Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/281

 xii. OCT. 3, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

273

" [Between two deep mourning lines] Epitaphium C. Pope, and C. in Stall-Street : | and | Sold by J. Leake, Bookseller. | M.DCC.LXI. | [Price Six-Pence.]"
 * Richardi Nash, | Armigeri. | Bath : | Printed by

Folio, pp. 8, including title-page. Last page blank. The text begins on p. 3.

There are some interesting particulars about Nash in 'The Tunbridge Wells Guide,' 1780. He placed the Pump Room arrange- ments at Tunbridge Wells on the same foot- ing as those at Bath about the year 1735. W. F. PRIDE A ux.

One of your correspondents mentions Nash's portrait at Bath. Now, so far as I remember, though it is many years ago, it was a statue of the famous M.C. that stood in the Pump Room, and may stand there still, and in that view I am confirmed by Chesterfield's epi- gram, which ran as follows :

Nash represents man in the mass

Made up of wrong and right ; Sometimes a knave, sometimes an ass,

Now blunt arid, now polite.

The statue placed the busts between Adds to the thought much strength ;

Wisdom and wit are little seen, But folly 's at full length.

BRUTUS.

The suggestion of the REV. J. PICKFORD that the portrait of Beau Nash should be replaced between the busts of Pope and Newton, for the sake of the epigram to which the combination gave rise, is not practicable. The location of these works of art was the Lower Rooms (as they were called to dis- tinguish them from the Upper), and they perished, it is believed, in the disastrous fire which occurred at the Rooms in 1820. With regard to the epigram, the honour of its authorship rests between Jane Brereton and Lord Chesterfield. The former wrote several verses on the same theme, which the latter is credited with crystallizing into the well- known jeu d? esprit. T.

Bath. '

AUTHORS OF BOOKS WANTED (9 th S. xi, 468 ; xii. 74). In a printed "Complete List of Knight's Weekly and Monthly Volumes" (186 in all), published by C. Cox, King William Street, Strand, signed C. Knight, 24 April, 1849, the 'Life of Gresham' is advertised as by C. MacFarlane, confirming MR. SHERBORN'S conjecture.

ADRIAN WHEELER.

AITKEN (9 th S. xii. 129, 213). The following quotation from Camden's ' Remaines ' will be of interest to SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, as it shows very clearly that the English form of

the word was considered to be derived from Arthur some 300 years ago. The correctness of the derivation would seem to be confirmed by the manner in which the soldiers treated the Duke of Wellington's Christian name two centuries afterwards. In his chapter on ' Surnames ' Camden says :

" From Nicknames or Nursenames came these (pardon me if it offend any, for it is but my con- iecture), Bill and Will for William, Clem for Clement, Nat for Nathaniel, Mab for Abraham, Kit for Christopher, Mund for Edmund, Hall for Harry, At and Atty for Arthur," &c.

He then adds :

" Many likewise have bene made by adioyning Kins and Ins to those nursenames, making them in Kins as it were diminutives, and those in Ins as Patronymica. For so Alfric, Archbishop of Canter- bury, and the most ancient Saxon Grammarian of our nation, noteth that names taken from progeni- tours do end in Ins ; so Dickins, that is, little Dicke, Perkins from Peir or Peter, little Petre ; so Tom kins, Wilkins ; Hutchins, Huggins, Higgins, Hitchins from Hugh ; Lambkins from Lambert ; Hopkins, Hobkins from Hob ; Dobbins, Robbins ; Atkins from Arthur," &c.

I quote from the second edition of the 4 Remaines,' 1614, pp. 131-2, but the whole of the article is contained in the first edition, published in 1605. "Adam" is not given; but it is mentioned in the chapter bearing the title of 'Names' as one of the " usuall Christian Names," thus : " Adam, Heb. Man, earthly, or red." JOHN T. CURRY.

The above is plainly the Scotch form of English Atkin = Adkin = little Adam, or the son of Adam. All are to be found in Bardsley's 'Dictionary of Surnames.' There is no connexion with Arthur. H. P. L.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS : A NEW THEORY (9 th S. xii. 141, 210). MR. INGLEBY will not allow that it is possible the Shakespeare Sonnets may have been the work of various hands, as * The Passionate Pilgrim ' certainly was, though published under Shakespeare's name. "Why should various hands," he asks, '* be supposed to have been at work on these sonnets?" Simply because Shakespearean commentators cannot fit many of them, by any method of argument, into the circum- stances of Shakespeare's life. " The style throughout," says MR. INGLEBY, " is the same inimitable work of the master hand." This is a matter of opinion. "Mr. Sidney Lee says :

"In literary value Shakespeare's sonnets are notably unequal. Many reach levels of lyric melody and meditative energy that are hardly to be

matched elsewhere in poetry On the other hand,

many sink almost into inanity beneath the burden of quibbles and conceits Passages of the highest