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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. x. DEC. 27, 1902.

a staff of the same wood. For the word croce see the ' New English Dictionary.'

When we refer to the six-text edition we find that one of the MSS., viz., Hn., has troce for croce, owing to the endless confusion in MSS. between c and t. Unfortunately, the black-letter editions likewise have troce ; but no such word is known.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

HALLOWE'EN IN MINNESOTA. An English girl who is on a visit to St. Paul, Minn., U.S., writes :

"Last Friday, being Hallowe'en, we had a great time. It is made a huge festival here. In the after- noon Mrs. brought in two pumpkins and

ordered me to make Jack-o'-lanterns. I tried my hand and turned out two most beautiful creations, teeth and all. Then when it was dark, Laddie had a candle put inside and ran round to his friends' houses and showed them. They all had them too. But about eight o'clock the fun began. Peas rained against the window like shot, expelled by means of bean-blowers from small boys' mouths, and larger and more audacious boys ran up and banged the windows with their fists and rang the door-bell, and a rock came banging through the front-door screen, and once, with a sickening crash accompanied by an offensive odour, an egg of at least ayearago's laying laid itself out on the dining-room window. That was kept up till about midnight, accompanied by most unearthly yells. And in the morning we found a heterogeneous collection of goods all over the verandah. Other people's door-mats and chairs and beans and stones were all over the place. Alma (knowing the custom) had removed ours within doors the afternoon before, but the dustbin was emptied into next door's yard ; however that was their trouble, not ours. It was so killing, seeing the people coming up the street looking for their possessions."

J. SPENCER CURWEN.

ICE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. My maternal grandmother (an Essex woman) used to say, "If the ice bears a man before Christmas it won't bear a goose after." The present season appears a good one for testing the truth of the proverb. FRANK REDE FOWKE.

24, Netherton Grove, Chelsea, S.W.

How BIOGRAPHY is WRITTEN : THE ' D.N.B.' In reading the accounts of famous men of letters contributed to this great work by " well-known hands " one is occasionally startled on coming across gross almost in- credibleerrors touching notorious matters of fact. Here are two such instances, come upon in the course of an hour's reading of the ' Dictionary.' In his article on Southey Dr. Richard Garnett observes :

" Southey also wrote and printed Biuch occasional verse, and joined Coleridge and Lovell in composing a tragedy on the fall of Robespierre, and a trans- lation of 'Poems by Bion and Moschus.'"

Now, in the first place, Lovell contributed

nothing to the tragedy in question. Accord- ing to the original agreement, he had indeed written a third act ; but as this was, on perusal, pronounced out of keeping by his collaborators, he retired from the under- taking in favour of Southey, who supplied a third act of his own by the following day. Again, Coleridge had no share in the volume entitled " Poems : containing The Retro- spect. Odes, Elegies, Sonnets, &c. By Robert Lovell, and Robert Southey, of Baliol [sic]

College, Oxford. [Motto: "Minuentur

atrae Carmine curse." Hor.l Bath, Printed by R. Cruttwell, and sold by C. Dilly, Poultry, London. M.DCC.XCV." In this volume Southey signed his poems Bion, and Lovell his Moschus ; but these nonce-names were adopted merely in order to distinguish the several shares of the joint authors of the book, in which from beginning to end there is not a single piece of translated verse.

In his 'Life' of Charles Lamb, written for the "English Men of Letters" series, Canon Ainger stated that Lamb had, "in 1805, made the acquaintance of William Hazlitt, and Hazlitt had introduced him to William Godwin." This was in 1882. Ten years later, in the article on Lamb contributed to the 'D.N.B.,' Canon Ainger made a similar statement: "Lamb made Hazlitt's acquaintance in 1805, and Hazlitt introduced him to William Godwin, who had turned children's publisher." In the interval between these two dates Canon Ainger published an edition of the letters of Charles Lamb (1888). Now on 13 February, 1800, Lamb wrote to Manning a letter printed by Canon Ainger in this edition, and in that letter he says :

" Godwin I am a good deal pleased with. He is a very well-behaved, decent man ; nothing very brilliant about him, or imposing, as you may suppose ; quite another-guess sort of gentleman from what your anti-Jacobin Christians imagine him."

Before the close of 1800 Lamb had written several letters to Godwin, of which Canon Ainger gives three. Of the letters written to Godwin between the commencement of the friendship in 1800 and the year 1805, Canon Ainger prints eight. One of the most notorious incidents of Lamb's literary career is his writing an epilogue for Godwin's 'Antonio,' a tragedy produced at Drury Lane on Saturday, 13 December, 1800, and promptly damned. Innumerable references to Godwin and his second wife the " bad baby" occur in the 'Letters' of 1800-1805. Yet here we have from Canon Ainger, twice over, at an interval of ten years, the state- ment that Lamb and Godwin became first