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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. x. SEPT. 12,

Dublin. At the same time a mass of Irish MSS. dealing with the lives of the saints, and used bv Colganus when producing his ' Acta Sanctorum,' was also removed from Louvain. . . .As, however, thoir resting-place is in the arena of war, no good would accrue from mentioning it by name.

" The library at Louvain was formed in 1627 by a bequest of books from Beyerlinck, and later Jacques Remain endowed it with his collection of works on medicine. Scientific agriculture until recently was the chief study at Louvain Univer- sity. One may recall, too, that it was at Louvain in 1546, at the command of Charles V., that the academic authorities issued the first ' Index ' of pernicious and forbidden books."

Perhaps some of our friends may have notes in reference to this now, alas ! vanished library. A. N. Q.

PETBOGRAD. By an Imperial decree dated September 1st, it was made known that in future the Russian capital is to be called Petrograd. The city was founded by Peter the Great on May 27th, 1703, under the name of Petersburg; and the seat of government was transferred to it from Moscow in 1711. The name now officially adopted is, it will be remembered, applied to it in the works of Pushkin, Lermontoff, Tolstoy, and Nekrasoff. X. Y. Z.

Slav sympathizers will rejoice that the more accurate and picturesque name Petrograd has been substituted for the cumbrous Sankt Peterburg, abbreviated SPB. The initial letter of grad in Russian frequently repre- sents h, and the Cech name for the city is Petrohrad, like Hradcany, Vinohrady, &c. Grad (gorod) has been more than once dis- cussed, and occurs in the Russian name for Constantinople, Tsar grad (Cech Carihrad), Belgrade, Gratz, &c. St. Petersburg is directly associated with Peter the Great rather than with his namesake, and was generally called Peterburg. The French have always transliterated the name St. Petersbourg, and do not appear to have adapted it to Pierre.

FBANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Streatham.

" RACK-BENT." This word is in regular use among lawyers to signify the market, the normal, or the full rent, as distinguished from a peppercorn or other nominal rent. The definition in the ' N.E.D.' is " a very high, excessive, or extortionate rent ; a rent equal (or nearly equal) to the full value of the land." Skeat says a rack-rent is " a rent stretched to its full value, or nearly so." What is meant here ? Is it the full annual value or the full freehold or capital

value ? If the annual value is intended, the word nearly is inadmissible ; and if the freehold value is intended, the definition is wrong. The quotations given for " rack- rent" in the ' N.E.D.' do not support the definition. The first quotation (1607) says in effect that a careful man paying a rack- rent will thrive as well as many freeholders. The word " rack " may, as stated, be con- nected with the instrument of torture, but among accurate speakers it has lost that connotation in England.

J. J. FREEMAN.

INSURANCE OF FOOD SUPPLIES. As a foot-note to the history of our times of probable interest when this comes to be written it may be worth recording that the proposal now realized in the national underwriting of cargoes in transit was first made in ' Letters on Tactics and Organiza- tion ' (Thacker, Calcutta, 1888), written by (to speak of him by his present title) Col. Frederick Natusch Maude, C.B.

SAPPER.

MEREDITH'S IMITATION or PEACOCK. The influence of Thomas Love Peacock and of his daughter on George Meredith's style and ideas is generally recognized. Peacock's daughter was Meredith's first wife, and the direct outcome of their unhappy marriage was ' Modern Love.' Meredith's attacks on romantic sentimentalism in men and women, his belief in the salutary effects of the war of the sexes, and his championshij of women of beauty and brains, all point back to this marriage, the failure of which he probably laid as much to his own youth and sentimentalism as to the fault of his wife.

Her father's influence was personal and literary. Meredith talked with the noble old man and he read his books. Peacock bequeathed to Meredith his enthusiasm for women's education and his sprightly comedy.

The most remarkable record of Peacock's influence, however, has just come to light in ' Up to Midnight,' by George Meredith, a " Series of Dialogues Contributed to ' The Graphic,' Now Reprinted for the First Time by John Luce and Company," Boston, 1913. In their collected form these dialogues become a Peacockian novel, without Peacock's finish and Meredith's characteristic genius, but with an interest of their own as imitation. In the letter to Greenwood (1873) in which Meredith mentions these dialogues, he does not admit the influence of Peacock. How- ever, he was just completing his imitative period, ' Harry Richmond ' being then his last novel.