Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/145

 us. xii. AUG. 21, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

137

and in ' The Duchess of Malfy ' :

most imperfect light of human reason, That mak'st us so unhappy to foresee What we can least prevent !

III. ii. (ii. 208).

All three passages were inspired by, and the last is an almost literal rendering of, a sen- tence occurring in Gynecia's speech at the beginning of Book IT. of the ' Arcadia ' : "0 imperfect proportion of reason, which can make too much foresee and too little prevent !"

The sailor who accompanies Mariana brings Cesario the news that his father has met his death by drowning. This news is received by Cesario with a remark which, with slight variations, is constantly on the lips of Webster's characters :

I pray thee leave us. Mariana then observes :

I have a sorrow of another nature, equal to the former.

and Cesario replies :

And most commonly they come together. The reflection that misfortunes never come singly is, of course, proverbial ; but it is none the less noteworthy that it is to be found twice in ' The Devil's Law Case ' : One mischief never comes alone.

II. i. (iii. 40). I do look now for some great misfortunes

To follow ; for indeed mischiefs

never come to prey upon us single.

III. iii. (iii. 67).

H. DUGDALE SYKES. Enfield.

(To be continued.)

" TRUMBREL " IN THE * N.E.D.' (See 11 S. xii. 79). In your notice of the latest instalment of the ' N.E.D.' you refer to the dialectal use of " tumbrel." This is noticed also in the ' Dictionary ' itself, but in another connexion. We are told that in dialect it has the meaning of "a square rack for holding fodder in the open field or yard." This is the use with which I have been familiarized in Lincolnshire, but I venture to think that these " tumbrels " are not "racks." In Nottinghamshire I have usually heard them called " cribs," and this seems the better word for them. Surely " rack " suggests bars, or some sort of open-work, which these things have not, nor has " crib " necessarily this implication. It is perhaps worth saying that I do not find several new pharmaceutical words in the latest double-section of the great Dictionary. The most important of these are " tubo- curine" and " tumenol." C. C. B.

A LETTER OF MADAME D'ARBLAY. Amongst some old War Office records I recently came across the following letter of Madame D'Arblay (Fanny Burney), which may be of interest to readers of ' N. & Q.' : War Office, 43/51,129.

Lower Sloane Street, Chelsea,

Dear Sir August 5 th, 1814

I enclose you the Letter of Mad e la Comtesse de Maurville, for whose distress & petition 1 have solicited your assistance. You cannot give it for a more estimable person, either in principle or con- duct.

She sustained herself here by giving instructions,, in French, &c., to several young persons, assembled for that purpose, under her root, till the Truce o Amiens inspired her with better, but false hopes,, of ameliorating her condition abroad. Once there,, however disappointed, she found no means to- return ;& her present claims upon the generosity of This Government, were precisely such as to annul all appeal upon that under which she lingered. She subsisted, therefore, almost wholly upon the hospi- tality of a relation, M. de la Tour du Pin, of late r Prefect at Brussels : a place he never accepted till threatened with an execution in his mouldering Chateau, near Bordeaux, from penury and revolu- tionary ruin. Louis 18 has lately, I am told, made him Ambassadour to Holland : but he has only his- appointment; & his good Cousin, Mad e de Maur- ville, anxiously desires to hang no longer wholly or* his benevolence.

I beg my kindest love to my dear Fanny, & many embra ssades to my little Favourite th& Favourite of my dearest Father ! & may believe me, Dear Sir, your affec tc Fr a & Serv 1.

F. B. D'ARBLAY. [Endorsed]

Charles Raper,* Esq.,

Cook's Grounds, King's Road.

[*0f the Foreign Department, War Office.]

Several letters in French from the Comtesse de Maureville will be found in a small packet under the reference given above. The Comte de Maureville, Captain in the French Royal Navy, died in 1797.

E. H. FAIRBROTHER.

FOLK - SPEECH (WORCESTERSHIRE) : " PLAIN." My gardener, who and whose forebears have for a long time resided in south-east Worcestershire, in reply to a question as to the popularity of a certain parson, described him as a very " plain " man ; and when I asked what he meant, said that the parson was an affable and approach- able man, and that he had used and heard used the word " plain " in that sense all his life. In ' A Glossary of Words and Phrases used in South-East Worcestershire,' by Jessie Salisbury (1893), the word does not appear. Is it known to be used elsewhere than here in a like way ?

STAPLE TON MARTIN. The Firs, Norton, Worcester.