Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/291

 10<" S. V. MARCH 24, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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ray collaborator in the 'Bibliography' and myself have found the original publication of two more sonnets, five new poems, and two prose articles. Two of the poems, which we have unearthed from an American magazine of 1882, will be included in my forthcoming edition of Wilde's lecture on his 'Impressions of America,' which has never yet been published.

STUART MASON.

c/o Holywell Press, Oxford.

HIBITION ' (10 th S. v. 64, 113). From informa- tion with which I have again been kindly favoured by MR. JOHN HEBB, I find I was right in my impression that these topical verses first made their appearance in an extravaganza by Planche (see ante, p. 14), and that they date from the early " forties." They were sung by Charles Mathews in the character of Puff in the "Medley Finale" of " The Drama at Home or an Evening with Puff, an Original Occasional and Local Extravaganza in Two Acts by J. R. Planche Esq. First Performed at the Theatre Royal Hay market Easter Monday April 8 1844." The *' Centrifugal Railway " stanza, which was sung to the tune of "A frog he would a-wooing go,'"' ran as follows : If a somerset you neatly wish to throw,
 * A MEDLEY FINALE TO THE GREAT EX-

Heigho ! says Rowley, I 'd really advise you at once to go (Though what you 'd get by it hang me if I know)

To the Rowley-poley gammon and spin-again Centrifugal Railway.

I hope the indexer of * N. & Q.' may be able to find a more appropriate heading than the above. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

"TRUMP" AS A CARD TERM (10 th S. v. 148). In Latimer's 'Sermon on the Card,' 1529, occurs the following :

"Now turn up your trump, your heart (hearts is trump, as I said before), and cast your trump, your heart, upon this card."

F. JESSEL.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Lectures on Early English History. By William Stubbs, D.D. Edited by Arthur Hassall, M.A. (Longmans & Co.)

RATIIET; more than three years have elapsed since the issue as a separate publication, under the same careful supervision, of Bishop Stubbs's 'Historical Introduction to the Rolls Series,' and we are now favoured with what is in some respects a com- panion work. The present volume includes lectures delivered at various times by the Bishop, the Regius Professor of Modern History, and con- stitutes an important contribution to our know-

ledge of the Constitution under early English and? Norman Kings. Twenty-one lectures in all are- printed, of which the first eight deal with ' The Anglo-Saxon Constitution,' ' Feudalism,' the ' Leges Henrici Primi,' the 'Charters of Stephen,' and other matters connected with purely domestic growth and development, ending with the investi- gation of the Domesday and later surveys ; while the remainder treat of the study of the various- growths of European kingdoms and institutions.

In the earlier portion, as in the later, the writer deals largely with Germanic influences, not only as in themselves (thanks to what we learn concerning- them from Julius Czesar and Tacitus) offering the best opportunities for study, but as furnishing the earliest traces of our forefathers. The fact is in- sisted on that the name of Briton, by which we call ourselves, has "only a geographical significance. The blood that is in our veins comes from German- ancestors. Our language, diversified as it is, is at the bottom a German language ; our institutions have grown into what they are from the common- basis of the ancient institutions of Germany." That we belong to the great Teutonic household is a fact not less clear than gratifying to the writer, whose prejudices or we will rather say convictions as to the solidity and moral worth of the German- character abundantly assert themselves. Especially noteworthy is the comparison more than once' established between the vices of the early French kings (with the solitary exception of St. Louis) and 1 the virtues of the German emperors. On the subjects on which he writes Bishop Stubbs remains a great authority. New light has been cast upon- many of his conclusions, but in few cases have these been invalidated, or indeed, in any appreciable- degree, shaken. Rather may it be said that the decisions of later writers, where they are not in- fluenced by Stubbs's views, bear them out and substantiate them. A sounder, if a less brilliant scholar than Bishop Creighton, Stubbs has in~ fluenced hugely the whole tone of modern English historical research.

The task of criticism thus becomes almost super- fluous. We can accordingly note for special praise the chapters on ' The Elements of Nationality among European Nations,' ' The Origin and Position* of the German, Roman, Frank, Celtic^ and English Churches,' ' The Historical Origin of European- Law,' 'Systems of Landholding in Mediaeval Europe,' 'The Growth of the Representative Principle,' 'Early Judicial Systems,' and 'The Growth of the Constitutional Principle in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,' and lastly an important and philosophical contribution (the value of which can scarcely be over-estimated) upon the beginnings of the foreign policy of England in the Middle Ages.

Recreations of a Naturalist. By James Edmund

Harting. (Fisher Unwin.)

A KEEN sportsman and an observant naturalist,, Mr. James Edmund Harting is known to the read- ing public as the author of numerous works on subjects belonging to natural history, some of them, like the present volume, drawn from the pages of The Field, to which he is a fairly frequent con- tributor. As the author of a ' Handbook of British- Birds ' and of works similar in purpose and aim, our author naturally is largely, though far from exclusively, occupied with ornithological subjects. A master of erudition in his favourite topics, he-