Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/270

 220 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.ix. SEPT. 10,1021. that at Notley Abbey an erection standing some 17 or 18 feet high to the eaves, with walls three feet thick and about 1,500 nest-holes. It may have been built in the fifteenth century ; and if not pre-eminent for antiquity, it is distinguished by being still used for its original purpose. The chapter on Barns contains one or two good old words, as does also the account of the Straw- plaiting industry one of the most melancholy of all, considered as a record of loss. There are a few illustrations, and a map of Buckinghamshire show- ing the places mentioned in the text. Lovers of Old England and its rapidly vanishing remains and traditions should certainly take note of this un- pretentious but charming and carefully compiled little book. tutuarp. HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON. IN common with all who love English literature we deeply regret the death of Henry Austin Dobson, which took place on Friday, Sept. 2, at Baling, after a long illness. Born at Plymouth in 1 840, eldest son of George Clarisse Dobson, he had French blood in his veins, a circumstance which perhaps explains not only the clarity, elegance and perfection of his work, but also its witty sobriety and the evidence it gives of an unusual sense for the value and beauty of limit as such. Some years of his early youth were spent abroad, but at 16 he entered the Board of Trade, where he remained till his retirement in 1901, having become Principal in 1884. His first printed work was the poem ' A City Flower,' which ap- peared in Temple Bar for December, 1864. His last book was the ' Later Essays,' reviewed in our columns at 12 S. viii. 199. Between the two lies so considerable and valuable a contribu- tion to English letters as to have formed, as early as 1900, the subject of a ' Bibliography of Austin Dobson,' forming a work in itself. For the first twenty years or little more his most important work was in verse. He was stimulated by the friendship of men who either were composing in the same vein or keenly appreciative of it Henley, Andrew Lang, Frederick Locker. His first volume of poems, ' Vignettes in Rhyme,' was published in 1873, followed, in 1877, by ' Proverbs in Porcelain, 'and, in 1883, by a collec- tion of all his best things in verse, entitled ' Old World Idylls ' the book which first made him known beyond the circle of his immediate friends or of literary connoisseurs. Meanwhile the poet had been saturating his mind with the life and spirit of the eighteenth century ; or rather with a certain distillation of his own from the history and remains of that century, which definitely rejected the harsher and coarser it may perhaps also be said the more difficult and heroic elements in that century of enthralling paradox. This is not to disparage Austin Dobson's work ; he turned, with a true instinct, to what was the characteristic, permanent contribution of the eighteenth century to that which, on the whole, it may be said to have brought to pass. What he neglected was either, in some sense, common to all centuries or else part of a move- ment whose significance could not be truly seen from a standpoint within the century itself. Moreover, his literary work was a parergon and for a perfect parergon perhaps, grace, wit, delicacy and the matters with which these can be allied are essential. Having laid poetry, then, aside, Austin Dobson turned to biographical studies of writers and artists to Hogarth (1879), Fielding (1883), Bewick (1884); in the later eighties and the nineties to monographs on Steele, Goldsmith and Horace Walpole, and to collections of essays. After his retirement he edited Madame D'Arblay's Diary and Letters (having a short time before published his work on Fanny Burney), and also Evelyn's ' Diary,' and within the last ten years we have had three or four more volumes of essays from his pen lively, graceful and unfailing in its genial kindliness to the last. His work brought him wide recognition, and that of a kind which must have given him pleasure somewhat retiring as he was by temperament, happiest among books and lovers of books. An instance of this was seen on his seventieth birthday, when eighty-nine friends and admirers united in giving him a gift of silver of eighteenth- century design, with a letter of affectionate congratulation and esteem. Austin Dobson married Frances Mary, daughter of Mr. Nathaniel Beardmore, by whom he had five sons and five daughters. WE are informed that the price of the first volume of the Court Rolls of Colchester (see ante p. 199) has been fixed by the Museum and Muniment Committee at 2 2*. to Correspondents. communications intended for insertion in our columns should bear the name and address of the sender not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. EDITORIAL communications should be addressed to " The Editor of ' Notes and Queries ' " Adver- tisements and Business Letters to "The Pub- lisher" at the Office, Printing House Square. London, E.G. 4; corrected proofs to The Editor, ' N. & Q.,' Printing House Square. London, E.C.4. MB. ANEURIN WILLIAMS. Francis Francis, author of ' Newton Dogvane,' was born at Seaton in 1822 and died at Twickenham, 1886. His other novels are ' Pickackifax ' (in rhyme), ' The Real Salt,' and ' Sidney Bellew.' See the ' D.N.B.' T.G. (" JERRY-BUILDER "). There has been much discussion of this term in our columns. The late SIR JAMES MURRAY contributed a long article upon it at 9 S. vii. 305, and references to it will be found in earlier numbers. More recently at 12 S. i. 19, 299, 415, 457 other attempts at solution of the problem were made, the last being the quotation by SIR WILLOUGHBY MAYCOCK of a statement in a paper to the effect that in the early nineteenth century a Liverpool firm of builders, of the name of Jerry, became notorious for their bad work, and that the word which seems to have been first current in Liver- pool is derived from them. CORRIGENDUM. At ante, p. 178, under Authors Wanted,' the date of Ribbeck's edition of ' Comicorum Romanorum Fragmenta ' should be 1898, not 1808.