Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/194

 158

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. 11. AUG. 20, im.

It ought to be your in the first line, or knewest in the second."

A Frenchman would be amazed at our ignorance if, instead of writing vous e'tiez, we wrote vous etais, or, worse still, vous e'tait ; and yet that is the prodigious blunder, the "enormous solecism," contained in the ex- pression "you was," which some people are trying to defend. JOHN T. CURRY.

"A SHOULDER OF MUTTON BROUGHT HOME

FROM FRANCE" (10 th S. ii. 48). I think this was the refrain of some verses which used to be sung round ; but it ran thus :

A leg of mutton came over from France To teach the English how to dance.

Lines, I remember, were something like this : I killed a man when he was dead, And as he fell he burst his head.

A leg, &c.

In his head there was a spring, In which a thousand fishes swim.

A leg, &c.

By the spring there grew a tree, On which a thousand apples be.

A leg, &c.

When the apples began to fall They killed a thousand men in all.

A leg, &c.

And so on, after the manner of capping verses, each adding what he chose.

THOS. AWDRY.

GIPSIES: "CHIGUNNJI" (10 th S. ii. 105). MR. STRICKLAND writes of chigunnji (?) that it is a dialect word, "not given in Russian dictionaries." If he looks under chu-, instead of chi-, he will find it in all the dictionaries. Chugunni is the ordinary Kussian adjective for " cast iron," e.g., chugunnaya pushka, a cast-iron cannon, and there are other deriva- tives from the same root, such as chugunka, railway ; chugunnik, boiler, &c.

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10 th S. ii. 49). 1. "Pitt had a great future behind him." If MEDICULUS has seen this recently, I am inclined to think it is an adaptation by a later writer of Heine's remark on Alfred de Musset, "un jeune homme d'un bien beau passe. " I regret I cannot give chapter and verse for this, but it is quoted by Mr. Swin- burne in ' Miscellanies ' (Chatto & Windus, 1886), p. 223. H. K. ST. J. S.

3. " Instinct is untaught ability to perform actions of all kinds," occurs in Bain's * Senses and Intellect,' ed. 1855, p. 256. "Instinct is inherited experience," is another terse defini- tion. G. SYMES SAUNDERS, M.D.

Eastbourne.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Collotype Facsimile and Type Transcript of an Elizabethan Manuscript preserved at Alnmck Castle, Northumberland, <fcc. Transcribed and edited, with Notes and Introduction, by Frank J. Burgoyne. (Longmans & Co.) THE famous Bacon MSS., concerning -which little i known and of which much has been heard, are at length within reach of scholars, having been tran- scribed and edited by the librarian of the Lambeth Public Libraries. The future owners of the newly published treasure, for such it is, can be but few,, since the work is issued in a costly and limited edition, and will soon become all but as inaccessible as before. In our great public libraries it will, how- ever, be open to the student, and it will be safe henceforward from those risks of destruction to> which it h v as all but succumbed, a portion of the contents haying been destroyed by fire, and another portion having become almost illegible. In saying this we are understating the case. A portion of the MSS. the greater, and presumably the more inter- estinghas been entirely lost. Could this be re- covered, and should it come up to, we will not say reasonable expectation, but to sanguine anti- cipation, it might prove to be one of the greatest literary finds of modern days. Never, however, was there a time in which there was more virtue "in an 'if'" or more need of the em- ployment of the "great peacemaker." While everything about the new volume, including joy in its possession, tempts so much to expansiveness that we once more regret the narrowness of the limits within which we are perforce confined, we doubt whether a reticence is not expedient which is adopted by the editor, who, while supplying us with the document, says little of its provenance and nothing of its significance. What survives is, as regards essentials, interesting enough. It con- tains much appertaining to Bacon which in the same form is not elsewhere to be found, and some- thing even of which in his existing works no previous use has been made. According to the MS. index, or page of contents, which forms the- outer portion, the collection of MSS. comprised' other items, among which were Bacon's ' Essaies ' ; 'Asmund and Cornelia,' a work supposed to be a, play, but concerning which nothing whatever is known ; ' The Isle of Dogs,' an unprinted and in- accessible comedy of Thomas Nashe, acted in 1597 ^ and Shakespeare's * Richard II.' and * Richard III.' It is in the two works last named that the chief interest centres. Not one line of Shakespeare script is known, and no trace of its having existed has been found. We dare not presume that these. MS. plays were the originals or were in the poet's handwriting. Evidence points the other way. They were, however, according to the assumption of the competent, exactly contemporary with the perform- ance of these plays, and their appearance, if they were rediscovered, could not but settle some contro- verted points, and probably give birth to many more.. What in the portion strll existing inspires most interest is the frequent collocation of the names of Shakespeare and Bacon. The index sheet is scribbled over and over with names, mottoes, and the like, written both sides up, and in a fashion, that cannot be conveyed 1 to the reader without