Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/529

 10 s. VIL JUNE i, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

437

in the same heading is a pun, of 'Course, and stands for S. T. C.

It would be interesting to know but I presume that the MS. is lost or inaccessible whether from TO to avToypatfrov is not in a different hand from that of the ' Epita- phium ' itself. Yet it is not a necessary inference from awdy/oa^ov that any part of this MS. is in Coleridge's handwriting.

D. C. T.

B.V.M. AND THE BIRTH OF CHILDREN (10 S. vii. 325, 377, 417). In J. Collin de Plancy's ' Dictionnaire Infernal,' under ' Couches,' it is told that, in certain places, to procure an easy childbirth you should tie the woman's girdle to the church bell .and ring three strokes upon it.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

London Topographical Record. Vol. IV. (London

Topographical Society.)

THIS volume opens with an interesting address by Mr. Philip Norman, Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries, on the Roman wall of London, which ably summarizes our present knowledge on the subject. Mr. Norman points out that there have been twenty careful and detailed examinations of the work, above and below the Roman ground level, at various points between Ludgate and the Tower of London ; but as most of the information resulting from the investigations is buried in the Transactions of various learned societies, we cannot help expressing the wish that Mr. Norman would undertake a comprehensive work in which the con- clusions that have been reached by the numerous antiquaries who have dealt with the subject should be scrutinized and co-ordinated. We agree, in short, with Mr. Norman in thinking that the time has come for the production of an authoritative (monograph on the Roman circumvallatioii of London.

An account of some recent demolitions at Black heath, by Mr. Gilbert H. Lovegrove, illustrated with views and plans of Vanbrugh House anc Vanbrugh Castle, follows Mr. Norman's paper, This is succeeded by a further instalment of Mr Hilton Price's valuable collections on the ' Signs -of Old London,' which comprises Cheapside, the Poultry, and the adjacent streets, and is copiously illustrated with facsimiles of old shopbills anc advertisements from originals in the British Museum or in the possession of the author. This list of signs, and the quotations by which they are vitalized, not only afford amusing reading, but are also of considerable value to the historical novelist who is anxious about the correctness of his loca colour. One source of information has not, per haps, been sufficiently utilized by Mr. Hilton Price. In the Reports of the Historical Manu scripts Commission there are abundant reference; to the old hostelries of London. One instance wil ssuffice. In the commonplace book of Whitelock

Julstrode, which is now in the possession of Mr. Eliot Hodgkin, we learn that on 8 Sept., 1692, that worthy dined in Cheapside, "against Mercer's Chappell at the sign of the Haunch of Venison," with some friends and cronies. At two of the lock, when they were seated at table, there was a ' strange shaking of the table," due to an earth- quake "that shooke most of London and the luburbe," and caused the greatest alarm to the estive party. This earthquake was felt from Cower Hill to Kensington, and extended over a con- siderable part of England, France, and Flanders .Hist. MSS. Comm., Fifteenth Report, Appendix, PartV., p. 18). Mr. Price merely mentions that ' The Haunch of Venison," which the foregoing extract enables us to localize, was occupied in 1701 by a Mr. Hall.

On p. 37 it is stated that Cheapside Cross was erected in 1291, and on p. 45 in 1290. Hunter showed n the Archceologia, vol. xxix., that the cross was under construction during the years 1291, 1292, and L293, and that it seems to have been completed in the last-named year. The statement by Maitland on p. 45 might have been omitted, as it refers to the Did Cross, which was taken down in 1390, the Little Conduit being subsequently built on its site. No explanation is given of the importance which seems bo have attached to the old " King's Head " in Cheapside. An earlier instance than that given by Mr. Price will be found in the Cottonian MS. Vitellius, A. xvi., in which, under the year 1498, we are told that " upon the monday folowyng (18 June) was a scaffold made in Chepyssyde, foreagayn the kynges hede, whereupon the said Perkyn stood from x of the mornyng tyll iij of the clok at after none" (Kingsford, 'Chronicles of London,' p. 223).

The volume concludes with a catalogue of the maps, plans, and views of London which were exhibited at Drapers' Hall on 16 March, 1905, and afforded sufficient testimony to the usefulness of the work done by the Society, under whose auspices the exhibition was held.

Gems from Boswell : being a Selection of the Most Effective Scenes and Characters in the Life of Johnson and the Tour to the Hebrides. By Percy Fitzgerald, M.A., F.S. A. (Gay & Bird.) MB. FITZGERALD produced in 1896 what, in spite of many misprints, is a most convenient edition in one volume of Boswell's 'Johnson' and the attendant ' Tour to the Hebrides.' He devoted a volume to rebuking Dr. Birkbeck Hill on the subject of Johnsonian editing ; and now he resumes his subject with an excellent selection of "ana" from the two masterpieces. Oddly enough, in "The Bibelots," to which this charming booklet belongs, ' Dr. Johnson's Table-Talk ' has already figured, and it is perhaps due to this fact that we miss some characteristic things, e.g., the remark about "cheerfulness always breaking in," which, though not Johnson's, is one of the memorable things in Boswell. Still, each enthusiast would probably choose different things as the best, and all that is given here is excellent.

No reader ought to stop at selections, even in these busy days, and such titbits or, shall we say? " Liebig of Literature " as we find here we accept mainly as an inducement to the uninstructed or indolent reader to go through the whole fare of good things laid before him in the great biography and its pendant. Boswell was no fool, though he was weaK in many ways, and the editor has no