Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/311

. x. OCT. is, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

303

Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, would also be a Scotchman. Since the Glorious Revolution we have had. I think, two Scotch Prime Ministers the Earl of Bute and the Earl of Aberdeen and Mr. Balfour is the third; but it never happened before in the history of the United Kingdom that both the actual and the pro- spective Prime Ministers have been Scotch- men. There have been two Irish Prime Ministers the Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston but no Welshman, so far as I remember, has ever held the office.

J. A. J. HOTJSDEN. Canonbury, N.

MOMMSEN AND BRUTUS. There is a re- markable slip in Mommsen's ' Romische Geschichte," which the English translator (Prof. Dickson)does not seem to have noticed. It occurs in book v. chap, x., where, speaking of the results of the final victory of Caesar over the Pompeians, it is said :

"Jetzt aber war der Kampf selbst unmoglich geworden ; die Republik, die Marcus Brutus be- griindet hatte, war todt, und niemals wieder zum Leben zu erwecken ; was sollten die Republikaner noch auf der Erde ? "

This is faithfully rendered (without note) : " But now the struggle itself had become im- possible ; the republic which Marcus Brutus had founded was dead, and never to be revived ; what were the republicans now to do on the earth ? "

The Brutus, however, who is supposed to have expelled Tarquin and founded the Roman republic was not named Marcus, like his namesake who murdered Caesar, but Lucius. Like most historians since Niebuhr exposed its inconsistencies, Mommsen rejects the ordinary story of the expulsion as mere poetic fable ; but the expulsion of kings did take place, and if we refer to Brutus in the matter we must do so under his traditional name, taking that name as given in the story which represents him and Collatinus as first consuls (i.e., colleagues, or, as the word literally means, together-leapers) of the new republic. But authentic Roman history does not begin till the time of Pyrrhus.

W. T. LYNN. Blackheath.

DICKENS AND SWEENY TODD. (See 9 th S. ix. 345 and references there given.) As the story of Sweeny Todd appeared in 1840, while a dramatized version of it was pro- duced in 1842, the following passages from 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' the first number of which appeared 1 January, 1843, may be worth noting :

" ' Upon my word,' thought Tom, quickening his pace, ' i don't know what John will think has become of me. He'll begin to be afraid I have

strayed into one of those streets where the country- men are murdered ; and that I have been made meat pies of, or some such horrible thing.' "End of chap, xxxvi., p. 361 in the "Charles Dickens" edition, 1867.

" Tom's evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis." Beginning of chap, xxxvii.

Tom Pinch had already, in the course of chap, xxxvi., been

"particularly anxious, among other notorious localities, to have those streets pointed out to him which were appropriated to the slaughter of countrymen." Pp. 355, 356.

EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

BELL INSCRIPTIONS AT ASIIBY FOLVILLE. The inscriptions on three bells lately pre- sented to the church of Ash by Folville, Leicestershire, are so new-fangled especially the first of them that they may well find place among curiosities brought forward by ' N. & Q.' I quote'*hem from the Grantham Journal of 15 March :

No. 1.

I '11 with my fellows join In many a roundelay ; We'll praise, whene'er we ring, Our Squire and his good lady.

No. 2.

Herbert Hanbury Smith -Carington, married Elizabeth Prime Stallard, June 1st, 1876 They gave to us our voice, So we can well rejoice.

No. 3.

Their four Children, Francis, born 1877 Neville, 1878 Ham o Folville, 18 Mary Morton, 19 List then to our loud peals, that sweetly say, Forget not Thou their silver Wedding-day. Had these 'effusions been justified by a "faculty"? ST. S WITHIN.

" PUT HIS CLOG ON HIS DIAL." This phrase is perhaps worth noting. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph dated 7 May contains :

"On the night of the 19th April a dispute took place in a lodging-house kept by a man named Daltney in Pigeon Street, Rotherham, and there arose a kind of free fight. Mathers told a fellow- lodger that there had been a man (Casey; in the kitchen threatening Daltney, and he had' ' put his clog on his dial.' (Laughter.) His Lordship told Mathers that he had acted very wrongly in using his boot on the prosecutor's face. "

H. J. B.

VILLON. It is stated in the Sketch, 3 Sept., that

"certainly many will be afraid to speak of him [Villon] before the play L' If 1 were King'] is pro- duced because of a feeling of uncertainty whether in pronouncing his name you ought to sound the II as in ville or as infille, there being no real rule, and