Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/119

 ii s. vi. ADO. s, 19K. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

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" VISTO " = " VISTA" (11 S. vi. 27). The form visto is much older than 1781 as a dictionary word. Already in Phillips (1706) we find " Vista, Ital., a prospect " ; and in Kersey's third edition (1721) we find in Kersey at a still earlier date ; but I have no copies at hand.
 * ' Visto (/.), a prospect." Perhaps it occurs

The change from a foreign suffix -a to an E. -o is really quite common. I beg leave to quote from my ' Principles of English Etymology,' Second Series, p. 322, as the book does not appear to have been consulted :

" Englishmen picked up the fact that -ado was a Spanish suffix. . . .Accordingly, they turned the Span. fern. sb. carbonado into carbonado, and played the same trick with Span, emboscada, Tudor E. ambuscado ; Span, bastonada, Tudor E. bastinado ; barricada, Tudor E. barricade ; see the suffix -ado in the ' N.E.D." Emboldened by this, they even substituted this -ado for the Ital. -a/a, as in the Ital. strappata, E. strappado. Palisado answers neither to the Span, palizada nor the Ital. palicciata, but was obtained by turning the F. palissade into imagined Spanish. Even Shakespeare twice uses armado instead of armada to mean ' a fleet ' ; though it might have been thought that he knew sufficiently what an armada was like, to be able to give a good account of it."

This I published in 1891.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

In a map of the township of Allerton, co. Lane., dated 1771, an avenue of trees is called " visto from the north and to the hall court," exactly in the sense of the dictionary of 1781. R. S. B.

' The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases,' edited by C. A. M. Fennell, Cambridge, 1892, gives a quotation for vista from Evelyn's ' Diary ' under the date 1644. The earliest instance given of the form visto is of the year 1722. ' The Stanford Dictionary ' does not seem to be so well known as it should be.

EDWARD BENSLY.

Bailey has both forms in his twenty- fourth edition (1782), as follows :

Vis'ta, 1 a Prospect, a straight Walk cut through Vis'to, / the Trees in a Wood.

C. C. B.

KING ENGLE AND HIS SONS (11 S. v. 509). If " seventeen "be a mistake for Another form of it may be seen in John of Bromton's ' Chronicle.' He derives the name Anglia from " Angela, daughter of a certain Duke of Saxony." STAR.
 * ' seven," the meaning of the story is obvious.

AUTHOR WANTED (11 S. vi. 29). The words were inscribed by Shenstone on an ornamental urn, erected by him in the grounds of the Leasowes, to the memory of his cousin Miss Dolman, and were not an epitaph on her tomb. See ' A Descrip- tion of the Leasowes,' pp. 287320, in vol. ii. of the fourth edition of Shenstone's ' Works,' published by Dodsley in 1773. The full inscription was on one side,

Peramabili suse consobrinsB M. D.

and on the other side,

Ah ! Maria

Puellarum elegantissima Ah ! flore venustatis abrepta

Vale!

Heu quanto minus est

Cum reliquis versari

Quam tui

Meminisse.

Miss Dolman, who resided at Broome, now in Worcestershire, died of smallpox at the age of 21. A. C. C.

As is said in the editorial note appended to this query, Shenstone is the author of the epitaph " Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse." Byron uses it as a motto for his lyric, " And thou art dead, as young and fair," included in ' Occasional Pieces, 1807-1824.' He ela- borates his theme in eight nine-line stanzas, opening the eighth with this paraphrase of the epitaph :

Yet how much less it were to gain,

Though thou hast left me free, The loveliest things that still remain, Than thus remember thee !

The late Mr. Arthur J. Munby, author of ' Dorothy,' whose initials used to be familiar in these columns, gave this compact and felicitous rendering :

Ah, how much less all living loves to me, Than that one rapture of remembering thee !

THOMAS BAYNE.

DINGWALL FAMILY (11 S. vi. 11). The Carlisle Journal of 31 Oct., 1840, has an account of the inquest on John Duff Ding- wall, Esq., of Brockley Castle, Aberdeen- shire, who was found dead in his bedroom at " The Bush Inn," Carlisle, on Monday morning, 26 Oct., his throat having been cut with a razor. He had arrived at " The Bush " on Sunday, the 25th, by the Edui- burgh mail, and had expressed his intention of leaving Carlisle at nine o'clock next morning. He was accompanied by his manservant, who gave evidence that Mr. Dingwall had, on the Sunday night, a