Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/277

 certain occasions, simply because "it always has been so"? G. W.

"A BIG BOOKE" PRINTED IN GERMANY.- Can any one suggest the title of "a big booke" sent from England to be printed in Germany in 1617, the proofs of which had to be sent back to this country for correction? The work was by an English author whom I am unable to identify. The 1623 folio of Shakespeare has been suggested, but this was printed by Jaggard & Blount in London, in the same types and with the same ornaments as many other books by the same printers. This folio cannot, therefore, be the large work referred to, unless it can be shown, per impossibile, that Jaggard & Blount sent much of their work to be printed in Germany. . Chelsfield, Kent.

"GALLANT."-It is well known that the accent on the noun, adjective, and verb gallant shifts according to the meaning of the word. The adjective, for example, when it means brave is gállant, when it means courtly is gallánt. The H.E.D.' gives no variation of this kind for the noun gallantry, which, according to the quotations given there, is always gállantry. Yet Browning has the following at the conclusion of Pippa Passes':-


 * But at night, brother howlet, over the woods,
 * Toll the world to thy chantry;
 * Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods
 * Full complines with gallantry :
 * Then, owls and bats,
 * Cowls and twats,
 * Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods,
 * Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.

Here, in order to obtain the correct rime, one must say gallántry. Is Browning in error here? He is contradicted by Pope ('Imit. of Horace,' II. i. 145) :-


 * The soldier breathed the gallantries of France,
 * And every flowery courtier writ romance.

Or was Browning entitled to introduce this variation? and is there an unintentional omission from the 'H.E.D.'? . 6, Castle Terrace, Edinburgh.

"TONGUE-TWISTERS."-In what book or books can I find collected examples, in the principal European languages, of sentences and poems specially constructed as tests of pronunciation ? I refer to such puzzles as our "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper-corns " and " Round the rugged rocks the ragged rascals ran to reach the rural races." The French have "Que coûtent ces saucissons ? Six sous? Ces saucissons six sous c'est cher." The Danish shibboleth is "Rödgröd med Flöde." The Dutch gutturals are heaped together in "Acht-en-tachtig glad geschuurde kacheltjes," the Spanish gutturals in a set of verses attributed to Lope de Vega, beginning "Dijo un jaque de Jerez, con su faja y traje majo." There must be numbers of similar drolleries on record, if one only knew where to find them. , Jun.

[French instances are "Ton thé t'a-t-il tout otée ta toux?" and "C'est le cri aigri du gris cricri qui crie."]

Replies.

COLERIDGE'S CHRISTABEL.'

(9th S. x. 326, 388, 429, 489; xi. 30, 116, 170.)

THIS discussion would have been of advantage, had other reasons been absent, since it has induced MR. HUTCHINSON to tabulate the grounds on which he believes that Hazlitt wrote the Edinburgh critique on Christabel.' We now know the worst that can be said of Hazlitt in this regard. But before proceeding to examine those reasons, I cannot help adverting to the House-of-Commons way in which MR. HUTCHINSON obscures the true issue by diverting attention to real or imaginary errors on the part of his opponent -if I may use such a word in relation to the friendly bouts of arms which diversify the columns of 'N. & Q.' These errors, generally speaking, have no real relevance to the point in dispute, but their discovery gives a factitious air of weakness to the opposite case, and affords a useful fulcrum for debate. For instance, MR. HUTCHINSON, On p. 116 of this volume, makes some capital out of a misprint, whereby the word "corrected" was turned into "converted." The explanation is that when I read my article in proof, I rewrote nearly the whole of the first paragraph, and the error was due to my bad writing and to the fact that no revise was sent me. Misquotation is not a fault I would wilfully commit.

In his last paper, again, MR. HUTCHINSON quotes (with an important omission) some remarks of mine by which I merely meant to convey the well-known fact that authorities were not in entire accordance with each other on the question of the authorship of the Edinburgh articles on Coleridge. I stated that "even the notice of the Biographia Literaria' which appeared in the Edinburgh Review of August, 1817, and which is generally attributed to Hazlitt, is marked by Mr. Ireland as doubtful." MR. HUTCHINSON, on the strength of this remark, imputes to me