Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/239

 9 th S. II. SEPT. 17, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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did the same in numbers of his pictures indeed, it has been the custom from distant times. for artists to depict troublesome and impertinent critics ; for instance, Leonardo da Vinci, while painting his celebrated picture of the ' Last Supper,' was very much troubled with the prior of the monastery in which it is painted. He could never find a face suffi- ciently beautiful to represent the Redeemer, and it remained incomplete, but the prior of the monastery who annoyed him so much as the work was proceeding he painted as Judas Iscariot. A full description of this incident can be found in Vasari's Lives of the Painters,' vol. ii. In our time Alfred Stevens was very much annoyed, while engaged on thecelebrated monument to the Duke of Wellington in St. Paul's Cathedral, by several members of Par- liament, the portrait of one of whom is given as Cowardice in the famous group where Valour is pulling out the tongue of Cowardice. Indeed, numbers of such instances could be named. CHARLES GREEN.

18, Shrewsbury Road, Sheffield.

"HORNY-HANDED SONS OF TOIL" (9 th S. ii' 127). I am far from books, and can give no references, but the man who popularized, if he did not make, this phrase was Denis Kearney, "Big Dinny," during the well- known meetings on the Sand Lots of San Francisco. There are a great many other "labour" phrases that I know as first used by him. H. H. S.

Vezelay.

BOOK-BORROWING (9 th S. ii. 66, 119). I adopted the wooden tablets at the University Library in Durham immediately after seeing them in use at the library of Sion College, and I think it was about 1874, as stated by W. C. B. We still follow the same method, but keep a record in a ledger-book as well. Where a great many books are out at a time, and for periods varying from two or three days to as many or more years, it is a great convenience to have some means of at once ascertaining where an absent book is, with- out having to turn over the pages of the ledger. J. T. F.

Winterton, Doncaster.

B. R. HAYDON, THE PAINTER (9 th S. ii. 45).

According to the contemporary accounts

in the Illustrated London News and ' Annual

Register,' Haydon died at 14, Burwood Place.

EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

Hastings.

"SABLE SHROUD" (9 th S. i. 445; ii. 133). It does not strike me that it is Steevens who "weakly remarks" on Beatrice's assertion

about lying "in the woollen." The Act of Parliament imposing the woollen shroud was 30 Car. II. stat. i. c. 3 (see ' N. & Q.,' 4 th S. L 548). ST. SWITHIN.

Was there any previous custom* or rule, or are we to suppose (on MR. YARDLEY'S autho- rity) that here Shakespeare prophesied, and' spoke beforehand of the Acts 18 Car. II. c. 4 and 30 Car. II. c. 3 ?

EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

Hastings.

I think that I was wrong in expressing myself contemptuously concerning the ex- planation given by Steevens. Beards and blankets are both prickly. But Beatrice may have meant that she would rather lie in a shroud than lie with a man who had a beard on his face. One explanation is as good as the other. E. YARDLEY.

" PAYING THROUGH THE NOSE " (9 th S. ii. 48). This is to be indirectly swindled in a transaction, or to pay an exorbitant price for a thing in consideration of long credit. A variant is "to be bored through the nose," " bored " here having the meaning of cheated; deceived :

At this instant he bores me with some trick. 'Henry VIII.,' Li. 128.

" One that hath gulled you, that hath bored you, Sir."' Life of T. Cromwell,' 1602, II. ii. 103.

And Ho well, in his 'Instructions for Forre Travell ' (1650), p. 59,

"had known divers Dutch gentlemen grosly guleB by this cheat [the selling of forged manuscripts to young travellers in Italy], and som English bor'd also through the nose this way, by paying excessive prices for them."

But explanations of the origin of the phrase in ' N. & Q.' and elsewhere are far from satisfactory, the simple and obvious idea of its inventor being, I think, merely to express payment transacted through an improper channel, as a " love " child is said to come into the world through a side door.

J. H. MACMlCHAEL. 14, Gloucester Crescent, Regent's Park.

UPHAM (9 th S. ii. 67). In reply to M. S., I can only suggest comparison with Upminster, Upstreet, and Uppingnam. Upcburch, a parish in Kent, or Upsnire, a hamlet in Essex, is said to be the origin of the Norfolk surname Upcher or Upsher. Upsall is the name of two townships in Yorkshire. There are two places called Upperton in Sussex. In most of these the first syllable seems identical with the preposition up. \%hope the same root? I think readers will be amused by the sug- gestion lately made to me by an able author,