Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/518

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. I. JUNE 25, '98.

wick? I should be greatly obliged if he would give the grounds on which his deriva- tion is based, and if he would tell me where to find the word " ches, gravel," which I do not remember having met with. The word which I do know is chesil, in Old English ceosel. The derivation of Chiswick is unknown to me ; for all I can tell, the documentary form Cheseuic might come from an older Cheseluic; but unless some definite evidence exists other explanations are equally possible.

HENRY BRADLEY. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

MR. SEARLE has missed the point of my contention. There are two A.-S. words, distinct and entirely unconnected hdm, a home, and ham. an enclosure. The first is normally preceded by a personal name, but with the second this is quite exceptional. Both have lapsed into ham in modern names. If Cheltenham had been from ham, MR. SEARLE'S explanation might have been defen- sible, but as it is from ham, the probabilities are strongly against him. Moreover, his Kelto is only a ghost-name.

MR. ARNOTT has forgotten that the Chess is not a gravelly stream, since it flows through chalk without flints ; and at Chesham, where there is no gravel, the source of the river is a large pool in the centre of the town, where the water bubbles up from the chalk through a number of auger holes, just as a branch of the river Hull does at Nafferton. If MR. ARNOTT will condescend to examine any of the books of the person he calls a " writer in ' N". & Q.,' " he will find that he has not altogether neglected "local inquiry," though hitherto ignorant that ches means gravel in A.-S. or in any other language.

ISAAC TAYLOR, Litt.D., Hon. LL.D.

At the end of his note the REV. S. ARNOTT deprecates the use of a Warburtonian style of writing. He nevertheless states positively that Chiswick is derived from ches, which he says is gravel. This positive assertion is made by MR. ARNOTT because he has lived at Chiswick and has made an exhaustive local inquiry into the origin of the name. It would be interesting to know the details of this inquiry and the steps by which MR. ARNOTT arrived at his conclusion. In what language, for instance, does ches mean gravel? If the local inquiry was confined to the natural features of the place, any geological map of Middlesex would have shown that gravel was a principal characteristic of the soil of Chiswick, as well as of the other riverain districts to the west of London. If MR. ARNOTT had crossed the river, he would

possibly have found that the soil of Barnes is composed of gravel to a greater depth than that of Chiswick. What, then, is the reason that Chiswick should derive its name from gravel in preference to other places in its neighbourhood? Before MR. ARNOTT'S derivation can be accepted these questions should be answered.

MR. ARNOTT also says, apparently with reference to the gravel theory, that "a neigh- bouring place, also on the river, is Chesilea, or Chiselea, Chelsea." I fear MR. ARNOTT cannot have done me the honour of reading my note on ' Chelsea,' ante, p. 264. A local inquiry at the end of the nineteenth century may, under certain conditions, be a service- able aid to knowledge, but I venture to think that historical evidence which mounts back as far as the eighth century is a still more trustworthy guide. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

45, Pall Mall, S.W.

SMOLLETT : HIS DEATH AND BURIAL.

(9 th S. i. 201, 309.)

IT is pleasing to learn that MR. MONT- GOMERY CARMICHAEL, British Vice-Consul at Leghorn, is satisfied that the subject of this

Eaper died on 17 Sept., 1771, but the place of is death and the precise site of his grave still remain unsettled points. As regards the monument at Leghorn, my old and esteemed friend the late Mr. Alexander Macbean, many years Her Majesty's Consul in that city, wrote to me in 1882 :

" My recollection of the obelisk dates back fully sixty years. About fifty years ago it was yerv much mutilated by Americans, who were surprised in the act of chipping off the edges with the mallets which they brought for the purpose. I happened to be a trustee (or churchwarden) in 1836-7, and I then succeeded in getting the railing erected at the public expense.

There is evidence to the effect that the obelisk existed in 1816. The Rev. J. C. Eustace, however, who dilates at some length on Leg- horn, in his comprehensive work in four volumes * A Classical Tour through Italy in 1802,' makes no allusion whatever to a Smol- lett tomb, so that it is very possible the obelisk as we see it was erected by the doctor's admirers in the early part of this century, subsequently to Eustace's sojourn in Leghorn; and if this surmise is correct, the tardy and erroneous entry in the consular registers is responsible for the mistaken date on what may be termed the cenotaph in the Leghorn cemetery. In seeking after the novelist's residence at the time of his death Roscoe, Herbert, Moore, and Ander- son do not satisfy it will be found that