Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/445

 io< s. ii. NOV. .5, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

better ; and the elaborate etymology of the confusion of German Wolfsbohne, wolfs bean (a lupine), with the plant known as Wolfsyist ( wolf's poison), Wolfseisenhut, Wolfskraut, &c. But here I may be mis- taken.
 * ' wolf's -bane " seems at least partly due to

Besides some genuine misnomers, such as those entries which are based on the distor- tion of facts. "Arabic figures " records from whom the notation was learnt; just as " Turkey rhubarb " refers to Asiatic Turkey, whence it was imported ; and " Burgundy pitch " to the district whence it was and still is exported, ** pitch " being here used in the original sense. (On the other hand, " Saracen wheat," elsewhere mentioned, has no more to do with the Saracens than bU de Turquie has with Turkey.) " German silver " came from Germany, and "Prussian blue" was discovered in Berlin ; and it is amusing to find one geographical blunder substituted for another under " Tonquin beans," which are obtained from Guiana, not Guinea. Of other errors in this article it must suffice to mention that common "salt," here said to be not a salt at all, is sometimes instanced in chemical text- books as a typical salt.
 * black-lead," " catgut,' 7 &c., there remain

The foregoing lines pretend to be neither an exhaustive list of the errors to be found in this dictionary nor the result of recondite researches. These, and a number of other misprints, misreferences, and mistakes in matters of fact of which I have some notes, are inaccuracies easily detectible on testing articles with common works of reference and well-known authorities. It is, therefore, all the more surprising that they should exist in a compilation which has been frequently reprinted and which is of considerable utility.

J. DORMER.

Redmorion, Woodside Green, S.E.

ANONYMOUS NOVELS. In his entertaining this month, Mr. Andrew Lang asks who is the author of the novels 'Restalrig; or, the Forfeiture,' 2 vols., 1829 ; and ' St. Johnstoun ; or, John, Earl of Gowrie,' 1823, 3 vols. It is Mrs. Eliza Logan, possibly a descendant or relative of Sir John Logan, supposedly implicated in the Gowrie conspiracy.
 * At the Sign of the Ship,' in Longman's for

H. T.

BRITAIN- AS "QUEEN OF ISLES." (See 9 th S. v. 369.) In my former contribution 1775 was the earliest date given for the applica- tion to this country of the term u Queen of Isles "; but I now find in * The Secret His-

tory of White-hall, from the Restoration of Charles II. Down to the Abdication of the late K. James,' by D. Jones, published in 1697, a letter dated Paris, 28 February, 1677, in which it is observed :

" The Great Monarch of France was resolved of nothing less than the Absolute Conquest of that Queen of Islands, that had so long domineered over the Sea."

To the poetical illustrations of its use already furnished, I may add a patriotic song of 1804 (given in Asperne's 'Collection of Loyal Papers') entitled 'The English Cooks ; or, Britannia the Queen of the Sea 1'' with the refrain :

Great Britain will never attempt at promotion, Contented alone to be " Queen of the Sea."

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

" FORTUNE FAVOURS FOOLS." This proverb has not yet been brought before the jury of ' N. & Q. R. Lucas in his ' Enquiry after Happiness,' 1692, part i. (second edition), p. 64, refers to " our English proverb, 4 Fools nave the fortune.' " Ben Jonson was familiar with it, e.g., in 'Every Man out of his Humour,' I. i. :

Sog. Why, who am I, sir ?

Mac. One of those that fortune favours.

Car. The periphrasis of a fool. Again, the Prologue of 'The Alchemist' begins "Fortune, that favours fools." But it occurs earlier, in B. Googe's 'Eglogs,' 1563 (Arber, 1871), p. 74, u Fortune favours fooles, as- old men saye " ; so that it was then regarded as ancient. In Ray's * Proverbs ' (Bohn, 1855), p. 94, and in Riley's ' Diet. Lat. and Greek Quot.' (1871), a Latin form, " Fortuna favet fatuis," is given without reference.

BOOK OF LEGAL PRECEDENTS, 1725-50. There has lately come into my possession a MS. "Book of Precedents. Josh. Pitts, 1748." Apparently it is the private note-book of a clerk or a pupil of an attorney, Henry Lare- more, of St. Clement Danes, Strand. Beyond the technical interest of the typical old legal forms of correct procedure, with its exact, inclusive, and spacious phraseology, many of the middle-class names mentioned may be of general interest. Four apothecaries are named : Samuel Barr (1739, Harrow-on-the- Hill), John Wheeler and Thomas Butler (1737, partners, Cheapside), and Thomas Smith, father of Mary Smith (St. Martin-in- the-Fields), an heiress whose marriage settle- ment is set out verbatim (1742, Jacob Fowler, of St. Andrew's, Holborn, was her husband). A dozen attorneys appear : Obadiah Marryafc (St. Clement Danes), Jos. Waters, Marryafc