Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/373

 us. XIL NOV. e, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

365

be difficult to define where it borders Westminster, Chelsea, or Belgravia perhaps it is, as Punch suggests, synonymous with " Belgravia," and so Thackeray's " Pimlico Arch " has a certain appropriateness.

Is there any view or description extant of the " Pimlico " in Grosvenor Place of 1777 ? Harrison does not describe it.

G. J., F.S.A.

Cyprus.

THE ' HYMN OF HATE ' (11 S. xii. 302).- I have a newspaper cutting :

" We wonder how many Germans would to-day sing the Song of Hate which was written for them many years ago by Herwegh. It was translated into English by that brilliant Irishman James Clarence Mangan, author of a ' German Anthology,' who died in 1849."

The contributor was T. H. Storey.

R. J. FYNMORE.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (US. xii. 302, 350). In Appendix A. (headed ' Poe's Ancestry') of J. H. Ingram's ' Life ' of the poet (ed. 1886, p. 435) there is no hint given of any Scottish relations of Poe, though it is not improbable some such may have existed as John Poe, the progenitor of the family in America, emigrated from the north of Ireland. Mrs. Whitman ('Edgar Poe and his Critics') held the theory that the family was of Italian origin, migrating through France, England, and Wales to Ireland, but it is mere supposition, as, says Mr. Ingram,

"it must be confessed that the earliest reliable records do not carry the paternal ancestry of Poe further back than the middle of the last [the eighteenth] century."

I am of opinion that if any ancestors or relatives could have been discovered in Scotland Mr. Ingram would have found them. He merely observes that it was " at the solicitation of his wife, Mr. John Allan agreed to adopt the boy [in 1811]."

Since the above reply was penned I have seen that by SIR WJLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK, and venture to add that I regard his asser- tion that Griswold's biography "is the fullest and best" as misleading. Ingram's work, which alone deserves both epithets, is an im- partial sketch of the man whom Griswold cruelly maligned, both living and dead. Capt. Mayne Reid said of Griswold ('A Dead Man Defended,' in Onward, April, 1869):

" In the list of literary men there has been no such spiteful biographer as Rufus Griswold, and never such a victim of posthumous spite as poor Edgar Allan Poe."

J. B. MCGOVERN.

St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

PRONUNCIATION OF "GLADIOLUS" (11 S^ xii. 220, 288, 327). On the question of the- penultimate syllable of " gladiolus " becom- ing long in late Latin, may I refer to an answer of mine on ' Latin Accentuation ' (11 S. v. 33) ? In reply to a query as to the accentuation of " filiolus," " gladiolus," &c., references were given to Lindsay's ' Latin Language,' to the ' Ency. Brit.' article on ' Latin Language,' to Brugmann and Del- briick's ' Vergleichende Grammatik,' and to articles in the Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie.

A few words of Prof. Lindsay may be quoted (' Latin Language,' p. 164) :

" The Latin, accentuation is retained with wonderful tenacity by the Romance languages - Where they agree in deviating from the classical Latin accent, the accentuation which they repro- duce is that of Vulgar Latin. . . .In words ending in -ier em, -t6lwn, e.g., mulierem, fili&lum, the accent in Vulgar Latin was shifted from the i to the e and o, mulierem, filitflum. The precept of an unknown grammarian (Anecd. Helv. p. ciii k.) sanctions this usage (mulierem in antepenultimo- nemo debet acuere, sed in penultimo potius), and in Christian poets of the third and fourth centuries we find scansions like

Insuper et Salomon, eadem mulie're creatus,

Dracontius, ' Satisf.' 161 r cf. Ital. figliuolo, Span, hijuelo, Fr. filleul"

An example given in the ' Ency. Brit. r article is the change of the classical Puteott to the Italian Pozzuoli.

The exact nature of these changes, and their chronology and causes, may not be easy to determine, but it is important to- recognize that such changes did take place. It seems sometimes to be forgotten that Latin while it continued to be a spokeik language was not stationary. It was not a point, but a procession.

If one is to criticize errors of pronunciation in botanical Latin, among the chief offenders are those who ill-treat the name Erica.

One is inclined at times to accept with patience the principle formulated by a Cambridge humorist that the meanest flower that blows has a right to be described with two false quantities.

EDWARD BENSLY.

THE FABRIC OF CATHEDRALS (11 S. xiL. 200, 261, 325). Information on this subject will be found in ' England's Chronicle in Stone,' by J. F. Hunwell, and ' British and Foreign Building Stones ' (a descriptive catalogue of the specimens in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge), published by the

Cambridge University Press, Fetter Lane* London, price 3s. J. WATSON.

Bracondale, The Avenue, Cambridge.