Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/502

 494

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. XIL DEC. 19, iws.

in "rule Britannia," arises from a universa bad habit of the printer, in putting a capita to a word in the middle of a sentence. Th first printer puts a capital to an ordinar word, which gives it the semblance of a name The next printer thinks he must alter tha but instead of doing the right thing anc putting a small r he puts a comma afte Ilule, to make it not appear as a name.

The bad habits of printers are so numerou that I cannot admit their universal practic as a guide. I have been writing agains these universal practices in 'N. & Q.' sine 1872 (4 th S. ix. 274), but other notes mor emphatic will be found 8 th S. xi. 83 ; 9 th S i 34, 143 ; iv. 146 ; vi. 258 ; xii. 83.

I find printers have many bad habits, a least to my idea. They alter my spelling i it is not that of their particular office. Thu if I write, according to the almost universa practice, civilisation, a z is put instead of my s, without the slightest notice to me. If ! put my date in proper sequence of day month, year, thus : friday 19 June 1903, it i altered to the childish form Friday, June 19 1903. As there are twelve nineteens in the year it gives a copyist twelve chances o: making a mistake.

But it is no use going on. I could fil columns with instances. I should like, how ever, to advise any one who wants peace o mind to let his printer print in any ugly way he likes. To get printers to do different from what they have been brought up to, is a task that would daunt the most determinec author, if he only knew what was before him. Let them do as they like, even if it is such an old-fashioned useless and brainless thing as numbering the sheets of a book with the alphabet, but leaving out j, v and w, and when the letters are exhausted beginnin again with A A ! This is what Englis printers have been doing for centuries. Don't talk about reform to them their great-great- grandfathers did the same.

RALPH THOMAS.

THACKERAY AND ' DAMASCUS AND PALMYRA (9 th b. xii. 446). A copy of this work, sold at feotheby's in 1891 (for 27J.), is said to have contained inside the cover Thackeray's re- ceipt, when a very young man, for twenty pounds for his illustrations to the work

R'. B.

A vehicle of the " pousse-pousse" and Ver- sailles order survived in public use in Bedford certainly for a few years after 1851. It be- longed to a Mr. Peacock, and was operated fcy him and his son, being known as "Pea-

cock's fly," but vulgarly " Peacock's pull-and- shove-it." There were no cabs in Bedford at that period, and Peacock's fly was in request to carry to gatherings at the Assembly Rooms guests who had no carriages at command. It held two persons, who sat facing each other. It was like a " slice " of cab, as if a cab had been cut down perpendicularly in the direc- tion of its length. The son pulled a bath- chair kind of handle ; the father pushed at a towel-rail kind of handle fixed to the back. The colour was, if I rightlv remember, a rusty black. F.

"HAGIOSCOPE" OR ORIEL? (9 th S. xi. 301, 321, 375, 491 ; xii. 58, 195.) At the first reference I mentioned the so-called squints in Haseley Church, Oxfordshire, and showed that it was impossible to see through one of them. I have lately bought a copy of ' Some Remarks on the Church of Great Haseley,' Oxford, 1848, first published in 1840. On p. 25 the Rev. T. W. Weare says : " These holes or perforations were no doubt intended to enable those in the chantries to see the high altar during the time of divine service." He appends, however, the following note :

"Delafield thinks that ' the holes were designed For lancets to convey the voice of the priests offi- ciating at the high altar to penitents who were under ecclesiastical censure, and therefore not ad- mitted (while thus bound) to the full and complete oartaking of and joining in the offices of religion.' The common idea formerly current in the parish, that they were employed for confession, seems un- tenable."

About the year 1740 the Rev. Mr. Delafield wrote a history of the parish of Haseley, the MS. of which remained in 1848 in the Bod- eiari Library. It is clear enough that these apertures were used for confession, but the 'hagioscope," invented in 1839, may live on las been made by its supporters to get rid of the fact that some of the apertures are filled with open panelling or lattice-work. On p. 196 ante Miss LEGA-WEEKES says :
 * or some years yet, and an ingenious attempt

"As to the screens or panels which, as described

n Parker, were features of some hagioscopes, it

las been explained to me that these were made to

open and shut, so that they need not obstruct the

view during service."

.f that were so, of what use would the screens 3e? And will the gentleman who has ex- plained the difficulty in this way come forward nd tell us of at least one case where the creen opens and shuts ? S. O. ADDY.

DICKENS REFERENCE (9 th S. xii. 430). Dickens, or his printer, or the two of them in eliberate conspiracy, did a misleading thing n giving a mere bogle the presentment of