Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/619

 iv. DEC. 23, zoos.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 51S It is a more difficult matter to say who it was that concealed himself under the un- pleasant-sounding pen-name " Enort." But whoever he was, he certainly was, as COL. PRIDEAUX states, a very inaccurate writer, for not only is Lamb's tragedy misnamed, but the extract from ' Oxford in the Vacation' is also incorrectly quoted. Lamb did not write " I will have him (Dyer) bound in Russia," which would have been absurd—and Lamb was never absurd in his essays—but "I longed to new-coat him," &c. COL. PRIDEAUX is greatly to be congratu- lated on possessing two such treasures as he mentions. To have even a copy of " Elia " is somewhat, and when he informs us that it is in boards, uncut, and with the first title-page (by which I presume he means the rare half- title) it makes one rub one's eyes. But not content with this, when he further states that it is a presentation copy, it inclines one to the opinion that this is a very unequal sort of world. S. BUTTERWOBTH. SPLITTING FIELDS OF ICE (10th S. iv. 325, 395, 454).—Headers who are interested in this question may like to have attention directed to a passage in Lowell's essay entitled 'A Good Word for Winter,' from which we learn that he did not understand Words- worth's lines in the 'Prelude' to be descrip- tive of a thaw ; for we find him declaring that " the most impressive sound in nature" is either the fall of a tree in a forest during the hush of summer noon, or " the stifled shriek of the lake yonder as the frost throttles it." After quoting Wordsworth's lines Lowell commends Thoreau's use of the term "whoop" to designate the sound referred to, and then himself pronounces it to be "a noise like none other, as if Demogorgon were moaning inarticulately from under the earth." F. JAERATT. My second reference, of course, only illus- trated and supported MR. BAYNE'S original contention. As to my first quotation, it is very possible that I owe him an apology for misinterpreting. But it seemed to me that in writing Till, seized from shore to shore The whole imprison'd river growls below, Thomson meant not that the water left unfrozen went growling on beneath the ice (which I take to be MR. BAYNE'S rendering) but that, upon being seized, the spirit of the whole river, like an angered beast, "growled below," under the frost's action. Or, in Lowell's words, I thought that the allusion was to "the stifled shriek of the lake (here, stream) as the frost throttles it." Perhaps other readers of ' N. & Q.' may give their opinions. Personally, upon the whole I an> inclined still to think this the more natural, as well as more poetic, meaning, and to make- answer to MR. BAYNE'S questions, "at my first reference." Surely if the poet had meant the growling of the remnant of the stream only, he would not have said " the whole imprison'd river." But perhaps we drift from the splitting fields of ice into word splitting. By my final paragraph I intended merely to express a passing regret that Thomson does not reach the greater public by means- of those popular series which, alluring pri- marily by pretty covers, lead their purchasers afterwards (1 hope) to penetrate within. If indirectly I have sent any reader to purchase- Thomson in one of the editions mentioned by MR. BAYNE, I am well content to have been guilty of quoting without sufficient cause. MR. BAYNE surely agrees that Thomson is not appreciated as he deserves. CHARLES MASEFIELD. No doubt some readers have recalled to mind Coleridge's lines in ' The Ancient Mariner':— The ice wan here, the ice was there, The ice was all around ; It cracked and groirted, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound. NORTH MIDLAND. DETACHED BELFRIES (10th S. iv. 207, 290; 415, 455).—J. T. F.'s criticism of my theory is just, but not, I think, conclusive. Innova- tions do not immediately become universal. Electricity is a novel mode of illuminating a house, but houses are still being built which are lighted by gas. S. D. CLIPPINGDALE. AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10th S. iv. 468).—The lines beginning Yet all these were. When no man did them know, are to be found in the third stanza of the- introduction to the second book of Spenser's ' Faerie Queene.' WALTER W. SKEAT. [Several other correspondents kindly supply the- reference.] 'HUGH TREVOR' (10th S. iv. 429) is by Thomas Holcroft. EALPH THOMAS. HORSE-PEW = HORSE-BLOCK (10th S. iv. 27, 132, 334).—For " near Cessisi," at last refer- ence, read near Assist. WILLIAM GEORGE BLACK. Glasgow. •ARABIAN NIGHTS' (10th S. iv. 409).—I am able to inform MR. JAMES PLATT that there