Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/643

 io» B. iv. DEC. so, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 533 the word punch occurs. When I first learnt the song, some fifty years ago, the word was not punch, but brandy. WALTER W. SKEAT. I am inclined, trusting a very distant memory, to say that the song, or a portion of it, appeared in an early volume of Punch., perhaps about 1843. A small illustration represented the postboys carousing. It was accompanied by a Latin version, one line of which was :— Tres hi lares pueri soliti vexare caballos. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge. [S. B., MR. A. F. CURWEN, and H. P. L. agree with PKOF. SKBAT that brandy cures the gout, Ac. C-1* S. is also thanked for a reply.] NELSON'S SIGNAL (10th S. iv. 321, 370, 411, 471).—PROF. LAUGHTON, by his reply, which contains nothing more than a confident reassertion of what he began with, makes my answer to it easy. As he produces nothing new, it becomes clear that what he told us about logbooks, and their recording signals " in some instances," was scarcely ingenuous. It counts for absolutely nothing, if this, the great signal, stands unrecorded after all in a.ny of them. Who is right, or who is wrong, matters little ; to establish the actual words was what I began hoping to achieve, and that is what I still desire. Even now it is possible, though I fear not very likely. The matter, however, lies in a nutshell. PROF. LAUGHTON puts forward the assertion of Pasco that it was he who hoisted the signal and suggested a change of form. I produce Browne's assertion. He, too, says ne hoisted the signal and suggested change. Pasco's tale is to me unlikely, awkward, and ungrammatical (how PROF. LAUGHTON can defend the grammar of it I cannot see, but simply request him to turn up the word confide in Johnson's old ' Dictionary,' which settles it). Browne's tale reads like candour itself, is consistent, and asks for no explanation at all. The admiral himself commended it, with " Right, Browne ! that's better." Up to this point one unhappy thing only stands out as conclusive, for in plain terms one or other of the men must lie. Pasco's tale for me is that of the lamed duck that can neither walk nor fly freely. So much for the signal itself. PROF. LAUGHTON I judge to be_ a man who grinds his transparent prejudices into pebble- glasses for his own spectacles. This idiosyn- crasy leads him here to step quite out of his record, and to tell me that, as I have not read the 'Nelson Despatches,' I am incom- petent to offer an opinion "on what Nelson might or might not write." This has nothing: to do with what we are talking about, for I have not said a syllable about Nelson's writing anything. It is manifest from PROF. LAUGHTON'S own showing that th& ' Despatches' do not touch upon the signal in any way. 1 observe in the booklet announcing Lloyd's " International Library " the following para- graph :— " The words that Nelson signalled, ' England expects every man to do his duty," have only recently been disputed. Nevertheless those were his actual words, which, before being sent up, had been altered twice at the suggestion of two of his officers. His intended message and the full account are given in the Library." The assertion that the words of the signal were twice altered at the suggestion of officers is surely a thing quite impossible. When the Daily Mail improvised its picture to illustrate PROF. LAUGHTON'S ver- sion of the event, it made emphatic the very fiasco that it was my object to have prevented. I furnished it, as I have said once before, with the Thompson particulars (that 'X. >fcQ.' has found a home for), in ample time for due inquiry to have been made. I see that in the account of Nelson in the 'Penny ' as also in the 'English 'Cyclopaedias- the signal is given as it ought to be: "England expects every man to do his duty " But further than that, I now find that 'N. & Q. is also on my side in an interesting paper, signed S., on ' Marine Flag Signalling' (6th S. x. 417). This system was invented by Sir Home Popham when a midshipman under a Capt. Thompson, commodore on the Guinea Coast. These signals appear to have been the literal signals that preceded those that at Trafalgar shot up the ever memorable words that England is now pleased to blunder over ; so incapable has she become of rising to- them. U. A. WARD. Allow me to refer your readers to 6th S. ix. 261, 283, containing a graphic and well- written description of the battle of Trafalgar by William Pryce Cumby, who was first lieutenant of the Bellerophon, and took the- command of the ship when the captain (Copke) was killed at the beginning of the- action. This is his account of the signal verbatim :—' "A Quarter past eleven [t.e. A.M.] Lord Nelson made the Telegraphic Signal ENGLAND EXPECTS- THAT EVERY MAN WILL Do His DUTY, which you may believe produced the most animating and inspiriting effect on the whole fleet." Appended is a letter addressed to Vice- Admiral Collingwood, dated 30 October, 1805y