Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/111

 5., FEB. 2. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

103

Cathedral Registers (1 st S. xi. 445.) Having occasion to pass through Canterbury this week, I employed a spare hour in revisiting (as I hope every stranger does) the fine old cathedral. In passing into the baptistery, the question was asked, " Are christenings ever performed here now ? " To which the verger replied, " Oh ! yes ; we had one last month." My memory greatly deceives me if a wedding was not celebrated at the cathe- dral church here a short while since. For this cathedral there are registers regularly kept. A few years since, I had occasion to examine them, and they were produced to me in the chapter- house. G. BRINDLEY ACWORTH.

Star Hill, Eochester.

Conversations with Wordsworth^ Sfc. (l Bt S. xii. 518.) A conversation, similar to that of Words- worth's, which is here referred to, occurs in a little book entitled Lions Living and Dead. I am unable to give more particular information, as I have not the book at hand to refer to, nor do I remember the author's name. S. C.

Irthlingboro'.

American Christian and Surnames (1 st S. xii. 114.) In addition to D. W.'s reply (l rt S. xii. 391.) to O. <3>.'s Query, the enclosed notice of the death of one of the persons referred to, which I have cut from a local paper of Dec. 5., may be interesting to your querist :

" Died, at the residence of his 8on-in-Iaw, Mr. A. Curtis, in North Dorchester, on the 29th Nov., Preserved Fish, aged 83 years."

THOMAS HODGINS.

Toronto, Canada.

Stone Altars (l t S. xi. 426.; xii. 115.) In the district church of St. George, Deal, in Kent, is to be seen one of these altars, which, it is said, originally belonged to Northbourne Priory, a few miles distant from Deal. It is always covered with the ordinary crimson velvet cloth, and is fortunately no bone of contention between the incumbent and his parishioners. The fact of its existence may deserve a Note.

G. BRINDLEY ACWORTH.

Door Inscriptions (2 nd S. i. 10.) Upon each pilaster of the porch of West Harptree Manor House, co. Somerset, is the following singular inscription : " Altogether Vanity." The house is a good Elizabethan mansion, and appears to have undergone little or no alteration since its erection. A gallery occupies the whole of the front upper story. This house and estate, now belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall, was possessed by the family of Buckland for several generations ; and, probably, was the residence of Ralph Buckland (the celebrated Puritan, in the time of James I.), who left behind him the character of having been

" a most pious and seraphicat person, a person who went beyond all of his time for i'ervent devotion." W. A.

Blessing by the Hand, with the Fore and Second lingers extended (I 1 * S. vi. 377.) In Gliddon and Nott's Types of Mankind (8vo, Philadelphia, 1854), at p. 138., is figured

" Darius, in the act of uttering that address which stands inscribed on the vast cruciform tablet of Behistun, cut about 482 B.C."

He is represented with the fore and second fingers so extended. J. P.

Signs (l Bt S. xi. 241.) Several of yoilr cor- respondents have given specimens. There is a curious paper on the subject in The Craftsman, No. 623., June 17, 1738, and another in No. 638. of the same year. B. H. C.

NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.

Students of Shakspeare have been looking long and anxiously for the promised Editions of the works of our great Dramatist, on which, as it has been generally un- derstood, Mr. Singer and Mr. Dyce have been for some time respectively engaged. At length we have before us The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare, the Text carefully revised, with Notes, by Samuel Weller Singer, F.S.A. The Life of the Poet, and Critical Essays on the Plays, by William Watkiss Lloyd, M.E.S.L. This edition occupies ten volumes, beautifully printed and got up by Whittingham, and is issued in two forms, viz. in foolscap octavo, uniform with the Aldine Poets, with which it is intended it should range ; and in crown octavo, corre- sponding with the crown octavo series of English Classics, issued by the late Mr. Pickering. Both are charming books, and while the smaller is admirably suited for a pocket Shakspeare, the larger forms a handsome library edition. Of Mr. Singer's fitness for the task of editing Shakspeare, by long preliminary study, by thorough ac- quaintance with the nature and genius of our language, and by his intimate familiarity with the writers of the Elizabethan period, the columns of " N. & Q." have ex- hibited so many and such unquestionable proofs, as to render further evidence upon the subject uncalled for, if not impertinent. We may therefore better employ the space to which our notice must necessarily be limited, with pointing out, in Mr. Singer's own words, the pecu- liarities of the present edition.

" In preparing the present edition," remarks Mr. Singer, " after a sedulous collation of the old authorities, it has been my endeavour to suggest such emendations and explanations as a careful and mature consideration of the corrupt and obscure passages, taken with the context, seemed to indicate ; and it will be seen that I have freely availed myself of the labours of all my predecessors. For the sake of compression, in many cases several pages of excursive discussion have been condensed into a few lines ; but it has not always been possible to acknowledge the source of the information conveyed. When these ex- planations are mere transcripts or abridgments, and un- accompanied by any observation of my own, it will of course be understood that I had nothing better to pro- pose. Yet I flatter myself that I have been in numerous instances fortunate enough to submit more satisfactory