Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/345

 9 th S. II. OCT. 22, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

337

paper on ' The Proverbs of Alfred,' which i the name of the MS. in question. This wa read before the Philological Society on 7 May 1897, and is published among the Transactions The results there established throw mud light upon the matter ; and I am entitled t( add, from the Modern Language Quarterly July, 1897, p. 31, that my paper has been pro nounced to be "epoch -making for Middle English phonetics." WALTER W. SKEAT.

" IN DOMINICIS AUGUSTI " (9 th S. ii. 226). MR. VANE must be curiously unfamiliar with ecclesiastical Latin not to know that thes< words mean nothing more recondite than "ir the Sundays of August" (dies Dominica = Lord's Day or Sunday) days for which the Church has appointed, in the divin office, special lessons, responsories, and anti phons, taken largely from the books o Wisdom and Proverbs. The antiphons for the Magnificat on the eves of every Sunday in August consist of verses from Holy Scripture in praise of Divine Wisdom. The actua words cited by MR. VANE do not occur in any of these as now arranged ; but that may be accounted for by the fact that his service-book is a mediaeval Spanish, not a modern Roman one. How the antiphon in question comes to be~ sandwiched between what appears to be a musical setting of the " Salve Regina " (the antiphon in daily use from Trinity Sunday to Advent) and a responsory for Christmas Day I cannot explain, in default of a much fuller and more adequate description of the book than MR. VANE gives. However, he may be quite sure that it has not the remotest connexion with O Sapientia, the first of the " great O " antiphons which precede Christ- mas, but that it belongs, as I have said above, to an entirely different season of the litur- gical year.

OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR, O.S.B. Oxford.

"Festa Augusti" in the Roman Missal means the festivals in August. " Dominicis," in like manner, seems to mean on the Sundays in August. ED. MARSHALL.

Surely not a very recondite phrase, and signifying that the service referred to was to be used on the Sundays of August. " Dies Dominica " = the Lord's Day.

FREDERIC LOCKE O'CARROLL.

REMARKABLE LAPSUS CALAMI (9 th S. ii. 125, 235). My thanks to C. T. S., MR. EDWARD H. MARSHALL, and M.A.OxoN. for their courteous corrections of my own "remarkable lapsus calami." I had quite overlooked the fact that the customs of the forties differ widely

from those of the nineties. I have unwit- tingly exemplified in myself the danger of judging an earlier by a later epoch, and cry peccavi. My only comfort lies in the fact that my note has served to unearth, through the pen-spades of my colleagues, a few literary gems whose sparkle in 'N. & Q.' will "lighten the darkness " of perhaps more than myself. Coupled with my thanks, however, I must demur to two observations of C. T. S. " Certainly," he says, "there is a signing of the register by the minister, if not by the parents, at a baptism." This is misleading. The officiating minister need not sign the register himself, though he generally does so. I have signed hundreds myself, and left hun- dreds for the clerk to sign my name, of course. It is otherwise with marriage regis- ters, which must be signed by the officiating minister in his own handwriting. Again, C. T. S. writes, "So far from its being unusual not to pay fees for a copy of the register," &c. If C. T. S. will kindly re-read my note he will find I never made any such assertion. I have received too many such fees not to know the law on that point. All that I stated was that there are no such things as baptismal fees qua such. Fees for copies of the register are a totally different matter, and rarely or never received at the time at least by me. People seem to prefer to get their copies later and pay more for them. J. B. S.

Manchester.

ZACHARY MACAULAY (9 th S. ii. 166). With

regard to the question, Was No. 3, Clarges

Street the house in which the father of Lord

Macaulay died ? I may remark that Mr.

r. O. Trevelyan, M.P., has recorded of

iachary Macaulay that

'during the months that his children were on heir homeward voyage his health was breaking ast, and before the middle of May he died without again having seen their faces." Jnder these sad circumstances is it reason- able to believe that Macaulay on his return rom India immediately took "lodgings" in he very house in which his father died 1 It iced hardly be mentioned, in connexion with he subject, that Macaulay was much de- ressed by a visit he made to the scene of his nother's death, as shown in the following uotation from a letter written by him in iugust, 1 1857 :

"I sent the carriage home, and walked to the /Tuseum ; passing through Great Ormond Street, saw a bill on No. 50. I knocked, was let in, and ent over the house with a strange mixture of
 * elings. It is more than twenty-six years since I

as in it. The dining-room and the adjoining room i which I once slept are scarcely changed; the ame colouring on the wall, but more dingy. My