Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/254

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 . vi. MAY is, 1920.

recorded in 1594 the word darl for chimpan- zee (Almada, 'Breve Tratado,' p. 80) ; there can be little doubt that "mandrill" is in some way connected with it, perhaps as a hybrid form coined by a native boy to denote the anthropoid nature of the animal. The mandrill proper does not occur in the neighbourhood and the name must have been applied to it considerably later.

N. W. THOMAS. 128 Gower Street, W.C.I.

THE LAST CAVALIER. The last Cavalier, or the last survivor of the men who had borne arms in the war between Charles I. and the Parliament, was probably one William Walker, who lived at Alston by Ribchester, Lancashire, and was buried in Ribchester churchyard on Jan. 13, 1736. In the parish registers his burial is entered thus : " Burried William Walker, a cavalier, aged 122, d. Alston." This man had a Lhorse killed under him at the battle of Edgehill on Oct. 23, 1642. J. W. F.

VENEDI ANT> VENETI. Southey in his "' Commonplace Book,' i. 199, quotes (from

.p. 65), a description of Moldavia from which I extract the following :.
 * Dr. Neale's Travels Travels of Macarius,'

" Jt is intersected with marshes and small lakes, in a degree curious beyond all description. Meck- lenburgh Strelitz, and La Vendee in France, were

formerly in the same state All these three

countries were inhabited by the Venedic nations, or the people who dwelt on fens ; the same tribes who first inhabited that part of England now called Cam bridgeshire."

The Wends who lived near the Gulfs of Riga and Danzig, are mentioned by Pliny <iv. 13) as Venedi, and by Tacitus (G. 46) as Veneti. A tribe called Veneti, living near the modern Vannes, is mentioned by Caesar several times in his ' De Bello Gallico,' and also by Pliny. Are there any grounds for identifying these peoples or for supposing that they were also the inhabitants of Moldavia, Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Cam- bridgeshire ?

In the 1832 edition of Lempriere's

ing of the Veneti near the mouths of the Po, says :
 * Classical Dictionary ' Charles Anthon speak-

" As regards the origin of the ancient Veneti, there is every appearance of fable in the commonly received account of their having come originally "from the coast of Paphlagonia in Asia Minor. Mannert (10.54) has started a learned and plausible theory, in which he maintains with great ability the northern origin of the Veneti : They were a branch of the great Sclavonic race. His grounds for this opinion are, 1. the fact of the Veneti being


 * not an aboriginal people in Italy ; 2. the analogy of

their name with that of the Vandals, both being derived from the old Teutonic word ivetulm, and denoting ' a roving and unsteady mode of life ' ; 3. From the existence of the amber trade among them, and the proof which this furnishes of a com- munication, by an overland trade, between them and the nations inhabiting the shores of the Baltic and countries of the north."

Pompeo Molmenti says that the Veneti emigrated from Illyria about the eighth century B.C.

Is Mannert's theory generally accepted ? JOHN B. WAIXEWRIGHT.

We must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

WAS DR. JOHNSON A SMOKER ? Boswell says, under year 1756 (Birkbeck Hill's edition, vol. i., p. 317) :

" There is a composure and gravity in the game of draughts which insensibly tranquilizes the mind ; and, accordingly, the Dutch are fond of it, as they are of smoaking, of the sedative influence of which, though he himself never smoaked, he had a high opinion."

Boswell probably refers to Dr. Johnson's remarks on smoking as given in the ' Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides,' under date Aug. 19 :

" Smoking has gone out. To be sure, it is a shocking thing blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes and noses, and having the same done to us. Yet I cannot account why a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out. Every man has something by which he calms himself ; beating with his feet or so."

In the face of this appears the following statement in ' The Soverane Herbe : a History of Tobacco,' by W. A. Penn (1902) :

" Dr. Johnson smoked like a furnace, and took snuff like the Scotsmen he so much hated. He kept his snuff in his waistcoat pocket, and with characteristic slovenliness his dress was always smeared with it. All his friends Goldsmith, Beynolds, Garrick were his companions in tobacco worship." What is the authority for this statement ?

Joseph Fume (A. W. Chatto) in his unique 'A Paper Of Tobacco,' 1839, writes:

" Dr. Johnson, in a conversation with Boswell, if I remember right, expresses his opinion that, since smoking had become prevalent among the more respectable and middle classes of England, suicides had become less frequent ; and he also seems to have regretted that he had not acquired the habit himself, from an opinion that the soothing influence of a pipe would have been beneficial in alleviating the melancholy with which he was so frequently depressed."