sir William Forbes, the biographer of Beattie who wrote ' The Minstrel ' : Scarce had lamented Forbes paid The tribute to the Minstrel's shade ; The tale of friendship scarce was told Ere the narrator's heart was cold.

In certain districts of the country this was the only pronunciation heard till well into the second half of the nineteenth century. Schoolmates of my own, afterwards dis- tinguished in the army and in commerce, were all " For-bes " to their fellows, and are still such when reference is made to them. One of my teachers an engaging humorist of curiously diversified interests was fond of contributing conundrums as well as other matter to the local newspaper, and some- times tried the effects of his ingenuity in the classroom before committing himself to the press. One experiment he placed on the blackboard was this : " Capt. BBBB went with his CCCC to dig pot oooooooo." He chuckled deliciously when no pupil ventured to interpret the mystery, and he found it necessary to explain that it meant " Capt. Forbes went with his forces to dig potatoes." This was in the sixties, when one would not have risked sounding the profundity of a pedagogue. Since then it has become fashionable with the upper and educated classes to make Forbes mono- syllabic. I have friends now who would keenly resent the older method of pro nouncing their name. THOMAS BAYNE.

LORD BEACONSFIELD AND THE PRIMROSE (10 S. x. 486). In 7 S. v. 146 there is another reference to Lord Beaconsfield's novels and the primrose, namely, that in ' Lothair ' it is said that this flower makes a capital salad.

Lady Dorothy NevilPs book of reminis- cences p. 210, deals with the subject, and her ladyship admits that she had not heard Disraeli express any partiality for the primrose, and goes on to relate :

" As a matter of fact, I believe that Queen Victoria at the proper season sent Lord Beacons- field primroses from the slopes at Windsor, and it is probable that, having expressed to some one his warm appreciation of those flowers, it was in consequence assumed that the great statesman had a strong partiality for the primrose." This to some extent confirms the story told at 7 S. v. 146 as to the flower being the favourite, not of Lord Beaconsfield, but of the Prince Consort, and that when the Queen wrote the superscription " His favourite