Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/258

 208 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.ix. SEPT. 10,1921. know. The Abbe de Grecourt died April j CHRISTIAN NAME : CURIOUS SEVENTEENTH - 2, 1743, at Tours. | CENTURY EXAMPLE. The following appears I need scarcely add that the French re- 1 in the Parish Register Transcript of Woot- gard New Year's Day as the great social ton, near Woodstock (Bodleian Library, festival, when they pay ceremonious or Oxford) : familiar calls to offer good wishes. ROBERT PIERPOINT. Joice Jones the Souldier-life ODDMENT. The ' N.E.D.'s ' earliest ex- ample of this word is from a letter by Madame D'Arblay, July 10, 1796 : I have still so many book oddments of ac- counts ... to arrange. But it was used several years before this date by Samuel Crisp in his letters to his sister, Mrs. Gast, which were published in 1905 in the present Dean of Winchester's delightful ' Burford Papers ' : Be sure you make haste and finish all your trumpery odments and accounts. July 27, 1780. Do you be sure to make haste and finish all your domestic odments. August 22, 1780. Your own Bed, your various Easy Chairs, ?11 your Odments and Fancies, that to we sic) Old Folks are very Essential and serious matters. July 13, 1781. It is clear that " odment " (he spells it with a single "d") was a pet word of Crisp's. His long intimacy with Dr. Burney's family makes it possible that Fanny may have caught the use of the word from him.^ EDWARD BENSLY. VIREMENT. This word is not in the ' ' V " section of the 'N.E.D.' I do not know how long it has been used in the official circles where alone it is current. It is ex- plained in the following quotation from The Evening Standard of Aug. 26 : I suppose few people have heard of the " power of virement." It is a system by which the Treasury, subject to subsequent approval by Parliament, makes up on the swings what it loses on the roundabouts. One Department spends more than was estimated, another less. The saving in the one case is applied to make good the excess of expenditure in the other. Thus in the Ministry of Munitions accounts excesses of 1,287,820 for compensation to con- tractors, &c., 2,964,614 for capital expenditure, and other items amounting altogether to over 4,866,000, were paid out of savings under g like Jones was baptized Feb. 3, 1678. (Note. She was buried on the 7th.) HERBERT SOUTHAM. CURIOUS SURNAMES. In the MS. copy of the Parish Register of Swerford, Oxon, 1577-1745, the following are given : 1598, marriage. Jane Half head. 1630, baptism. Lovedream. HERBERT SOUTHAM. WILLIAM COLLINS. It seems to have escaped the students of William Collins that a version of his ' Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer ' was printed in the second edition of Hanmer's 'Shakespeare ' (Oxford, 1771). Verbally this version follows the second separate publication of the Epistle (London,. 1744) of which a copy is preserved in the Dyce Collection, according to Prof. Bron- son's edition of Collins (1898). A literary curiosity is a rhymed version of Collins's ' Ode to Evening,' which wa& written by the Quaker poet John Marriott,. and printed among his ' Poems,' Doncaster, 1803 reprinted, New Bedford, Mass., 1805. THOMAS OLLIVE MABBOTT. Graduate School, Columbia University. 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. " Miscellaneous and so forth." effective services, liquidation, The ' N.E.D.' has the verb "vire" now obsolete, in the sense of "turn"; and I suppose " virement " is money turned from one department to another. HIPPOCLIDES. DICKENS : PAGE -HEADINGS. I was asked the other day a question I could not answer. Perhaps ' N. & Q.' can solve it for me. Are the page-headings to the text of Dickens his own work or not ? I should like further to ask, Have the original editions in this respect been followed with any care ? It would be like the precision of Dickens to attend to such a detail, but he could hardly do so till the proofs were paged. In the early stage of his literary career he may have been too inexperienced to think about headings and left them to his publishers*