Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/24

 16

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. JULY 5, 1002.

and if the greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes and does not wage war on conjec- tural grounds, then Wellington was the greater on the fields of Belgium, and acted on fewer and less dangerous conjectures than his mighty an- tagonist. It is an idle controversy." Vide p. 225.

HENRY GERALD HOPE. 119, Elms Road, Clapham, B.W.

WILLUGHBY'S 'ORNITHOLOGY' (9 th S. ix. 468). Possibly the book inquired for is re- ferred to in the following passage from Alleyne's 'Dispensatory ' (1733) :

" There hath lately been published in English a treatise of the Misletoe, wherein the author pro- fessedly supports his opinions of it's virtues both from facts and experience ; and warmly recommends it's use as a specific in Epilepsies, and many kinds of Convulsions."

C. C. B.

' HOP THE TWIG " (9 th S. ix. 189, 314). It would be interesting if we could have a dated quotation from the dictionary to which De Quincey refers. I am unable to identify it in the British Museum, but it occurs to me that the following notes (made in the course of hunting for it) may be of interest, as showing the difficulties that the unfortunate foreigner encountered in his study of our language.

In the " Teutsch-Englisches Lexicon, Worin- nen nicht allein die Worter, samt den Nenn- Bey- und Sprich-Wortern. Sondern auch so wol die eigentliche als verbliimte JRedens- arten verzeichnet sind. Aus den besten Scribenten und vorhandenen Dictionariis mit grossem fleisz zusammen getragen, Das erste so iemahls gemacht worden. Leipzig, bey Thomas Fritschen, 1716," among other divert- ing matter * and immense profusion of synonyms, I only find the following under sterben :

" To dy or die ; to decease ; to depart ; to depart this life ; to starve ; to breath your last ; to exspire ; to give up the ghost ; to kick up your heels ; to pay the tribute to nature ; to tip off; to tip over ; to tip over the pearch."

" Er mag gerne echmarotzen, he loves tid-bits, ragoos, kick-shaws, junkets, delicate meats ; he is given to his belly : he loves to spunge upon others that keep a good table. Er geht iibercul schmarotzen, he sharks up and down ; he lives upon the catch ; he goes sharking about ; he is a smell-feast. Schmarotzer, a smell feast, a parasite, a shark, a sharking fellow, a spunger, a glutton, a gormandizer, a robin-good- fellow, a boon-companion, a table-friend, a cater- cousin, a pot-companion, a greedy-gut, a lick-dish, a lick-sauce, a slap-sauce, a trencher-fly, a trencher- friend, a hanger-on, a lover of tid-bits, a lickerish fellow." Again, under the word verstorben, the guileless German was instructed that "Er ist schon langst verstorben " might be rendered " he is dead and rotten."
 * For example, under the word schmarotzen :

The ' Teutsch - Englisch Lexicon,' published at Leipzig in 1745, gives the above verbatim et literatim.

In J. Ebers's ' Vollstandiges Worterbuch der Englischen Sprache fur den Deutschen ' (Leipzig, 1793), vol. i. 784, I find, "To hop the Twig, weglaufen." And in his 'New and Complete Dictionary of the German and English Languages' (Leipzig, 1799), Ebers omits the incorrect "to starve," but other- wise represents the English equivalents of sterben almost exactly as his predecessors had done. The earliest quotation for " Davy Jones's locker" in the ' N.E.D.' is dated 1803.

Q. V.

'AYLWIN' (9 th S. ix. 369, 450). I read with interest MR. HAKE'S notes on the personalities introduced into this charming book. I should like, however, to have some information re- garding the "school of mystics founded by Lavater " which Aylwin is said to have joined, and "the large book, 'The Veiled Queen,' by Philip Aylwin," a quotation from which forms a heading to the first chapter, and has haunted me ever since I read it. Of course, this book may, as some believe, exist only in the imagination of the author. I should like to know, at all events, something^ definite on this question. JAY AITCH.

LATIN VERSES (9 th S. ix. 447). This is ccxlii. of the ' Anthologia Veterum Latinorum,' Bur- man, vol. i. p. 670. The version there given is slightly different. H. A. STRONG.

University College, Liverpool.

THE WEST BOURNE (9 th S. viii. 517 ; ix. 51, 92, 190, 269, 291, 375, 456). "The study of place-names," says Mr. Duignan, in the pre- face of his ' Staffordshire Place-Names,' " is a modern science." It should at any rate be treated on scientific principles. The historical method should be applied to each name, just as the historical method is applied by Dr. Murray and his colleagues to every word in their monumental dictionary. In endeavour- ing to apply this method to the name of the supposititious "West Bourne." I have not been able to get further back than some time in the nineteenth century. When I asked for evidence that would enable me to trace the name to a remoter date I, of course, meant documentary evidence. Oral evidence can only carry us back a very short distance. But my friend MR. RUTTON thinks that the name itself affords sufficient evidence of its antiquity. A very little research will show that names are very unsatisfactory evidence of facts. Nine people out of ten consider that my own name is a French one. Out- wardly it has that appearance, but there is