Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/74

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL JAN. ie, im

is correct, I tasted Benedictine for the first time, not far from Fecamp, about 1874.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

The business connected with the manu- facture of ben^dictine is now carried on at Rue Theogene Bouffart, 108, Fecamp.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

" BROKENSELDE " (10 S. xi. 10). Two solutions are possible. If the spelling is really English, then seld is a variant of settle, a seat, and meant a seat or chair, from A.-S. seld. But in the phrase " le Brokenselde " it is more likely that the spelling is Anglo-French ; and I have fully shown, in my ' Notes on Etymology,' p. 474, that the A.F. initial s was freely used in place of our sh ; and, if so, then " le Broken- selde " simply means " the broken shield." WALTER W. SKEAT.

Brokenshire is the surname of a well, known resident in this city. HARRY HEMS.

EL-SERTTJAH (10 S. x. 469). The word may be meant for sdriyah, mastlike, from sari, a mast, or for serdyah, a palace. I have failed to locate the pillar in the latitude named. H. P. L.

THE TENTH WAVE (10 S. x. 445, 511). Nine is the multiple of three, but I do not understand the tenth. The greatness of the third wave is alluded to in ^Eschylus, 'P. V.' 1015, and Euripides, ' Hippolytus,' 1213. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

YEW TREES BY ACT or PARLIAMENT (10 S. x. 430). In Haydn's 'Dictionary of Dates,' 20th ed., under ' Yew Trees,' it is stated, " A general plantation of them for the use of archers was ordered by Richard III. 1483," Stow's ' Chron.' being cited as the authority.

In ' The Encyclopaedia Britannict. ' (9th ed.), vol. xxiv. p. 744, it is stated :

" The planting of the yew in churchyards was at one time supposed to have been done with a view to the supply of yew staves. But while importation from abroad was fostered, there seems to have been no statute enforcing the cultivation of the yew in Great Britain. On the other hand, a statute of Ed. I. (cited in Gard, Chron., 6th Mar., 1880) states that the trees were often planted in churchyards to defend the church from high winds."

I may say that, although I have consulted the legal works most likely to give informa- tion on the point, I have so far been unable to discover any statute " ordering a general plantation of yew trees for the purpose of archery." R. VAUGHAN GOWER.

Jftisrdlatwous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Characters and Passages from Notebooks of SamveT Butler. Edited by A. R. Waller. (Cambridge, University Press.)

THE author ot ' The Way of All Flesh ' remarks that it is a sign of the "literary instinct" when a man is in the habit of carrying about a notebook and jotting down his thoughts and observations. Whatever may be the truth of the theory, his illustrious namesake might be cited as one excellent example in support of it. We have authority for the statement that this Samuel Butler would from his childhood "make observations and reflections on everything one said and did," and his manu- scripts prove that he was not content until he could set down his impressions in black and white. It is obvious that the writing of ' Characters ' must have been peculiarly congenial to a man of his temperament, and it is not surprising that lie should have indulged his taste for it perhaps to excess. That class of composition was exceedingly popular in England during the first half of the seventeenth century. Sir Thomas Overbury had inaugurated it with marked success ; Earle prose- cuted it with brilliant and delightful results ; Fuller dallied with it charmingly; and a host of other writers paid passing homage to the fashion. Few of them, however, can have devoted such pro- longed attention to it as Butler, whose literary portrait-gallery, now fully displayed in the present edition, contains nearly a couple of hundred more or less finished pieces. Of these the first hundred and twenty may be familiar to the student from Thyer's edition of 1759 ; the rest of them, together with a miscellany of observations and" reflections on various subjects, are now printed for the first time, and constitute the larger portion of a very well-filled volume.

It must be admitted, we think, that Thyer picked out the best of the collection. There are among the new portraits several that are happily studied and forcibly executed ; but many of them are to a con- siderable extent repetitions or variants of figures already drawn, and as a whole they do not add much to Butler's achievement. However, it is satisfactory to have them in their entirety, and it need hardly be said 'that they contain plenty of valuable matter. Butler at his best is an admirably vigorous painter of types, though his somewhat elaborate method is not so pleasing as the lighter and more graceful manner of Earle and Overbury. His observation is wonderfully minute ; he has a keen judgment, an inexhaustible wit, a fertile fancy, and a remarkable power of expression. His sketches, therefore, are full of excellent things excellently put. Two or three of his sentences, taken at random, will suggest the quality of his writing better than any description. Of the Hen- pect Man he says that "when he was married he promised to worship his Wife with his Soul in- stead of his Body, and endowed her among his. worldly Goods with his Humanity. He changed Sexes with his Wife, andput off the old Man to put on the new Woman"; of the Antiquary that ''he is a great Time-Server, but it is of Time out of Mind, to which he conforms exactly, but is wholly retired from the present " ; of the Haranguer that