Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/352

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii B. x. OCT. si, ww.

M. Maurice Kufferath, who contributed a 'Chant Funebre' to the first London number of the paper."

The Pall Mall Gazette of the 24th inst. added :

" Although no foreign paper of such a high order as L' Independence Beige has previously appeared in this country, Londoners have long been accustomed to seeing French papers published in their midst. Apparently the earliest of these was a weekly entitled Nouvelles Ordinaires de Londres, of which the French National Library possesses a series xtending from July 11, 1650, to January 14, 1658. Its four pages contain mostly English news, in which it looks odd to see the House of Commons habitually described as ' la Maisoii.' Occasionally an extra number was issued, as on the arrival of Cromwell's report of the battle of Dunbar. The paper afforded the Protector's policy enthusiastic support, and in all likelihood was subsidised to influence Continental opinion, just as Milton was employed to counteract Salmasius."

We offer to our Belgian brothers a hearty welcome. JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS.

BIRMINGHAM, "THE TOYSHOP OF EUROPE.'' This famous phrase was used by Burke on 26 March, 1777, in the course of a de- bate in the House of Commons on a Bill for establishing a theatre in Birmingham. Jt is not reported in ' Hansard,' nor is it noticed by any of Burke's biographers, so far as my researches have extended. I have only just discovered that the speech is reported, apparently verbatim, in Aris's Birmingham Gazette for 31 March, 1777 <(p. 3, cols. 1 and 2), where the following words occur : " I look upon Birmingham to be the great Toy Shop [of Europe." The speech is also printed in J. A. Langford's pp. 281-2).
 * Century of Birmingham Life ' (vol. i.

I regret that I did not get the original reference in time for the ' N.E.D.' Burke's phrase, which has been repeated over and over again by writers about Birmingham, has given rise to much misunderstanding. Mr. Sam Timmins your old correspondent JEsTE remarks in his ' Birmingham and the Midland Hard Ware District ' (1866), p. 216 :

" The word ' toy ' has now acquired a different meaning, and had in the days of Edmund Burke & special technical reference. The ' toys ' of Birmingham have always been the trinkets, as .they would now be called, made in endless varieties, and formed from steel. They were not the ' toys ' of children nor the toys of men, but that large class of wares made from steel or well- hardened and well-polished iron. The toy trade of Birmingham, a century ago, included even the buckles, the purse mounts, the chatelaines, the brooches, the bracelets, and the endless varieties .of steel watch-chains, sword - hilts, and other email wares in iron, or iron and steel."

As a consequence of this misapprehension, people have been led to believe that chil- dren's toys are largely made in Birmingham. The earliest quotation in the ' N.E.D.' for " toyshop," in the sense of a shop where children's playthings are sold, is dated 1818, and is from Sir Walter Scott's ' Heart of Midlothian.' The word, in Burke's sense, seems to have lost its meaning by the end of the eighteenth century.

I may remark in passing that the imprint of Sir Samuel Morland's tract ' The Poor Man's Dyal ' (1689) sets forth that the instrument is "to be sold at all the Button - Sellers, Cutlers, and Toyshops about the Town." This reference does not appear in the ' N.E.D.,' and is earlier than any there given. B. B. P.

ARTHUR JOHNSTON BIBLIOGRAPHY. The Aberdeen University Library has recently acquired, through the generosity of Col. William Johnston, C.B., a booklet which had eluded his research when he compiled his ' Bibliography and Portraits of Arthur Johnston,' Aberdeen, 1896. The title runs :

I Ad | Illustrissimum Princi- pem | Ludovicum Comit. | Palatin. Ducem | Bavarise, &c. [device] Sedani, | Ex Typographia loannis lannon. | M.dc.xviii."

The LTpoTre/tTTTiKov, which occupies sig. A2 and A3, consists of forty-six elegiac couplets. It is signed " Arturus lonstonus, Medicine Doct. et Philosoph. in Academ. Sedanensi Professor." P. J. ANDERSON.

University Library, Aberdeen.

MUSICIANS, MINSTRELS, AND PLAYERS. Musical readers may be interested in the following names, taken from the returns of the Drapers' Company in 1641, in connexion with a poll tax levied upon the members of City Companies. All the following persons were certified as " not able to pay iij u " :

John Coleborne, in Pye Corner, musiconer ; Alexander Farmer, musiconer, in Ireland ; Ed- ward Clarke, in Bishopsgate streete, musiconer ; William Only, ditto ; Edward ATerrick, in Cowe Lane, musiconer; and John Goodale, in Wood street, musiconer.

The following extracts from the registers of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, may also be re- corded here :

John Broderer, mynstrell, was buried 31 July, 1563.

George Feyreclyff, mynstrell, was buried 9 August, 1563.

Comedia, the daughter of William Johnson, one of her Ma tie players. Base borne of Alyce Booker, baptised 10 February, 1586/7.

PERCY D. MUNDY.