Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/438

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. VIL MAY 31, 1913.

MAGIC RING. Who was the man that was fabled to possess a magic ring that pricked him whenever he abandoned duty and followed the path of desire ?

HUGH MAR WICK.

[This allusion of George Eliot's was discussed at 9 S. xi. 109, 211, 490. G. E. D. referred to the ring of Sultan Amurath (vide ( The Adventurer,' xx ) and to Maria Edgeworth's ' Rosamond ' ; MB. E. E. STIIEET supplied a reference to Madame de Beau- mont's ' Le Prince Cheri ' in her ' Contes des Fees ' : MR. HARRY HEMS mentioned a cognate belief among the Zulus ; MR. E. H. COLEMAN quoted 5 S. iii. 194, where vol. ix. New Series of the publica- tions of the Royal Society of Literature was said to give information ; and MR. KUMAGUSU MINAKATA told of a Buddhist story of a magic ring.]

" CLEVEBALITY." Is not this a new coinage ? It occurs in the review of Mr. Chesterton's ' The Victorian Age in Litera- ture ' which appeared in The Athencaum of 22 February last (p. 209). UBLLAD.

[The first quotation for "cleverality" in the 'N.E.D.' is from Blackwood's Magazine of 1828. The Athenaeum reviewer was following Charlotte Bronte's use of the word, as the context shows.]

" DEATH BIDES A HOBSE OF BAPID SPEED." Is this a quotation from some writer ? I have heard it quoted in the pulpit and elsewhere, and it is a line in a tombstone inscription :

When in the bloom Of life, my home

Was chang'd, on sudden, to a tomb. Watch, ye that read, Pure lives to lead ; Death rides a horse of rapid speed.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

WASHINGTON'S CONNEXION WITH SELBY. (See ante, p. 317.) I have a rough note as follows :

''Laurence Washington left his native village of Wharton in Lancashire for London ; but he moved to Northampton, where he was Mayor (1532) ; pro- cured a grant of the manor of Sulgrave. Cf. ' Historic Warwickshire,' by J. Tom Burger, I\S,A., 1875."

Were the Washingtons of Sulgrave de- rived from Lancashire or from Yorkshire ?

EUGENE F. McPiKE. 135, Park Row, Chicago.

4 THE AMBTJLATOB.' I wish to obtain full bibliographical details of ' The Ambu- lator.' issued some years ago as a guide to the London district. J. ABDAGH.

Dublin.

QUEENHOO HALL. What is the deriva- tion of the name of this Hertfordshire manor house ? Are there any historical incidents connected with the place ? W. E. W.

' STAMFORD MERCURY.'

(11 S. vii. 365.) THE reference to the Stamford Mercury reminds me that The Bristol Times and Mirror celebrated its two hundredth anni- versary last February, claiming descent in an unbroken line from The Bristol Post- man, founded in the middle of February, 1713. For the bi-centenary number of the Times and Mirror I wrote an article telling the story of the paper and its ancestors, availing myself freely and thankfully of the results of researches made by the Rev. Alfred B. Beaven and others. At the out- set I wrote of the Times and Mirror's claim :

"There is no existing daily morning newspaper in Great Britain and Ireland that dates back so far. The nearest claim is that of the Leeds Mercury, 1718. The other morning general newspapers that had their beginnings in the eighteenth century are: Belfast Neivs Letter, 1737; Birmingham Gazette, 1741 ; Yorkshire Post (Leeds), 1754 ; Newcastle Chronicle, 1764 ; Morning Post and Devon and Exeter Gazette, 1772; Glasgow Herald, 1782; The Times, 1785; and Morning Advertiser, 1794."

I believe that of existing weekly provin - cial newspapers Berrow's Worcester Journal is the oldest, dating from 1690, when the title was The Worcester Post-Man. Then comes The Lincoln, Rutland, and Stamford Mercury, which is stated to have been started in 1695. MB. HEBBEBT E. NOBBIS suggests that 1713 is more likely to be the correct date. He assumes that the number- ing of the issues is trustworthy, which is assuming much ; those early printers had a habit of misnumbering which is bewilder- ing to us in these days.

The earliest extant copy of a Bristol news- paper is The Bristol Post-Boy of 12 August, 1704, and it is No. 91. From that number it is inferred that the paper was first pub- lished in November, 1702. As a matter of fact we do not positively know in Bristol the exact date of the beginnings of either the Post-Boy or the Post -Man; we can only arrive at the dates by the process MB. NOBBIS has adopted with the Stamford Mercury, and we do not know exactly when nor why the Post-Boy ceased to appear, but it cannot be traced beyond May, 1712. The assumption is that it died before the Post-Man was born, but it may have been killed by the Post-Man, which was a better paper. The earliest known copy of the Post-Man is stated to be No. 24, dated