Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/529

. iii. JCN-E MHOS.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

437

Triton, and another in capturing on 16 October, 1799, the t\vo Spanish frigates Thetis and Santa Brigada. The two Spaniards were full of treasure, and each seaman and marine obtained nearly 2001. as his share of the prize money, each captain receiving 40.000Z. HERBERT KING HALL.

H.M.S. Cumberland.

EPITAPHS: THEIR BIBLIOGRAPHY (10 th S. i. 44, 173, 217, 252, 334 ; ii. 57, 194, 533 ; iii. 114, 195, 371). As the last correspondent on this subject refers to MS. collections, I may be allowed to say that I have copied all the deci- pherable inscriptions in both the church and churchyard of West Haddon. The collection as at present in my possession, contained in three volumes, to each of which a numbered plan is attached indicating the position of the tablets and gravestones referred to therein.

Under Essex should be added ' Among the Tombs of Colchester' (1880), published by Beuham & Co., price sixpence.

JOHN T. PAGE.

"LEGESVRE" (10 th S. iii. 309). Is not this a misreading of the not uncommon French name of Legendre or Le Gendre?

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

VIXENS AND DRUNKENNESS (10 th S. iii. 389). MR. DODGSON asks if English contains expressions similar to the Spanish cazar una eorra (also pillar una zorra, tomar una zorra). to make oneself drunk ; estar hecho zorra, to be drunk, &c. In 'Slang and its Analogues, that unique storehouse of the colloquial, he will find the exact equivalents, viz., " to catch a fox " and " to be foxed," the lattei dating from 1611. His romantic equation oi Welsh f/uineu, reddish, with Catalan yuineu a fox, seems to me inadmissible for many reasons, mostly phonetic. The Catalan term is a corruption of Provencal <juiner. This in turn appears to be contracted from guinert since the corresponding verb is guinerdejar which occurs in a fine poem ascribed to Arnau d'Erill (fifteenth century) in the line

Ta malvestats te fa guinerdejar. Guinerdejar here has nothing to do witl drunkenness, but merely means " to plaj the fox." JAS. PLATT, Jun.

Zorra is the regular Spanish word for fox it is used also as the name of a loos 3 woman It is probably derived from \fi6pa, the mange because foxes are supposed to lose thei hair in the summer ; cf. our word alopecia Some philologers have derived the word from the Bask zurra, clever, sly. The meaning attached to zorra of meretrix might easily

)ass into drunkard : with us vixen has in ike manner passed into the signification of a
 * ommon scold. H. A. STRONG.

COLISEUMS OLD AND NEW (10 th S. ii. 485, 329 ; iii. 52, 116, 189, 255). An article of five columns on the Colosseum appeared in The Literary Gazette of 17 Jan., 1829 ; a note was n the following week's issue (p. 59) ; and another long article, with an architectural drawing of the place, in the issue of 31 Jan.

W. ROBERTS.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o. The. Book of the Spiritual Life. By the late Lady Dilke. With a Memoir of the Author by the Right Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Bart., M.P. (Murray.)

To those privileged to possess the acquaintance of the late Lady Dilke this volume will make direct and irresistible appeal ; to a more general public it will come as the record of a noble, industrious, and well-spent life, memorable in literature, art, and social progress, and as the final exposition of a spiritual, poetical, and in a sense optimistic, faith. In order fully to appreciate the significance of those writings of Lady Dilke which reach us as a voix d' outre tombe, it is necessary to have some knowledge of 'The Shrine of Death' and 'The Shrine of Love,' works to which portions of the present volume are intended to be complementary. For the purpose of delectation in a masterly account of a singularly interesting, important, and fascinating personality no previous knowledge is requisite. A portion of Lady Di Ike's career is the common property of all students of literature and art ; another portion is enshrined in the affec- tion and admiration of her friends. By a select but cosmouolitan world she is remembered as one whose influence over others extended far beyond her recognized accomplishment, considerable a* this was, in letters. Thanks to her intimacies with the best, most cultivated, and most repre- sentative men and women of her day, she all but succeeded in re-establishing in Oxford and Lindon the literary saloi which is now a memory or a tradition of the past.

A task of supreme difficulty attende 1 the biographer, who had, while satisfying the legiti- mate curiosity of those interested in his subject, to steer his way among sanctities in some such fashion as the heroine of old trod through the hot ploughshares. Admirably has the feat been accomplished, and though the chis r alry and the devotion of the writer are everywhere apparent, the reticence of the utterance is not less manifest than its fidelity and truth. A measure of the guardedness of which we speak is obligatory upon ourselves, and it is inexpedient that we should obtrude any personal note in what is intended to be a literary estimate or appreciation. Concerning the writer on art, and notably on French art, in which respect Lady Dilke had scarcely a rival, it would though to do justice to this aspect of her taste and erudition requires a rarely accorded knowledge and power of apprecia- tion be easy to expand. On her accomplishment