Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/531

 12 s. vii. NOV. 27, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

439

the opening lines of the song should be given as a supplement, for they contain a graphic as well as a biographic touch which gave rise to a phrase almost as popular at the time as the still current " Gone where the good niggers go." I never saw the song in print but my memory is that it begin thus ; Oh, I once knew a nigger, and his name was Uncle Ned,

And he went dead long ago, He had no wool on the top of his head,

On the place where the wool ought to grow.

ALFRED BOBBINS.

WILL PROVED BEFORE BURIAL OF TES- TATOR (12 S. vii. 391). I do not understand the point of this inquiry. Evidence of burial is obviously not required before pro- bate is granted. A man might be burnt, or die at sea, or be eaten by a lion, without affecting his will being proved. The exe- cutor proves the death on oath, and the grant of probate will not be made until seven clear days for probate of a will, or fourteen days for letters of administration, have elapsed from the date of death. So far as the probate authorities are concerned, the body might never be buried, or might be embalmed and keot as a mummy.

R. S. B.

SEA-WATER AND MADNESS (12 S. vii. 392). -Sea-water would not and could not cause madness in itself. However, in thirsty ship- wrecked persons it would increase their sufferings if they drank it. It would produce delirium and death unless a speedy rescue was effected, merely by aggravating the symptoms. W. S.

BOOK-TITLE MIS-TRANSLATED (12 S. vii. 371). Instead of " M. Britling mene la chose jusqu a la fin," I would suggest as a proper title "M. Britling mene la chose a bonne fin." W. D. C.

I would suggest, as a translation of 'Mr. Britling sees it through,' " M. Britling tient ferme jusqu 'au bout." J. M. HOWDIN.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED. (12 S. vii. 351.)

1. Buskin 'Lectures on Art at Oxford' (?) 1870, p. 88 ' The Relation of Art to Morals,' 'Life without industry is guilt, and industry without Art is brutality.' X.

2. Some time ago, in The Times- Literary Supplement, the couplet about Nebuchadnezzar was assigned by Mr. D. S. MacColl, with confidence but without reference, to an article by Andrew Lang. G. G. L.

[See above p. 437.]

A Thousand, and One Notes on 'A New English

Dictionary." By George G. Loane. (Philpott &

Co., Surbiton, 5,9.)

OWNERS of the Great Dictionary should certainly acquire this pamphlet to enter its contents or at any rate the chief of them in their copy. We do not see much use in offering, as notes on the ' N.E.D.,' examples later than those which appear in the Dictionary as we have it, though a collection of good things of the kind might be started as a con- tribution towards a purely modern dictionary yet to be made. Thus even the interesting " toe-hold,'* garnered out of The Observer for November 10, 1918. seems to us neither here nor there. But it is a real service to have recorded words and senses of words omitted by the compiler?, and to bring forward early examples that have been missed. A certain amount of what Mr. Loane supplies has been discovered in discursive reading, and the compilers of the Dictionary are not bound to make regretful reflections upon it at the same we notice that he has gleaned a good deal in fields which we should have taken it for granted would be searched- to the last square inch Wordsworth, for example, or Shelley, to say nothing of the text of all seventeenth and eighteenth-century writers.

A few examples will illustrate Mr. Loane's work. He has a note on "ferocious " in the Latin sense of "self-confident"; comments on the omission of Wordsworth's " eye-music "; gives the correct date and the exact words of Scott's famous "bow- wow" remark about -Jane Austen; has found, in Scott, a use of " appall " = to pall, become insipid ; notes the word "pindaric" transferred from literature to life (giving some very pretty instances of this) and supplies Talbot's reply to Henry VIII. containing the nonce-word " fif tify." Sylvester has furnished a good number of items among them "S.P.Q.R."=Rome. When Mr. Loane exclaims ''only So-and-so is quoted" we some- times feel inclined to remind him that there are limits to possibility in the way of quotation, but we also sometimes agree with him as we do concerning "sightless" that out of a number of instances the Dictionary has selected the less suitable and interesting.

Mr. Loane has affixed to his collection a rather happy motto, to wit; " Pulverem Olympicum collegisse iuvat."

The Authorship of ' The Taming of a Shreiv,' The Famous Victories of Henry V, 1 and the

additions to Marlowe's ' Faustus.' By H.

Dugdale Sykes. (Chatto and Windus, Is. Qd.

net.)

Behind Shakespeare's ; The Taming of the Shrew ' and 'Henry V.' are two plays, resembling them alike in title and substance, to which Shakespeare himself owes no small debt. The attempt to find their author has been many times made, .but without satisfactory results. Mr. Dugdale Sykes, however, here presents the record of a piece of research work, very pretty, very acute in the manner with which our readers are well acquainted, and very closely worked out. He establishes first the fact 'The Shrew' is the work of two hands,