Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/193

 ii s. v. FKB. 24, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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after the author's death. He died in 1703. The imprints on the respective editions are "' Paris, 1704," and " Paris, 1741," in 4 vols., 12mo. I have not heard of any edition having ever been published in England.

W. SCOTT.

BEAUPUIS (11 S. v. 91). A good account of Beaupuis (or rather Beaupuy) will be found in ' The Early Life of William Words- worth,' by E. Legouis (Dent, 1897), pp. 201- 215, or in the original form of the work,
 * La Jeunesse de W. Wordsworth.'

G. C. MOORE SMITH.

University of Sheffield.

Editors of Wordsworth refer to ' Le General Michel Beaupuy,' by G. Bussiere and E. Legouis. A good deal of information will be found in Prof. Legouis's ' La Jeunesse de William Wordsworth,' which was trans- lated by F. W. Matthews under the title ~ Early Life of Wordsworth.'

L. K. M. STRACHAN.

Heidelberg.

JANE AUSTEN'S ' PERSUASION ' (11 S. iv I 288, 339, 412, 538 ; v. 75). It is curious that nobody has referred to what the
 * O.E.D.' says under A, 12 :

" Process ; with a verbal sb. taken passively : in process of, in course of, undergoing. Varying with in : ' forty and six years was this temple in building,' arch, or dial. (In modern language the a is omitted and the verbal sb. treated as a participle, passive in sense ; as the house was a building, the house icas building, &c.)"

Of use with a there is an instance given from 1 Peter iii. 20 : "In the dayes of Noah while the Arke was a preparing."

C. C. B.

' THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC ' : A CURIOUS ANACHRONISM (11 S. v. 46). Such obvioui anachronisms as that to which MR. BENSE refers are not rare in the English miracle plays, nor, presumably, in French plays of the kind. Later Scripture allusions were introduced into Old Testament scenes altogether as a matter of course. Even paganism of a later day was frankly drawr upon. Prof. Schelling (' Elizabethan Drama 1558-1642 ') has the following appropriate sentence on the subject :

" Herod and Pontius Pilate rage, as the heathen will, and swear, customarily by Mahomet, whils Isaac, in a scene touching 1 in its simple and homel; pathos, adjures his father Abraham, ' by th< blessed Trinity,' to spare his mother's tears an< withhold from her the tidings of her son's untimelv death."

W. B.

KNIVES AS PRESENTS (11 S. v. 91). A few weeks ago a lady told me that, having been commissioned by the members of a mothers' meeting to spend some collected money on a present for a conductor of the meeting, who was about to leave, she bought a brooch. This, however much admired, was objected to because of the pin ; and it had to be exchanged for a pendant before the mothers were content. Mr. Lean some- where enshrines the information that it is so unlucky to give a pin that, if you ask for one, woman will say : " You may take one, ut, mind, I do not give it."

ST. S WITHIN.

The following appeared on 3 February n The Glasgow Evening Citizen :

An old superstition was perpetrated at Hanley yesterday. A presentation of cutlery was made by the employees of a local firm to he principal. Before the gathering dispersed the ecipient gave each employee a new halfpenny is a symbol of a continuance of the happy rela- ionship existing between the employers and employees, or, to use a localism, ' so as not to cut the friendship.' "

W. G. B.

When lads and lasses gave their sweet - learts scissors or knives, great care was taken that something should be passed in return a kiss, handkerchief, or a small coin. This ustom was " thought much of," and now and then a lass would give a knife, and refuse anything in return, " on purpose to cut love." But I never knew a lad to do so. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Gay has an allusion to this old superstition somewhere, and it is mentioned in a poem by the Rev. Samuel Bishop, No. cxvi. in Locker's ' Lyra Elegantiarum ' :

A knife, dear girl, cuts love, they say Mere modish love perhaps it may ; For any tool of any kind Can separate what was never join'd. The knife that cuts our love in two Will have much tougher work to do.

C. C. B.

[MR. JOHN T. PAGE refers G. H. G. to Brand's ' Antiquities,' s.v. ' Omens ' ; and also to 7 S. viii. 469 ; ix. 11.]

LADY ELIZABETH STUART, DARNLEY'S SISTER (US. iv. 89). According to the best and most recent authorities, Matthew, the fourth Earl of Lennox, and Lady Mar- garet Douglas, his wife, had a family of four sons and four daughters. All their children died in infancy or childhood, with the exception of Henry, Lord Darnley, who