Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/163

 12 s. VIL AUG. 14, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 131 Emerson get this information ? Is it correct ? [I once mentioned it to Sir Evelyn Wood, and he said it was nonsense !]. 2. Chap. viii. He mentions an R.A. who, in order that his picture should not dim a rival's, took a brush secretly and blackened his own. Who was this R.A. ? G. DALRYMPLE. Ludgershall Rectory, Wilts. [2. This was Turner. His ' Cologne ' was 'hung at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1826 'between two portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence. On varnishing day it was seen that the brilliance of Turner's colouring killed that of Lawrence. Before the private view day Turner dulled his picture with a wash of water-colour saying, when people remonstrated : " Its only lampblack. It will all wash off ; and Lawrence was so unhappy"] THE BLACK BOY, CHELMSFOBD. p. 392, under date 1810, says : "At the Chelmsford Assizes the Lord Chief Baron observed that, on examining some ancient deeds a few days before, he accidentally dis- covered that the Black Boy in that town bore the same sign in the reign of Edward II." Is this the hostelry now known as the Saracen's Head ? JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. CARDINAL ALEXANDER'S EPITAPH, "written by himself " according to Southey -('Commonplace Book,' 4th Series, p. 399) K.dr6avov OVK ae/cwv, orl Traucro/xat wv TTI- , &VTTp ISelv aXytov rjv Oavdrov. "Which Cardinal Alexander was this ? Where is the epitaph to be seen ? JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. AN OLD PALINDROME INTERPRETED. Respecting a palindrome published in 'N. & Q.' for Nov. 26, 1853 (p. 520), stated to be the inscription around a figure of the ' En giro torte sol ciclos et rotor igne, will more profound classicists tell me whether they can support this translation : "Lo Helios, thou art twisted as to thy chariot-wheels into a vortex, and become -* roller with fire " ? In detail I will attempt to justify it so : En sol, Lo sun, torte ciclos, twisted as to thy wheels (cyclos, accusative of reference), giro, into a vortex, et rotor igne, and (become) a roller with fire (vocative, like torte, in ^apposition with sol) a playful allusion to mythical Helios's chariot transformed by CJopernican astronomers into a whirl of incandescent gases ? The contributor recording this puzzle asked for a solution, but it does not appear that any correspondent supplied one. The only trouble I perceive about this rendering is rotor. That quasi -Latin occurs among the terms of present-day mathe- maticians, but its provenance seems to be an essay published in London in 1873. (See Murray's * Oxford English Dictionary.') As something must go over the side in most palindromes, could it be that the con- traction of rotator to rotor suggested itself independently to a medissval (?) epigramma- tist and a modern English mathematician ? Rotor does not occur in any Latin dictionary I have consulted, but there is a possible analogy in the syncope of "symbolology " to symbology and in potor for potator from potare, where the point of elision is the same accented syllable, with the same vowel and recurring consonant. G. W. San Francisco. ' THE SPECTATOR. ' Who were the writers whose initials stand at the bottom of their several articles ? J. T. F. DOCTOR OF DECREES. Is anything known of the degree of "Doctor decretorum " ? It was held by several persons of note at the beginning of the sixteenth century, amongst others by William Witter, rector of Tarposley (1499-1543), by David Pole, rector of Bebington (1531-1535), afterwards (1557- 1561) Bishop of Peterborough, and by James Stanley who received the degree shortly after Pope Julius II. had " signed his bull of provision constituting him Bishop." Mr. James Thornely in his ' Monumental Brasses of Lancashire and Cheshire,' gives some account of Bishop Stanley, from which the above is a quotation (p. 120), and continues : " In the following year (1507) the University of Oxford granted and decreed that he might bo created a doctor of decrees by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London placing a cap upon his head." Was the degree equivalent to the modern honorary D.C.L., and were all such degrees " granted and decreed " by the University of Oxford ? W. F. JOHN TIMBRELL. Coddington Rectory, Chester. JOHN BOARDMAN of Manchester, married three times, and his eldest daughter, Jane, was born in 1824. His first wife was a relation of the Peel family : could some reader give me her name. Any details of the Boardman family would be appreciated. BARTLETT.
 * Southey's Commonplace Book,' 4th Series,