Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/33

 9*" s.x. JULY 12, i902.i NOTES AND QUERIES.

account of the case from communications which were made at the time to the Royal Society. In this case it appears that the sufferers had been using not rye, but wheat of a very poor quality. If the reader is in- terested in the subject, he will find further information in the Rev. Herbert Thurston's ' Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln,' pp. 478-83. EDWARD PEACOCK. Wickentree House, Kirton-in-Lindsey.

" RELIABLE." (See 9 th S. ix. 435.) I thought the late Mr. Fitzedward Hall had fully vindi- cated the right of this word to be considered good English, and I do not understand how, in face of the fact that it is used by Coleridge, Gladstone, John Stuart Mill, John Henry Newman, Dean Mansel, and many other writers who rank as classics, it can be said to have come into the language " as it were by stealth," or to be "accompanied by associa- tions " which render it "painful " even to the most fastidious taste. To the word " rely " objection might, indeed, be taken ; but this formation admitted, why object to its quite regularly formed derivative ? The grounds ASTARTE alleges against it are certainly in- sufficient : " reliable " and " trustworthy " have not always precisely the same applica- tion, and the names I have cited from Mr. Hall's essay are enough to show that the " associations " of the word are not so base as its critic seems to suppose. The old objections to its use are well put in a passage quoted by Prof. Hodgson ('Errors in the Use of Eng- lish ') from a writer whom he supposes, no doubt correctly, to be Mr. Hall himself : " It is unaccount-for-able, not to say laugh-at-able, that men will try to force upon the language a word so take-objection-to-able, so little-avail- of-able, and so far from indi/erence-with-able, as reliable " a way of stating the objections which is in itself sufficient to dispose of them. I believe this word has been discussed before in 'N. & Q.,' but I cannot find it indexed in any recent volume. C. C. B.

[Reliable is duly given in the General Index to the Seventh Series. DR. MURRAY'S learned defence of the word appeared in vol. viii. p. 133.]

THE PSEUDO - SCIENTIFIC NOVEL. The historical novel may be traced up to Xeno- phon. The originator of the pseudo-scientific romance of which Mr. Wells is admittedly the greatest master who has ever written in any language was probably the truly wonderful Lucian. He also wrote the first " imaginary voyage." There are traces of science in the 'Arabian Nights,' but I pass at once to Cohausen,Dr. Campbell's translation of whose 'Hermippus Redivivus' greatly interested

Dr. Johnson. In this connexion Sweden- borg deserves that notice which he has never received. Of him Le Fevre has written this pregnant sentence: "At first a naturalist; demented in 1745." If only the sections of Swedenborg's 'Heaven and Hell' had been arranged and connected together by a thin thread of narrative (as are the essays which constitute ' Rasselas '), no other writer could ever have hoped to approach this masterpiece of imaginative writing. Then comes Mr. Wells, closely following upon the steps of the mighty artist Poe, but outstripping his master, because he has more knowledge of science than ever fell to Poe's share.

THOMAS AULD.

A TRAVELLED GOAT. In his ' Relics of Literature' Stephen Collet prints (p. 310) some extracts from the diary of a nameless person, who, under date 28 April, 1772, records that there

" died at Mile End a goat which had been twice round the world ; first'in the Dolphin, Capt. Wallis, then in the Endeavour, Capt. Cook. She was shortly to have been removed to Greenwich Hospital, to have spent the remainder of her days under the protection of those worthy veterans, who there enjoy an honourable retirement. She wore on her neck a splendid collar, on which was engraved the following distich, said to have been written by the ingenious and learned Dr. Samuel Johnson : *

Perpetui ambita bTs terra praemia lactis Haec habet, altrici capra secunda Jovis."

This goat is mentioned in Bos well's ' Life of Johnson ' under date 27 February, 1772. WILLIAM E. A. AXON. Manchester.

" ELUCUBR ATION. " This word is not given by Dr. Johnson in the abridgment of his ' Dictionary ' which appeared in 1786. " Lu- cubration," however, is duly entered with a reference to the Tatler. The latest edition of Stormonths copious and trustworthy dic- tionary (Blackwpod, 1895) gives "lucubra- tion," but not its longer equivalent. The 1 Encyclopaedic Dictionary,' which is wonder- fully exhaustive and exact, enters "elucu- brate" and "elucubration," but marks both as obsolete. Perhaps the editor would have done better if he had grouped these forms with the class that he describes as "those which have not dropped altogether out of use, but are only rarely found." The author of the 'Reliques of Father Prout' admittedly revelled amid riotous whims and fancies, but his notable scholarship and literary skill guarantee for any of his peculiarities at least attention and respect. In his introduction to the learned paper on ' Literature and the Jesuits ' he indulges in some editorial rapture