Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/293

 9* s. XT. APRIL ii, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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WILLIAM BLAKE. The valuable collection of Blake's illustrations and drawings formed by Mr. Monckton Milnes, and afterwards in the possession of his son the Earl of Crewe, recently sold at Sotheby's, brought large prices. Twenty-one original designs in colours for the illustrations of the book of Job, together with Blake's original portrait of himself, and the twenty-two proof engravings on India paper from these, were purchased by Mr. Quaritch for^ 5,600?. Gilchrist, in his life of Blake, mentions these as being amongst the finest and sanest of the artist's achieve- ments. The original drawings for Milton's 'L' Allegro' and 'II Penseroso,' bound with the text of the poems and explanations of the designs in manuscript, went for 1,960?. to Mr. A. Jackson; 'The Book of Urizen,' 1794, twenty-seven numbered plates, 307?.; ' America, a Prophecy,' 1793, being the rare original coloured issue, 295?. ; ' The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,' twenty -seven plates, 260?. ; and ' Europe, a Prophecy,' Lambeth, 1794, seventeen plates in colours, 203?.

B. 0. A.

CLIFFORD'S INN : VANISHING LONDON. Messrs. Farebrother, Ellis, Egerton, Breach & Co. have announced that they will on the 14th of May sell in one lot, unless pre- viously disposed of by private contract, Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street, forming an exten- sive site with a superficial area of about 38,000 feet, suitable for the erection of legal and professional chambers, commercial offices, or a public institution, or for the creation of ground rents, the buildings now

on the land including " the historic hall

of Gothic design, lighted by six windows, which measures 33ft. by 30ft., and has a fourteenth - century arch leading to the offices and wine cellars." The property is described as having been originally granted to masters of the Society of Clifford's Inn, under an indenture of feoffment dated the 29th of March, 1618, by the then Earl of Cumberland and his son Lord Clifford.

Y. Z.

THE VANISHING REDSKIN. In these later days, when the noble savage, the hero of boyhood's days, has been almost finally im- proved off the face of the earth only brought to mind as still existent by the occasional visits to our shores of General Miles or Col. W. F. Cody the following extract from the Printers' Register of 7 January might seem almost worth preservation in the pages of 'N. & Q.' I would like to mention, by the way, that Fred Gilbert, a clever wood- draughtsman, whose good (or bad) fortune it

was to have an illustrious elder brother, made his early efforts as illustrator as a delineator of Indian life ; his sketches were bold and dashing, but he made his redskins far too handsome :

" The Cherokee Advocate was started about half a century ago, and is about to be dropped for want of funds. It is the only Red Indian newspaper ever printed, for the Cherokee tongue is the only one that has been reduced to writing and had type cast for it. Only full-blooded Cherokees are allowed to work at the case and the machine ; only full- blooded Cherokees read it, and it is but rarely that any one else contributes to the paper. The type for this language was cast forty years ago, and has not been renewed, for the moulds were broken after the completion of the casting. The news- paper has a circulation of three hundred copies, and is distributed free ; it contains news affecting the tribe, and is under the control of the Indian Council at Tahlequah. The printing office is a quaint building near the council house, and is fitted up with a very antiquated machine. The Cherokee alphabet was drawn up in 1826 by a Cherokee, who received the name of George Guess ; his invention of the alphabet was a matter of the utmost astonish- ment to every one ; the Cherokee learnt it, and has become able to read and write, and the American Congress gave him a medal and a small sum of money. The alphabet has eighty-five signs."

HERBERT B. CLAYTON.

39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

" ADOXY." The reappearance of this seven- teenth-century word, but in a sense far removed from " without reputation," may be worth noting. In an article on the late James Martineau, by Julia Wedgwood (Ex- positor, January, p. 22), we find "adoxy" used to indicate the neutral zone between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. It is a useful colourless word (like a-gnostic).

C. S. WARD.

CHRISTMAS WEATHER-LORE. If Christmas Day falls on a Thursday a windy year will follow. A farmer here told me this the other day, in explanation of the almost constant gales we have had lately. C. C. B.

Epworth.

" SELF-ENDS." We now use the periphrasis " selfish ends," but apparently our ancestors were more concise in denoting the same philosophical summary. In what appears to be a fairly trustworthy reprint of the 1670 edition of Walton's 'Lives' we find the intimacy between Hooker and his college pupils described as "a friendship elemented in youth and in a university, free from self- ends, which the friendships of age usually are not." Both archaic and current com- pound forms with "self" as an integral element are very numerous, but "self -end" is one that does not seem to^have been