Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/453

 9 th S. II. DEC. 3, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

445

her sudden and mysterious disappearance were most suspicious (see '^Eneid,' ii. 735 sqq.) :

Hie mihi nescio quod trepido male numen amicum

Confusam eripuit mentem, &c. Some hostile god, for some unknown offence, Had sure bereft my mind of better sense ; For while through winding ways I took my flight, And sought the shelter of the gloomy night, Alas ! I lost Creiisa, &c.

As to his treatment of poor Dido and its mourn- fully tragic results for her, the less said the better. Altogether it is pretty evident that this overrated " pious " gentleman was after all no better than he should have l^en. As Pococurante says in 'Candide':

" Pour son pieux En6e, <fcc., je ne crois pas qu'il yait rien de si froid et de plus ddsagreable. J'aime mieux le Tasse et les contes a dormir debout de 1'Arioste."

PATRICK MAXWELL.

Bath.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S BROTHER'S GRAVE IN QUEBEC. The following, from the ^Evening Post, signed G. H. D., Newark, seems worthy of preservation :

" Recently when in Quebec the driver of the cab in which I was coming down St. John's Street, outside St. John's Gate, and passing St. Matthew's Church, said, pointing with his whip : ' There is the grave of a brother of Sir Walter Scott.' I told him to stop, and went inside the gate of the church- yard, which was once part of the old cemetery of Quebec, and just inside the gate I found the grave and the stone to his memory, stating that Thomas Scott, Paymaster of the 90th Regiment, died 6 Feb., 1823, and his daughter Barbara 30 Oct., 1821. I venture to write of it to you, as others visiting Quebec may like to see it, and no reference is made to it either in the Baedeker or Appleton guide-books. The other morning I looked up the references to Thomas Scott in Lockhart's ' Life of Sir Walter Scott' and found there were twenty, besides fifteen letters. Thomas Scott was Sir Walter's third and last surviving brother, and his career was a chequered one. At one time he was supposed to be the author of the Waverley Novels, before the mystery was cleared up. The letters are very touch- ing and pathetic, and show the affectionate relations that existed between the two brothers. I wrote about it to the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell Scott, the great- granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott, the present owner of Abbotsford, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Wimbledon last year after the unveiling of the beautiful bust to his memory in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, that I had visited the graves of the two brothers who lie so far apart, one in Dryburgh Abbey and the other in Quebec, and what warm and loving hearts they cover."

SEYMOUR HADEN.

TYPE ERRORS. Perhaps the most annoying misprints are those which are not at once apparent to the eye, but make sense after a fashion, and pass the ordinary proof-reader. One of these occurs in a note to Lord Ly tton's

translation of Horace, the fifteenth ode of the third book, Harpers' reprint. To the passage,

Te lanae prope nobiles

Tonsae Luceriam,

is appended this observation :

" A town in Apulia now called Lucera. In its neighbourhood was one of the largest tracts of public pasture land. The woods of Luceria were celebrated."

Is it not manifest that Lord Lytton wrote wools, that the compositor made it woods, and that the proof-reader did not notice there was a non sequitur ? It seems to make sense. That the word should be wools is evident from the Delphin note on the same passage :

" Ea civitas Apulise Daunia?, sita est in planitie pascuis abundante, in qua educantur multi omnium greges, quarum lanae in primis laudantur."

JOHN E. NORCROSS. Brooklyn, U.S.

POE AND PUCKLE. In two of his critiques Poe referred to Sir James Puckle's 'Grey Cap for a Green Head.' Puckle's celebrated ' Club ' was several times, I read, published with this sub- title, 'A Grey Cap for a Greenhead'; but was the original title ever omitted, and that used by Poe substituted? If it were, this edition would seem to have escaped the notice of the compilers of the ' Dictionary of National Biography.' THOMAS AULD.

Belfast.

PATRONYMICS. Of the fascinating study of surnames, the most fascinating part has always seemed to me that of the patro- nymics, or names which indicate that their bearer is the son or descendant of so-and-so. I venture to throw together in these lines a few of the prefixes and terminations which I have observed in use in the principal lan- guages of the world to indicate descent by means of surnames. To begin with our own, the termination -son is familiar to us all, not only in English, but also in the other Teutonic languages. The only exception to the general rule that all Teutonic peoples have family names with this ending is the Frisian, which employs for the same purpose the syllable -nut-. Alma Tadema is a Frisian name which will occur at once to the minds of my readers. Tadema in English would be Adamson. The Finns, who have long been closely associated with Teutons, use the desinence -nen ; thus Penttinen is the Finnish equivalent for the Swedish Bengtsson, son of Benedict.

The Irish need not delay us, nor the Welsh Ap and Scottish Mac, two forms of one and the same Celtic root. Of the last, which is indubitably the most interesting of