Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/188

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. AUG. 21, 1020.

" Au PIED DE LA LETTBE " (12 S. vii. 132). The phrase seems to be good current French for " literally," and to have been in use for a very long time. Littre's quotations are from Madame de Sevigne (1626-96). For the expression " au pied de " he quotes Boileau, " Est ce au pied du savoir qu'on mesure les hommes ? " So that the equiva- lent for " au pied de " might be "on the basis of," or " on the footing of."

C. A. COOK.

Sullingstead, Hascombe, Godalming.

INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE ON STYLE (12 S. vii. 89). Of course any one who wished to do so could easily find many cases which contradict the statement that the best writer of a language is he who is familiar with none but his own. Was not Gibbon saturated with French literature and is not his style, which many people admire, profoundly influenced by French ? Did Pater never read a book that was not in English ? In Carlyle, of whom many will say that he wrote Carlylese, there are, amid much that is odious from the point ot view of style, as a result perhaps of his studies in the works of the German romantic school, passages instinct with the finest poetry and of magnificent power. Emerson, I think, says somewhere that he never read anything in another language, if he could find an English translation of it ; perhaps he would have ranked higher as a stylist if he had been a little less enamoured of his mother tongue. As for the poets, what would Rossetti have been without a know- ledge of Italian, or Swinburne, if he had not read ancient Greek ? How many languages did Milton, Longfellow and Tennyson know ? Though I am no judge myself I believe that the best German prose is to be found in Schopenhauer and Nietschke, and on both of them a foreign language had such in- fluence that it enabled them to avoid the faults that characterize German writers. Schiller, I have read somewhere, refused to learn any language but his own. He said that it was his business to write in German, and that he could never know it too perfectly. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG.

The Authors' Club, Whitehall Court, S.W.

ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA (12 S. vii. 31, 98). -The origin of the custom of invoking the aid of St. Anthony when an article is lost arose from an incident in his life and not from any resemblance between Padua and perdu. Anthony possessed a " common-

place " book in which he had written out whatever he thought worth recording. It was a storehouse of learning and piety and his sole possession. The devil tempted someone to steal it. The loss was keenly felt, but the prayer of St. Anthony was so powerful that it compelled the devil to appear to the thief and so frighten him that the book was restored. Many statues repre- sent St. Anthony with this book open upon, his arm, the Divine Infant standing on the book : the reason why the Divine Infant is standing on the book is connected with another incident. RORY FLETCHER.

5 Hillside Road, Streatham Hill, S.W.2.

CALVERLEY'S PARODIES (12 S. vi. 335; vii. 58). SIR WILLOUGHBY MAYCOCK seems surprised that MR. HAULTAIN should ask a question regarding the parodies written by Calverley, bobtails the word with \sic\ and suggests charades. And yet in parody Calverley is unsurpassed by any English writer. Of his powers in this line take but three examples, and where can you match ; them ?

Tennyson ' The Travelling Tinker's Song' commencing " I loiter down by thorp and town."

Browning .'The Cock and the Bull,' "You see this pebble stone ? It's a thing I bought."

Tupper the proverbial philosophy ad- dressed to " The artless Maiden who wanders in Vanity Fair." RORY FLETCHER.

"BUG" IN PLACE-NAMES (12 S. vii. 28, 77 9 97). I fi n d n o reference to this in my MS. Index to the place-names of Essex from the Ordnance Survey (referred to at 11 S. v. 407). In my MS. transcript of the Lay Subsidy Rolls for Essex of 8 Eliz., I note that Anthony Bugge, gent., of Harlow, paid 24s. for his land and Edward Bugge, of the same place, 10s. 8df. The first named was the principal landowner in the parish. WILLIAM GILBERT. F.R.N.S.

JOTTINGS FROM AN OLD COLONIAL NEWS- PAPER (12 S. vii. 107). The reference to the early coffee-houses in London is interesting. There was a token issued in the seventeenth century at the first house, bearing on the- reverse " At the ould Coffee house in St. Michells Alley, formerly Bomans." The second house mentioned, viz. the Rainbow, was in Fleet Street, against the Inner Temple Gate, and was kept, in 1666, by James Farr who issued a token there, a specimen of..