Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/243

 us. vi. SEPT. 7, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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0n 38o0ks.

Analecta Bollandiana. Tomus XXXI. Fasc. I. ; Fasc. II. et III. (Brussels, Societe des Bollan- distes.)

Two articles in the first number possess a special and sad interest, as being from the pen of P. Albert Poncelet. The one is a catalogue of the Latin hagiographical codices in the Meermann-West- reen Museum ; the other a study of the legends relating to Bohemond of Antioch and St. Leonard. This last displays not only the erudite accuracy and judgment of the author, but also his clear- cut and lucid method of story-telling. P. van de Vorst gives us the text of the panegyric upon St. Theophanes, ascribed to St. Theodore Studites, preceded by an illuminating introduction ; and from P. van Ortroy we get the text of the life of the Blessed Dalmatius Moner, a Dominican priest of the early fourteenth century, in the original Latin of Nicolas Eymeric, whose MS., written about 1351, was the source from which all later biographies were derived. This is here published for the first time a pious and simple narrative of a familiar type, having yet, apart from its scholastic value, a considerable measure of attractiveness, and that in spite of the frank- ness concerning details hardly pleasing which comes natural to the mediaeval hagiographer.

In the other number the first article is the obituary notice of P. Albert Poncelet, whose sudden death, at the age of 50, in January of this year, is a great loss to hagiology. Following it is a short paper by him on the authorship of the life of St. Basinus of Treves. The most important of the contributions is that by P. Delehaye, one of the editors, on the Saints of Thrace and Mcesia. From MSS. in the Bodleian and the British Museum, at Paris, Rome, Munich, and Vienna, he has selected, partly for their superior literary merit and general interest, nine texts relating the passions of martyrs, which are, indeed, apart from questions of scholarship, well worth reading for their vigour and simplicity. They are fol- lowed by a lengthy and most valuable discussion of their place in hagiography, whether as regards each work as a whole or as regards allusions con- tained in it. Matter of this kind an affair of MSS., dates, authorities, and so on has so often, to all but those who have made it their special study, an air of repelling " dryness," that it seems worth while to congratulate the author on having composed a study which is as delightful as it is learned. P. Paulus Peeters prints a catalogue of the passions and other texts con- tained in the Iberian Codex lately acquired by the Bodleian ; and there is an unusually long list of reviews.

MR. HENRY HARRISON has completed Vol. I. of his concise Etymological Dictionary of English Surnames. This extends from A to L. The work shows great care and industry. The author in his ' Forespeech ' says : " When the late Canon Bardsley's ' Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames ' was published in 1901, I found that its Introduction opened with the following remark : ' The purpose of this work is to supply materials for an etymological dictionary of English and Welsh surnames.' At that moment there lay in my manuscript case the first draft, complete

from A to Z, of an attempt at an Etymological Dictionary of Surnames of the United King- dom." Mr. Harrison in revising and rewriting his early attempt found Canon Bardsley's " industrious delving " for early forms of names in the print copies of our records of the Middle-English period " of great value," but he states that " the volume, despite its many merits, has to be used with very considerable caution." In regard to English names of local origin, Canon Taylor's work ' Names and their Histories ' has been found useful.

The curious origin of many names is well known to our readers. We cite a few examples from Mr. Harrison's useful work : Angus, unique strength ; Arnold, Eagle, Gracious ; Audrey, Noble-Strength; Bacon, Bacon dealer, a nickname for a swineherd or a peasant; Barlow, the Bare hill ; Beeman, a Bee-keeper ; Benham, the Bean-Land ; Bentley, the Bent grass Lea; Borthwick, the Castle place; Borra- daile, the Valley of the stronghold ; Bradshaw, dweller at the broad wood (the same applies to Braidwood) ; Chapman, Merchant, tradesman ; Doran, Stranger, alien, exile. The name Gordon was discussed in our pages during 1902, and Mr. Harrison refers especially to the number for the 29th of March (9 S. ix. 256).

On the completion of the Dictionary an essay on the history of our surnames will be given, as well as a list of the treatises quoted and an appendix of foreign names. The work is published at the Eaton Press, Ebury Street.

THE September Fortnightly Rerieu- begins with an article of much more than ephemeral importance on ' The Evolution of Colonial Self-Government,' by Mr. J. A. R. Marriott. Mr. Hilaire Belloc, when he indited ' The Classical Spirit,' appears to have been in a somewhat didactic moon, and to have been entertaining at the same moment con- tradictory opinions as to the probable abilities of his readers ; for he gives in some places emphatic repetition to ideas which are easy enough to grasp, at the first hearing, and in others he utters rather cryptic sayings, to which he vouchsafes only explanation nearly equally dark. His main point apart from individual nuances in treatment has been made before. Mrs. Arthur Barter's paper on Casanova, if it brings nothing new to the " Casanovist," may serve to make clearer to those who are not yet captive to that hero's fascinations what it is that his admirers see in him. Miss Violet Hunt's ' Princes and Prescriptions ' gives a vivacious, if rather " slapdash " account of life_ in the German vttles (feau. We felt some disappoint- ment over Mr. Hallarn Mqorhouse's ' Aspects of William Morris,' which gives us little that is not already generally familiar. Mr. Sidney Whit- man's reminiscences of Prince Reuss are pleasant reading ; Mr. Beresford Chancellor's ' Changing London ' can only in part be called so, since it relates, perforce, so largely to demolition. He makes an interesting comparison between our attitude towards the changes which looks chiefly towards the past, and expresses itself in a good deal of writing on what remains to us of it, neglecting the "improvements" themselves and the attitude of the early years of the nineteenth century, when innumerable books on the new schemes and buildings were published. There is a welcome biographical article on Massenet by Mr.