Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/93

 12 S. VIII. JAN. 22, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. by the saintly Herbert," and at p. 215 he said : " Bishop Andrewes, a very high authority* appears to have used it, though in what way is not clear, in his own private chapel," and that it " certainly was in use in the time of King Edward the Sixth's first prayer book. The visitation article of Cranmer as to forbidding the censing to certain images, &c., supplies one of the proofs of the fact." StilJ, though he regarded the ceremonial use of incense as "an ancient, innocent, and pleasing custom," he decided that "to bring in incense at the beginning or during the celebration and remove it at the close of the celebration of the Eucharist," to be "a distinct ceremony, additional and not even directly incident to the ceremonies ordered by the Book of Common Prayer," and to be therefore illegal. In the later case of Sumner v. Wix (L. R., 3 A. and E. 58) the same judge held that the use of incense immediately before the cele- bration of the Holy Communion in such a way aa_to be preparatory or subsidiary to the celebration was also illegal. These legal decisions have, however, as is well known done very little to impede the ceremonial use of incense in Anglican churches. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. THE HANDLING OF SOURCES (12 S. vii. 499). From the literary point of view I agree with almost everything that your reviewer has said in his kindly criticism of my book 'William Bolts.' But he raises an interest- ing question. Given a mass of MS. records of historical interest concerning a man once famous, records hitherto unpublished and difficult of access, what is the best method of making them available for the historical student ? He offers two alternative methods, either complete digestion of the material and the composition of a literary biography, or the orderly printing of the records with full annotation. The former method I deliberately rejected, because it would not have made the records available for the student. For the same reason I rejected, except to a limited extent, the substitution of a paraphrase for an exact quotation. It seemed to me that the only way of fulfilling nty design was either to print and annotate the records, in which case no general reader would open the book, or to put them kito the form of a biography by writing a brief connecting narrative, I chose the latter method because, while it would enable me to retain the ipsissima verba of all the most important documents, the story might still interest some members of the general public. I was aware that I should be producing in either case what Charles Lamb would have called "a book which is no book " ; but I thought that th& historical value of the material justified me in braving the distaste which the form of my book was bound to excite in the mind of any good judge of literature. I am still not sure, however, whether there is any better way of doing what had to be done unless r of course, one were to double the size of the volume by relegating all the MS. quotations to an appendix and writing a literary bio- graphy with " something of a mise-en-scene and an atmosphere." But then who would publish it ? N. L. HAIXWARD. A FEW WARWICKSHIRE FOLK SAYINGS (12 S. vii. 507 ; viii. 35). A racier, if not an earlier, form of the " silent sow " proverb is recorded in Camden's ' Remaines ' : " The still sow eateth up all the draffe," p. 307 r , ed. 636. EDWARD BENSLY. Much Hadham, Herts. PRISONERS WHO HAVE SURVIVED HANG- ING (12 S. vii. 68, 94, 114, 134, 173, 216,- 438). Abraham Chovet was liveryman and demonstrator of anatomy in the (London) Company of Barber -Surgeons, in 1734, and for several years thereafter. S. Weir Mit- chell mentions that Dr. Physick told his father : " While living in London, Chovet tried to save a too adventurous gentleman about to be hanged for highway robbery, by opening the trachea before the hangman operated. The patient was rapidly removed after the execution, and is said to have spoken. A queer tale, and doubtful, but worth the telling. The Government is said to have lacked due appreciation of this valuable experiment, and Chovet brought his queer Voltarian visage to America." Quotation is from p. 219 of 'American Medical Biographies,' which Drs. H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage have recently edited. This has many notices of those who (like Mitchell) have ridden two horses, medicine and literature, and can doubtless be found already in the larger libraries. In any case, it is well worth calling the attention of the readers of ' N. & Q.' to it. ROCKINGHAM. Boston, Mass.