Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/382

 374

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. I. MAY 7, '98.

interesting. The Venetian painters readily became nomads. They willingly carried their talents to European Courts, where they had generally been preceded by musicians and poets of the same nationality. Thus we find Sebastiano Ricci leading a wandering life; Tiepolo died in Spain as Court painter; one goes to Vienna ; another to Dresden or Warsaw, like Bellotto ; others, like Pietro Roturi, attached to the Empress of Russia, went as far as St. Petersburg. Some, of less celebrity, attached themselves to leisured dilettanti princelets, whose civil list was royally bled to the great advantage of the artists. Canaletto was 9f a more sedentary disposition. He quitted Venice only at rare inter- vals, to make excursions either to Verona, Padua, or the adjacent country, or to visit England on two different occasions. George Vertue and Horace Walpole say nothing of his presence in England beyond noticing that he arrived there in 1746. The date of 1751 at the foot of two plates engraved by Muller* of views in London is not sufficient to prove that these plates were executed under the super- intendence of the artist, nor that he was in Great Britain at that time. A view of Munich in the Pinacoteca, which has all the character of authen- ticity, indicates with greater certainty a journey to Bavaria which is not mentioned by Lanzi."

The drawing of Westminster is in Mr. J. P. Heseltine's collection, and was recently repro- duced in the Building News with a note by me. There is a replica of this view in the Print-Room of the British Museum.

JOHN HEBB. Canonbury Mansions, N.

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF (8 th S. iv. 305, 391). At the former reference I quoted an example of this term from a document of 1646, eight years antecedent to the date of the earliest quotation in the 'H.E.D.' A yet earlier instance has just come under my eye. The English Historical Review for April publishes at p. 307 a letter, dated 14 December, 1644, " addressed, it would seem, to Prince Rupert," by a royalist commander. He had been ordered to "block" the Parliamentarians in Taunton, but they had received reinforce- ments of both horse and foot ; and adverting to the commanders of these, he says :

"They name Sydenham Comaunder in Cheefe, but I beleeue hee only beares the title for the con- ductinge of them to the releefe of Taunton, & some other will shortly be sent to take that charge."

F. ADAMS.

ELEPHANT (9 th S. i. 187, 335). The answer to this difficult question involves the still more recondite problem of the region where Semites and Aryans first came into contact. It is noteworthy that " camel " is veliblandu in Old Slavonic, olbanta in O.H.G., and

Vauxhall Gardens and Westminster with the new bridge [i. e. Westminster Bridge] from the north- west angle of the garden of Somerset House."
 * These engravings represent the grand walk at

ulbandus in Gothic words evidently con- nected with " elephant." These facts have to be accounted for, and it has to be determined which was parent and which was offspring. Barrus, an "elephant," is an Indian loan- word, and ebur, " ivory," is Egyptian (see Wharton's ' Loan-Words in Latin ').

ISAAC TAYLOR.

MASTERSON (9 th S. i. 68). This family descends from MacTighearnain of Clan Colla, a descendant of Feargall (see O'Hart's * Irish Pedigrees'). In Irish the name is Mac Tighearnain (tighearna, Irish, a lord or master), which has been Anglicized Tiernan, MacTiernan, McTernan, McMaster, Master- son, and Lord. Margaret, daughter of Richard Masterton of Castletown, co.Wexford, married William Talbot, M.P. for Wexford, in 1689. Her granddaughter, Jane Talbot, married Edward Masterston of Castletown, brother of Luke Masterston ; a descendant, Tho- masina, daughter of Thomas Masterton, mar- ried Marcus Shee. PELOPS.

Bedford.

GOUDHURST, IN KENT (9 th S. i. 87, 154, 337). I do not see how it is possible to tell the origin of this name, especially when we are not in- formed as to its present pronunciation or its old spelling. Vvny it is that inquirers so carefully and persistently withhold such information I have never been able to understand.

If, at the present date, Goud- rimes with loud, then we know at once that it has no connexion with the adjective good. The absurd book by Edmunds on the ' Names of Places ' is constructed on the old principle of bluff ; by which I mean that the author con- structs Anglo-Saxon forms out of his own head, on the speculation that we are all so ignorant as to know no better. This specula- tion is still a very good one, but no longer imposes on scholars. I will only say that the derivations are for the most part mere guesses, and not very good ones either.

In the present case the author of this work has the effrontery to tell us that goud is an English word meaning woad. But it needs small learning to discover that the English for "woad" is precisely woad, and nothing else, on the same principle that the English for " wind " is wind, and not gand. If we alter the initial of a word and the radical vowel at the same time, it is a fact (incredible as it may seem) that we produce a new word altogether. When this fact once becomes generally known, etymology will become a sensible and reasonable pursuit. The pre- tence that goud means " woad " is, as I have