Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/152

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NOTES AND QUERIES. pi s. xn. A. 21, ms.

" the hether end of the Bank " (e.g., book for 1596), after which" The Bank eside begin- ning at Banke end " (book for 1641), and the fringe of houses facing the river, together with the intersecting alleys, are accounted for. Between Bankend and Horseshoe Alley where MB. HUBBABD places his " smal] houses fronting upon Bankside," which he calls the " Park," the books account for Drewe's Rents, Oliphant Alley, Norman' Rents, and Three Tuns Alley, but no mention is made of a Park there. Yet, according to MB. HUBBABD, the small houses, together with those to which the books testify, have all to be squeezed within a length of about 150 yards, the distance between Bankend and Horseshoe Alley.

If further evidence were necessary to show how an appeal to the Token Books refutes MB. HTJBBABD'S theory of the position of the Park, I would cite a later Book^in which the order of alleys, &c., is reversed. Starting at the Falcon Yard, which was at the extreme west of the area, the various alleys are enumerated in their order and Bankend reached. Thence the order is : Castell stayres, the Iremonger's Rents, the north side of Made Lane, the south side of Made Lane, Blackboy Alley, Globe Alley, the weste side of Dedman's place, Rochester House within, Rochester House without, the este side of Dedman's place; and so on.

In view of this evidence, there can hardly exist a doubt that after Winchester House and Rochester House on the south of Winchester House were dealt with the Bishop of Winchester's Park was then re- corded. Thence the usual order in the Books was northward to Globe Alley, the south side of Maid Lane, the north side of Maid Lane following, until Bankend was reached. In no instance in the Books does the " Park " come out of the place allotted to it near Rochester House, nor does Globe Alley ever occur between Maid Lane and Bankend.

This, then, disposes effectually of there being any park but the Bishop of Win- chester's Park, and of any hypothetical Globe Alley but the existing Globe Alley, an alley now incorporated in the premises of Barclay, Perkins & Co., Ltd. The " Park " of the Coram Rege Roll is, therefore, the Park to the south, the Bishop of Win- chester's Park, and the " way or lane " of the Roll is the existing Globe Alley south of the present east and west portion of Park Street, formerly Maid Lane.

WILLIAM MABTIN.

(To be concluded.)

A THIBD ALTEBNATIVE (11 S. xii. 86). If Dr. Sven Hedin said, " There is no third alternative," he indulged in looseness of style. What he obviously meant was that there was no third choice, no third course, or no third possibility. A similar criticism applies to the quotations from Mill and Gladstone in the ' N.E.D.,' designed to illustrate the " extended " use of the term. This " extended " application is in- defensible, and shows merely that writers who speak of three or four alternatives are neglectful stylists. It seems a pity to give permanence to faulty constructions as standard examples, for the position thus assigned them is as likely as not to invest them with the character of precedents. Strictly speaking, an alternative is one or the other of two, and in this primary sense the word has no plural. A choice between two gives an alternative, not " two alterna- tives." In chap. x. of Darwin's ' Journal of Researches,' &c., good examples of the correct use of " alternative " and " alter- nately " are given in two consecutive sen- tences. Speaking of Fuegians who were returning on board the Beagle from an educative experiment in England, the author says :

" Although all three could both speak and under- stand a good deal of English, it was singularly difficult to obtain much information from them

oncerning the habits of their countrymen ; this was partly owing to their apparent difficulty in understanding the simplest alternative. Every one accustomed to very young children knows how seldom one can get an answer even to so simple a question as whether a thing is black or white ; the idea of black or white seems alternately to fill their minds. So it was with these Fuegians, and hence

t was generally impossible to find out, by cross- questioning, whether one had rightly understood anything which they had asserted."

THOMAS BAYNE.

I was interested to see this point raised, ? or I used to have many arguments with my old head master on the subject. He stoutly asserted there was no such thing as a third alternative. I contended that the act of comparison implies a temporary duality ; hat you cannot compare A with B, C, and D all at once, but that you necessarily compare it with each one separately, when hat one is, in the strictest sense, an alterna- ive. B, C, and D being thus each an alternative, it followed that there were three alternatives ; just as a woman may have three husbands, if she takes them one at a time, which is just what one does with alter- natives. This argument my old friend denounced as sophistical, so I plied him with