Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/430

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. III. JUNE 3, '99.

story would not be of much interest unaccom- panied by pictorial illustrations. It can now be purchased, double-columned with a coloured wrapper, for the small sum of sixpence.

There is a good engraving of W. H. Ains- worth, when in the prime of life, prefixed to the original edition of ' Windsor Castle,' pub- lished in 1844, said to be engraved by S. Freeman from the picture by D. Maclise, KA., half-length, depicting a very handsome man. This is certainly not taken from the full-length portrait in the librarian's room at Chetham College, which represents him in a standing posture, wearing a cloak, and having his hat under his arm.

There is a " memoir " of W. H. Ainsworth in the ' Manchester School Register,' vol. iii. pp. 121-5, to which the letter C. is appended, showing it to have been written by Mr. James Crossley, an old friend of mine. It may pro- bably be identical with that mentioned by your correspondent (p. .332) in the edition of Rookvrood published in 1878, since the same expressions occur in it as are quoted by him. Ainsworth was born in 1805, and admitted into the Manchester Grammar School in 1817, then under the high - mastership of the Rev. Jeremiah Smith, D.D. There he was a schoolfellow of my father, who died in 1867, and he has given an amusing de- scription of the school as it existed in his day in one of his novels (' Life and Adventures of Mervyn Clitheroe,' 1851, 8vo.). Ainsworth died 3 Jan., 1882, and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. He had in Mr. Crossley as great a hero-worshipper as Thomas Carlyle could have desired. Mr. Crossley had once been a solicitor in large practice in Man- chester, and thus refers to the novelist's dis- relish for the law :

"Here [in the office of a conveyancer] he copied

Erecedents, and we have a folio volume in which is labours are embodied, but the rule in Shelley's

case and Fearne's contingent remainders had no charms for him."

Pasted in one of my books is an account of Ainsworth and his funeral at Kensal Green, a cutting most probably from either the Man- chester Guardian or the Manchester Courier. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

"CLINCHER." The earliest quotation for this word, in the sense of a clinker - built vessel, in the ' H.E.D.' is dated 1678, and is taken from Phillips's ' New World of Words.' The publications of the Navy Records Society may probably have furnished Dr. Murray with instances of the use of the word in the sixteenth century; but there is no harm in my pointing out that clinchers (spelt clynchers)

occurs on p. 3, 1. 21, of the (anonymous) trans- lation of Antonio Galvao's 'Discoveries of the World ' published by Hakluyt in 1601, but made, as he states, more than twelve years previously. It is there correctly used to render the Portuguese naos de pregadura; but the editor of the Hakluyt Society's reprint (a vice-admiral) very unnecessarily substitutes in a foot-note " well secured with nails." One would almost imagine that he was ignorant of the meaning of clincher. (Some of his emendations in various parts of this work are ludicrously wrong.) DONALD FERGUSON.

5, Bedford Place, Croydon.

DANTEIANA. (See 8 th S. ii. 23.) It is getting somewhat ancient history now, but I notice in a back number of ' N. & Q.' an incomplete and perhaps erroneous explanation of a pas- sage in the 'Inferno' (iv. 55) where Dante is telling of the souls he saw in limbo:

Trasseci 1' ombra del primo pareute, 1)' Abel suo figlio, e quella di Noe, Di Moise legista e 1' ubbidiente Abraam patriarca e David re.

The question is whether a comma should be j put after "legista" or "patriarca," and the writer says, " The adjective refers in the text not to Abraham, but to Moses," and goes on to quote Lord Vernon, who explains the epithet by saying that Moses was " legislators e ubbidiente sernpre alia voce de Dio." It may, however, be remarked that Abraham gave a signal instance of obedience in offering up his son Isaac at the Divine command. It would seem then that the epithet might apply to the Patriarch and this is how Fraticelli takes it as well as to the leader of the chosen people, so that Lord Vernon, if this is all he says, has noted only one of two possible explanations. T. P. ARMSTRONG.

Putney.

HAND-PRINTED BOOKS FROM WOOD EN- GRAVINGS, TEMP. 1800-88. As ' N. & Q.' is an invaluable record where instances are em- balmed, I wish to note therein some facts regarding woodcuts, or rather wood en- gravings, as xylographs have been termed since the days of Bewick, being produced on the end of the wood by the use of lozenge tools alone. The art of engraving upon wood, \ve are told, is a lost art ; certainly, if not lost, it is not one likely to be revived, as boxwood engravings in relief to print with type are costly. They replaced copper and steel, which were cut en cru and slow to print, the process being without improvement and in a method antique, whilst "process" by chemical result not only spares the original,