Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/464

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NOTES AND QUERIES.


 * s. m. JUNE 10,

RAMUS FAMILY (9 th S. iii. 348). Mr. Andrew Lang wrote a short poem on Romney's por- trait of Miss Benedetta Ramus, which will be found in his ' Rhymes a la Mode.' In the notes to the later editions of that collection a few biographical details are given. There is also a copy of the picture and a short account of the lady in the last edition of Dr. Busteed's interesting 'Echoes of Old Calcutta.' It was in reference to this lady and her hus- band that George III. made his only joke : that he had turned Day into Knight, and made Lady Day at Michaelmas. Benedetta Ramus, afterwards Lady Day, died 20 May, 1811. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

MARTIN, A GAME (9 th S. iii. 408). "All sorts of people now played gleek or martin," in the passage quoted, was my translation of " tout le monde veut jouer au glic, aux martres," in an extract from Monteil (Amans- Alexis), I think, from his ' Histoire des Fran- 9ais des divers Etats, ou Histoire de France aux cinq derniers Siecles,' 5 vols. " Martres " was " a game played with huckle-bones and a little ball," and had nothing to do with cards, or " mart," or war of any but the most peace- ful sort. Cptgrave, who gives the above- quoted definition of this old game, explains " jouer au glic " as " to leacher ; to play at fast and loose," from which a double meaning may be gathered, as applied to the phrase in his day. "Tricon," he says, "is (at cards) that which wee now call, a Gleek of Kings, Queenes, Knaves, &c., viz., three of them in one hand together."

I hope these references may be of use to J. S. M. T. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of Cotgrave's ' Dictionary ' in this kind of inquiry. JULIAN MARSHALL.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (9 th S- i. 389).

The lines beginning

You should indeed have longer tarried By the roadside before you married are from a piece entitled 'To One Ill-mated, 'written by Walter Savage Landor, and quoted in the Edin- burgh Revieiv, July, 1869, p. 236. The writer of the article, the late Lord Houghton, states that the poem one of the very last Landor wrote was sent to the printers to be inserted in ' Heroic Idyls,' but arrived too late. The following couplet precedes that quoted above :

We all wish many things undone Which now the heart lies heavy on.

STEPHEN WHEELER.

(9 th S. iii. 109,218.)

In Tennyson's ' Amphion ' in the original versioii (edition of 1842) the following lines occurred in the fifth stanza ;

The birch-tree swung her fragrant hair,

The bramble cast her berry, The gin within the juniper

Began to make him merry.

I have heard that the poet removed the lines because they were untrue to fact, as he learnt that gin was not made from the juniper.

EDWARD E. MORRIS. The University, Melbourne.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

A Trip to Paradoxia, and other Humours of the

Hour. By T. H. S. Escott. (Greening & Co.) SEEKING to deride the inconsistencies and con tradictions of our life, social and political, Mr. Escott, to whom are owing many brilliant and faithful pictures of modern society, has employed a method not unlike that adopted by Voltaire in ' L'Ingenu.' For the Huron who is converted to Christianity, and in each step of his conversion seeks to conform to the letter of Bible teaching, Mr. Escott takes Kalogathus, a no less ingenuous visitor from the country of Hilaria, who visits Dumdum, the capital of Paradoxia, otherwise! London, the capital of England, and seeks to under- 1 stand the conditions in the midst of which we live. ! No method better than that once more adopted has j been found of satirizing what in our manners and life is illogical or absurd, and the machinery Mr. Escott employs furnishes opportunity for some humorous sketches of our social life, politics religious observances, and similar matters. Science is treated with no more respect than religion, ant the doctrine of evolution is bantered with mucl drollery. Underneath Mr. Escott's badinage w< find serious arraignment, and the shams of oui social life are treated with as much severity a; they are by Raleigh in ' The Lie.' It is in regan to politics that 'A Trip to Paradoxia 'as those wil| know who have followed Mr. Escott's previou j work, literary and journalistic, and his pictures sometimes recognizable through the diaphanou disguise, of various political celebrities will com mend itself to a large number of readers. It i with politicians, moreover, that the short sketche which form the second portion of the work ar principally occupied, and such papers as ' How th 'House of Lords Question" was Settled,' ' Hov his Party lost Mr. Contango,' 'Lord Boscobel' Garter,' and 'The Cabinet Council ' could only b written by one who was in the political swin~ Scarcely more than jeux d? esprit are the entire cor tents, which are dedicated to Lord Rosebery. The are, however, good-natured as well as diverting, an, are not unworthy of the author of ' Personal Force \ of the Period.' A pleasing portrait of Mr. Escott i prefixed to the volume.

A Neio Dictionary of the Terms, Ancient andModen of the Canting Creiv, &c. By B. E., Gent. (Smitl Kay & Co.)

WE have here a facsimile reprint of a scarce an curious book, which is the foundation of the si sequent canting dictionaries of Grose and othen The original stole, towards the close of the sever teenth century, unostentatiously into existence What personage is hidden behind the initials B. I