Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/72

54 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S. IX. JULY 16. 1921. money, and, possessing himself of a canoe, disappeared down river.

He was not seen again.

I am under the impression that I have read of similar cases in the Sudan or other parts of Africa. Such action, after all, is only natural. "What is bred in the bone won't come out of the skin."

An instance of relapse is given by Darwin, in a letter of April 6, 1834, viz., that of Jemmy Button, a native of Tierra del Fuego, who had been brought to England and afterwards restored to his country, where Darwin saw him. He writes: "Instead of the clean, well-dressed stout lad we left him, we found him a naked, thin, squalid savage." He refused to be taken back to England ('Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,' edited by Francis Darwin, 1887, vol. i., ch. vi., p. 251).

Grant Allen's story does not pretend to be anything but a fiction. In it a negro, educated at Oxford, and married to an English wife, reverts to savagery when he returns to Africa. The story is one of the best in Grant Allen's excellent volume, 'Strange Stories.'

COCKNEY PRONUNCIATION (12 S. ix. 17). It may be worth while to instance a verse of Barha-m's in the poetical skit pub- lished with his * Ingoldsby Legends,' and styled ' The London University ; or, Stin- komalee Triumphans. An Ode to be per- formed on the opening of the new College of Graf ton Street, East.' Fat F, with his coat of blue, Who speeches makes so hot in town, In rhetoric, spells his lectures through, And sounds the y for W, The vay they speaks it at the U- niversity we've Got in town. Barham was, of course, parodying the famous * Gottingen ' poem in The Anti- Jacobin. W. B. H. SCHOOL MAGAZINES (12 S. viii. 325). I noted The Blackheathen, issued for Black- heath Proprietary School, at 10 S. xii. 89. The numbers I have are May 2, 1865, and May 4, 1866. One who was a pupil at the school a few years later than the above has told me that the memory of names prominent in the magazine was then fresh, but he had no knowledge of any magazine having been published, so that it is probable The Black - heathen enjoyed only a short life. W. B. H. FENNING'S ' ROYAL ENGLISH DICTIONARY '' I before 1761 and 1763. An article headed ' About Dictionaries ' in The Bookworm, iii. i 49 (1890), gives the names of several. Dr* 1755 ; an interleaved copy of Bailey's i Dictionary, 1730, folio, having been largely ! used in its preparation. W. B. H. t Something like two centuries separates j this work from the " first English dictionaries 1 and this list by no means exhausts the- early flow of English lexicons : Levins. Manipulus Vocabulorum : A Rhyming ! Dictionary, 1570. [Reprinted 1867.] Baret. Alvearie or Quadruple Dictionarie, 1580.. Exposition of Hard Words . . . 1609. Bullojtar. English Expositor, 1616. Minsheu. Guide into Tongues, 1017. [Polyglot Dictionary.] Cockeran. English Dictionarie, 1623. W. JAGGAED, Capt. FONTENELLE'S ALLEGORY IN BATTLE'S- ' NOTJVELLES DE LA REPTJBLIQTJE DES LETTRES' (12 S. ix. 10). Fontenelle's allegory was headed ' Extrait d'une Lettre ecrite de Batavia dans les Indes Orient ales, le 27 Novembre 1684, contenu dans une Lettre de M. de Fontenelle, recue a Rotter- dam, par M. Banage.' With an editorial introduction- and postscript it appeared as article x. in the January, 1686, number of Ba.vle's ' Nouvelles de 'la Republique des Lettres.' (The heading of the query was therefore rather misleading.) The name of the Mother in the story is Mliseo, the daughter who succeeds her is Mreo. Eenegu is the pretender to the throne who main- tains that she is the true daughter of Mliseo. The names are printed in the first volume of Bayle's ' QEuvres diverses ' Mliseo (not Mliseo, as at p. 10 ante), Mreo (both without accents), and Eenegu. Them is a short account of Fontenelle's allegory by A. C. Guthkelch on pp. 307, 308, in Vol. viii. of ' The Modern Language Review,' where a suggestion of G. C. Macaulay is quoted that " Mliseo is an anagram for Solime, i.e., Solyma (Jerusalem)." See also pp. xxxvi., xxxvii., in the Introduction to A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith's edition of Swift's ' A Tale of a Tub ' (1920). The edition of the ' Nouvelles ' that I know is of 12mo size in gatherings of 12 I leaves with a separate title for each month. [ Amsterdam, Henry Desbordes. Is this a
 * ( 12 S. ix. 11 ). There were many dictionaries
 * Samuel Johnson's Dictionary appeared in
 * printed," as the following brief list will prove,