Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/433

. x. NOV. 29, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

425

" LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT " : CARDINAL NEW MAN, 1833 : A LATIN RENDERING.

Lux ades alma: per hanc, qua Nox circumvolat umbram,

Tu rege labentes per loca cseca gradus. Caligo ruit atra : foris longinquus aberro :

Tu rege labentes per loca caeca gradus. Ipsa pedes serva: distantia non mihi cura

T Cernere : si tantum progrediar, sat erit. Non mens ista mihi semper : non ista precabar,

Ut tu dirigeres per loca caeca gradus. Corripuisse viam propriam per aperta juvabat :

Dirige sed tu nunc per loca caeca gradus. Gratse olim vaga Lux domitrixque Superbia Mentis

Denciente Metu : parce, nee ista refer. En, antiqua comes, bonitas tua numine fausto

Rexerit usque meos per loca caeca gradus, Per colles, per stagna, per ardua, per freta, donee

Palluerit tandem nox veniente die, Luciferpque oriente chori felicis imago

Riserit, interea perdita, cara diu.

RICHARD HORTON SMITH. Athenaeum Club.

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN FRENCH HOMES. [ have been amusing my leisure lately by the perusal of an accumulation of French novels written within the last decade, and I have noticed that the ladies in many instances seem to prefer reading English authors to French. It may be that literary jealousy is at the bottom of this presumed preference, for it supposes a higher average culture among Frenchwomen than obtains among our countrywomen ; albeit one or two authors are not afraid to give their literary rivals an advertisement, notably so Georges Ohnet, who seems more than most to write for English tastes and prejudices. The authors the ladies seem to like most are Shakespeare, Scott, and Dickens. M. L. R. BRESLAR.

ST. MARY AXE. The usual derivation of this name has never seemed to me entirely satisfactory. Stow's account is well known :

" In S. Marie street had ye of olde time a Parish Church of S. Marie the virgine, Saint Vrsida and the 11000. virgins, which Church was commonly called S. Marie at the Axe, of the signe of an Axe, ouer against the East end thereof." ' Survey,' ed. 1603, p. 162.

Mr. Wheatley, in his ' London Past and Present,' ii. 493, says Stow is not quite correct in this, because the church derived its parti- cular designation of St. Mary Axe from a holy relic it possessed : "An axe, oon of the iij that the xj mi Virgyns were be hedy.d wV The authority for this statement is a "Signed Bill, 5 Henry VIII." I have no doubt some relic of this kind existed in the' church, but there are reasons for thinking that as regards the origin of the name it may be a case of post hoc, propter hoc. In the 'Rotuli Hun- dredorum' the church is frequently men-

tioned under the varying forms of "Sancta Maria apud Ax," " atte Ax," "atten Ax," and " atte Nax." The Latin apud and the English atte (at the) would seem to connote locality and to indicate the position of the church. A large number of London churches had distinctive appellations, which were expressed in Latin when the documents in which they occurred were written in that language. We have "S. Maria de Arcubus," U S. Michael ad Bladum," " S. Nicolaus ad Macellas" or "apud Macellum," and many others. We should therefore expect to find " S. Maria ad Securim " or " de Securi," if the implement were meant. The vernacular expression seems abnormal in a Latin document. I would therefore suggest that a small stream, known as the Axe, may have flowed by the church in very early days, and that the building may have become known from its position. St. Stephen by Walbrook and St. John upon Walbrook afford analogous instances of churches being named from the stream on which they are situated.

W. F. PRIDEAUX,

INDEX : How NOT TO MAKE. The following extract from Thomas Hearne's ' Collections,' 15 February, 1713 (vol. iv. p. 80), may interest some of the readers of 'N. & Q.' who have not yet made acquaintance with the highly interesting series from which I quote :

' Being with D r Charlett this morning he was

^leased to tell me that the Index at ye End of

> r W m Whitlock's Memoirs was drawn up before he Book was printed, and y b ye Reason why lothing hardly can be found by it is because they 'ollowed the Pages of the MS. & not of the Print, which they should not have done, unless at ye same time they had put the Pages of the MS. in the margin of ye Print."

The book referred to must be Sir Bui- strode Whitelocke's ' Memorials of English Affairs,' the first edition of which appeared n 1682. ASTARTE.

NELSON LETTER. Mr. J. H. Reeve, of North Walsham, recently announced in the Eastern Daily Express the discovery of an unpublished etter by Lord Nelson, supposed to have been written from Bath to "My dear Lloyd" in "anuary, 1798. On reading the letter as ,lven in the above paper I found it was the ounterpart of one preserved at the Bath ^iterary and Scientific Institution, to which -j was presented some years ago, framed and lazed, under the belief that it was an original. iubsequently it was believed to be spurious, nd the gift was consigned to a lumber upboard. The fact was mentioned in the . Bath Chronicle, and in the meantime a entleman at Chesterfield intimated that he