Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/369

 8. XL MAT 9, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

361

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 9, 190S.

CONTENTS. No. 280

NOTES : Chancellor Silvan Evans, 3H1 Billion : Trillion, 362 Merry Tales, 363 Milton's 'Minor Poems,' 3155 Bonnet =Toque " Pip" Dr. Halley Music to Mrs. Hemans's Songs, 3iS Westminster City Arms Thacke- ray's Carefulness as to Details, 367.

QUERIES :" Cahoot" Long Melford Church, 3*7-Pike Family Roman Numerals Oliver of Ley tonstone Good Friday in 1602 ' Celebrities and I 'Henry II. and Lin- coln ValleVs ' Bibliographic des Bibliographies' Dyng- ley " And the villain still pursued her " Jelf Kelynack : the Place and Family, 368-" Folks"" Welter "Maori Legend J D P^pys Kimberleys of Bromsgrove

Delivered from the galling \oke of time" Herbert iid Leather " Paraboue " A Voice from the Danube ' " Oh, true brave heart," &c.,

REPLIES : -'The Good Devil of Woodstock,' 370 Ancient Demesne, 371 Races of Mankind Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale 'Watson of Barrasb-ilge, 372 Definition of Genius, 373 Last of the Pre-Victorian M.Ps, 374 Vicar of Wakefield ' Footprints of Gods Stevenson : Corinthian : Put " Hagioscope" or Oriel? 375 Rings in 1487 Road Waggons from Liverpool, 376 Notes on Skeat's 'Concise Dictionary 'San Diego " Surizian," 377 Chaucerian Quotation Longevity Gods and Men- Hock- : Ocker-, 378.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-FitzGerald's 'Calderon.' edited hy Oelsner 'Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist' Reviews and Magazines Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

CHANCELLOR SILVAN EVANS. IN the Cardiff Weekly Mail of 18 April there are two obituary notices of this excellent Welsh scholar : one in English, reprinted, I believe, from the daily issue of the Mail ; the other in Welsh by "Idriswyn." I do not know who the latter writer is, but am under the impression that he is a Dissenting minister. The English notice bears internal evidence of being the work of Mr. Eilir Evans, a zealous Churchman and Conservative, and a well- known Cardiff journalist. Mr. Evans, an old Lampeterian, who had been personally interviewing Silvan Evans about a year ago, writes thus respecting the distinguished lexicographer's connexion with Lampeter :

" The Rev. Chancellor Evans was an old Lam- peter man, where he graduated B.D. in 1868 and

acted in the capacity of examiner at St. David's College. Lampeter, from 1875 to 1890. He was made Canon of Bangor in 1888, and subsequently was appointed to the chancellorship of the cathe- dral, which he held for eight years. For an equal period he had been previously Professor of Welsh at the University College of Wales."

This notice runs to a column and a half (full newspaper size) ; and that is all a leading Church pressman and Lampeterian has to say about Silvan Evans's connexion with his old college. I may observe that the dates of Evans's Lampeter examinership given in the

above quotation do not tally with the dates in the current edition of the college calendar, which on p. 60 gives 1874-81, but on the very next page has 1875-79. It will be noticed that the eight years of his professor- ship at Aberystwith (1875-83)are not specified, nor placed in their natural position. On looking at the curious discrepancies of dates, one is half inclined to suspect that some of them are intentional, made with the view of parrying the awkward accusation that Lara- peter was shamed into paying its old alumnus the compliment of appointing him Welsh examiner by the action of its vigorous young rival at Aberystwith. I am not at present able either to confirm or dissipate this sus- picion, but I know that the Lampeter authorities have always been somewhat prone to mystification. Turning now to "Idriswyn's" account, we find indeed more information, but even less accuracy. The writer is very well informed on Welsh matters, and an enthusiastic advocate for the preservation and extension of the Welsh language. This, then, is what " Idriswyn" says :

"From his leaving [the Dissenting academy of] Neuaddlwyd to his entrance at Lampeter Silvan Evans's biographers are wholly silent, but, if I am not mistaken, he began preaching with the Inde- pendents, if indeed he did not take charge of one or more [Dissenting] churches. At any rate, this is certain, in 1846, when he was twenty-eight years old, we find Evans a student at Lampeter with the object of taking Church orders. He was one of the earliest students (myfyrwyr cyntaf) of that col- lege, and one of the most promising that ever were under instruction. In the last year of his course he was Welsh lecturer to the college, completing

his other studies at the same time He won a

high position at Lampeter, passed in the first division, and won a scholarship [in another obituary the scholarship is said to be the " senior" one]. He took his B.D. in 1868, and served as Welsh examiner to his old college from 1874 to 1880. Silvan Evans's career and his subsequent scholarly works were the means of bringing Lampeter College to the nation's notice, and he set a permanent mark of renown on the institution he was a living witness to the nature and effectiveness of the education imparted there."

Such is "Idriswyn's" glowing picture of Silvan Evans's Lampeter career, due partly, no doubt, to the kindly Welsh fashion of covering lack of exact information with a profusion of pleasant adjectives, but mainly to that Lampeterian mystification to which I have already referred. I do not yield to either Mr. Eilir Evans or "Idriswyn" in sincere respect for, and admiration of, the deceased scholar, but I do not believe that fiction can furnish a satisfactory wreath for his grave.

As the college was opened in March,