Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/40

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii B. XL JA*. 9,

' HAND LEY CROSS.' I have a copy of the following work in one volume :

" Handley Cross I or | Mr. .Torrocks's hunt | By | the Author of Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, Jorrocks's Jaunts, &c., &c. | With illustrations by John Leech | London | Bradbury & Evans, Bouverie Street. | 1854."

I have just seen a copy of the following in three volumes :

" Handley Cross | or | the Spa Hunt. | By the Author of Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities. | Henry Colburn. 1843."

This book is not illustrated, but, with some exceptions, is word for word as that of the 1854, the great exception being in the omission of six chapters of the 1854, the whole 1843 work being divided into thirty- nine chapters, against eighty in that of 1854. I should feel much obliged if any reader of ' N. & Q. ' would kindly explain this evident plagiarism. The ' Handley Cross ' of 1854 I take to be a first edition, and by Surtees. The question is, Who is the culprit ? The dedications are dissimilar.

HAROLD MALET, Col.

[The 1854 edition 'Handley Cross, or Mr. Jorrocks's Hunt,' is an expansion of ' Handley Cross, or the Spa Hunt,' published in 1843, both being by Surtees.]

BARLOW. I should be obliged if some reader would explain the meaning and origin of the surname Barlowe or Barlow, which occurs frequently in the North of England ; and also as a place-name, such as Barlow Moor in Lancashire, and Barlow in York- shire. Which is the elder of the two place names ? INQUIRER.

WORDS OF POEM WANTED. I wish to obtain the words of a ' Poem upon the Statue of the King erected in the Royal Exchange by the Society of Merchant Ad- venturers, 1684.' J. ARDAGH.

35, Church Avenue, Drumcondra, Dublin.

SHAKE SPEARIANA : ' ALL 's WELL THAT ENDS WELL.' In 'The Arden Shakespeare,' which is the only separate edition of this play that has a full commentary, the im- portant passage " Has led the drum before the English tragedians" is left unnoticed. I am prepared to wager that not one in a hundred readers of Shakespeare would be able to interpret it. I am not quite certain of its meaning, and therefore I ask your readers to explain it to me. I believe it has reference to the -actors who marched through the city accompanied by a drum to call attention to the play they were about to act. MAURICE JONAS.

Jleplus.

THE 'SLANG DICTIONARY '

PUBLISHED BY J. C. HOTTEN:

ITS AUTHOR.

(11 S. x. 488.)

I WAS closely connected with Mr. John Camden Hotten in the latter part of his life up to his death, and I always understood from him that he was the author (so far as a dictionary can have an " author ") of the ' Slang Dictionary.' From the nature of the case, all dictionaries, from the biggest to the smallest, must be to a great extent compilations ; and doubtless Mr. Hotten was largely helped by the contributions of fellow-workers in the field, and by the great collections of cuttings to which, like all working antiquaries, he was always adding ; but that the putting into shape and the making into a volume of the material so collected, as also much of the original writing in it, was his own, I have never doubted. I think the volume may have been once revised by him after 1859, but he had always intended to prepare a greatly improved edition of the book a project the realization of which, beyond the collection of much additional matter and many cor- rections, was prevented by his premature death.

Soon after Mr. Hot-ten's death, the work was taken in hand by Mr. Henry Sampson, who, it will be noted, in the Preface to the 1874 edition speaks of the " compiler " of the fifteen-years-earlier edition, but himself signs as " editor." He certainly put a great deal of himself into the book (he was, by the way, no mean humorist), though, as he tells his readers, in his position as editor of " what, with the smallest possible stretch of fancy, may now be called a new book," he had " mainly benefited by the labours of others," including " two gentlemen well known in the world of literature," " who have not only aided me with advice, but have placed many new words and etymologies at my service." He tells us also that he " had no idea that the alterations would be nearly so large or so manifest."

The etymologies and histories of words are often very difficult to trace ; but the 1874 edition largely added to the value of the ' Dictionary ' in these departments as in others. Since that date, of course, philology has progressed, and any new com- piler of a Dictionary of Slang should any