Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/40

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XL JAK. 10, isos.

h has had attention in modern dictionaries and grammars. Dr. Johnson has said, " Grammarians of the last age direct that an should be used before h ; whence it appears that the English anciently aspirated less." In Chaucer we read :

An hundred lordes had he with him there. In the Bible an seems to be always used before h. See Psalm cxlvii., "He hath no pleasure in the strength of an horse." Shak- speare, unless he has been altered by his editors, generally used a before h. I do not suppose, however, that he has been altered ; for I know that Middleton, in ' The Witch,' wrote "a hog " Sometimes Shakspeare has an :

No, not so much perdition as an hair. Afterwards he has " not a hair perished." Milton writes :

With up-right wing against a higher foe.

Dry den has used both a and an : Tis dangerous to disturb an hornet's nest.

4 The Cock and the Fox.'

Swift, in one of his letters, which I quote from an edition published in his lifetime, writes, " I have learnt this by living like a hermit." In another of his letters he writes, " I wish there were an hospital built." But he has "a Hollander." Addison, in the fifteenth number of the Spectator, has "an hat buttoned with a diamond." He has also " an human body," but, on the other hand, "a hero." I find that Steele writes " an hag- gard," "an hero." It is certain that in the old editions of the Spectator and my ex- amples are quoted from the second edition an is almost always found before words be- ginning with an h. E. YARDLEY.

The innocent cause of this discussion was Dr. Thomas Marshall, to whom the University of Oxford is indebted for many valuable books. According to Wood's ' Fasti Oxonienses' he became B.D. 1 July, 1661, D.D. 28 June, 1669, and was "a great critic in the Gothic and Saxon languages." In " The Antient and Present State of the City of Oxford, the whole chiefly collected by Mr. Anthony a Wood ; with additions by the Rev. Sir J. Peshall, Bart." (London, 1773), and on p. 4 of the appendix on monumental inscriptions, it is stated that his epitaph in All Saints' Church, Oxford, was "on the East Wall a black Marble Tablet, Gold Letters " The epitaph at present is in colour- less Betters, incised on a slab of grey stone, inlaid on the pavement of the choir or chancel of the said church, to the west of, contiguous to, and in a line with the south side of the one-stepped platform on which the Holy

Table stands. As the copy of it which Sir J. Peshall published is not quite accurate, it may be worth while to subjoin that which I took in December, 1902 : p. M. s.

D. THOM^l MARSHALL S. T. D.

QUEM IN AGRO LEICESTR. BARKBEYA GENUIT,

OXONIUM EDUCAVIT,

EX PASTORE MERCAT. DORDRECT.

LINCOLNIENSE COLLEGIUM

PRIMO SOCIUM

DEINDE RECTOREM FECIT.

GLOUCESTRI^ DECANUS IMPIGER,

CONCIONIBUS POTENS ET CREBER,

PIETATE INSIGNIS,

DOCTRINA SUMMUS,

LINGUAR. OR. ET OCCI. AQUILA PERSPICAX

^EGYPTLE PHCEN1X UNICUS,

EX MUS.EO INSTRUCTISSIMO

ACADEMLE LIBROS IN B. P. DESIDERATOS,

COLLEGIO RELIQUOS ET PECUNIAS AMPLAS

LEGAVIT

SUI DEPOSITUM HEIC RELIQUIT XVIII APRILIS MDCLXXXV.

Did this epitaph, or a duplicate, once stand on the east wall \ E. S. DODGSON.

GREEN AN UNLUCKY COLOUR (9 th S. viii. 121, 192 ; ix. 234, 490 ; x. 32, 133, 353). This seems to have done duty as a revolutionary colour, though at one time the distinctive colour of Ireland. In 'Rokeby' Sir Walter Scott has the following beautiful allusion to the shamrock in a little poem, 'The Cypress Wreath ':

Let merry England proudly rear

Her blended roses, bought so dear ;

Let Albin bind her bonnet blue

With heath and harebell dipped in dew ;

On favoured Erin's crest be seen

The flower she loves of emerald green

But, Lady, twine no wreath for me,

Or twine it of the cypress tree.

Canto v. xiii.

Green is, however, the colour of the ribbon of the Scottish Order of the Thistle, and sky-blue is the colour of the Order of St. Patrick, founded in 1783 ; but the trefoil slipped on the badge of the latter is green (vert) in colour. There was a fine portrait by William Owen at Aldenham Abbey, Herts, of the Hon. William Stuart, Arch- bishop of Armagh, father of the owner. He was depicted in his episcopal habit, and wearing the sky - blue ribbon over it (as prelate of the Order of St. Patrick), from which depended the shamrock badge. Mr. Stuart possessed many valuable relics and heirlooms, amongst them a fragment of the