Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/131

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

Then came ' American Notes,' which caused Dickens much anxiety and care. It appeared on the 18th of October, 1842, and before the year closed four editions had been sold. Jeffrey, connected with America by the strongest social affections, said of it :

" You have been very tender to our sensitive friends beyond sea, and my whole heart goes along with every word you have written. I think that you have perfectly accomplished all you profess or undertake to do, and that the world has never yet seen a more faithful, graphic, amusing, kind-hearted narrative."

1843 opened with his "hammering away all day " at ' Chuzzlewit ' ; and during the year he began to take public part in those works of charity and mercy which occupied him throughout his life. For the printers he took the chair at their annual dinner in aid of their Pension Fund, which Hood, Jerrold, and Forster attended with him. After the terrible summer evening accident at sea by which Elton the actor lost his life. Dickens, ably helped by Mr. Serle and the theatrical profession, would not rest until ample provision was made for his children. In October he presided at the opening of the Manchester Athenaeum, when he told his listeners that " he protested against the danger of calling a little learning dangerous,' 1 and declared his preference for the very least of the little over none at all, mentioning that he had lately

" taken Longfellow to see, in the nightly refuges of London, thousands of immortal creatures condemned without alternative of choice to tread, not what our great poet calls the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire, but one of jagged IHnts and stones laid down by brutal ignorance : and contrasted this with the unspeakable con- solation and blessings that a little knowledge had shed on men of the lowest estate and most hopeless means, watching the stars with Ferguson the shepherd's boy, walking the streets with Crabbe, a poor barber here in Lancashire, with Arkwright, a tallow chandler's son, with Franklin, shoemaking with Bloomfield in his garret, follow- ing the plough with Burns, and high above the noise of loom and hammer, whispering courage in the ears of workers I could this day name in Sheffield and in Manchester."

He gave eager welcome to ragged schools, calling Miss Coutts's attention to them, who wrote back at once

li to know what the rent of some large airy pre- mises would be, and what the expense of erecting a regular bathing or purifying place would be ; touching which points I am in correspondence with the authorities." '

Towards the close of the year he began to work upon that gem of gems, ' The Christmas Carol.' " With a strange mastery it seized him for itself : how he wept over it, and

laughed, and wept again, and excited him- self to an extreme degree." On its publica- tion Thackeray wrote to him: "Such a book as this seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness." Letters daily poured in from complete strangers, telling him " how the Carol had come to be read in their homes, and was to be kept on a little shelf by itself, and was to do them all no end of good."

I still possess the copy which Dickens gave to my father, and well remember his reading it aloud to us. I also remember, on Christmas Eve, 1858. hearing the author himself read it a Christmas. Eve never to be forgotten.

JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS:

(To be continued.)

"CASTRA," "CASTR^E," IX OLD ENGLISH.

Ix order to understand the behaviour of the Latin word castra in English the student of place-names would naturally turn to Dr. Pogatscher's article on the phonology of Greek, Latin, and Romance loan-words in Old English. This appeared in ' Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kultur- geschichte der germanischen Volker' in 1888 (part Ixiv.). But disappointment awaits him in that quarter : Dr. Pogatscher knew neither the normal uninfected form nor the umlauted one ; and he paid no attention to the form preserved by Bede. He asserted, moreover, that ceaster is derived from castru(m). But that derivation is not accepted, and I beg leave to supplement the few remarks he makes about the forms that castra took in O.E.

The normal O.E. representative of Latin d in the Anglian and Kentish dialects is ce, hence castra postulates ccestrce. That actu- ally occurs in Bede's ' Historia Ecclesiastica,' II. iii. p. 85, " (Dorubreuis) quam gens An- glorum. . . . Hrofaescaestrae cognominat " ; and IV. xxiii. p. 254, " Dorca-caestrae " (MSS. d&rcic-c.).

In the Mercian and Kentish dialects we get cestcr, and, as one of the uses of e is denoting i-umlaut of ce, this postulates ccestir. This form, which he spells caestir, is actually used by Bede in every case except those quoted just now. In the infected form cester the umlaut is hidden, but in the un- i i f ected early Northumbrian one the i invariably appears. So far as I am aware