Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/490

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

. m. JUNE 24, m

word * sallet' was born to do me good : for many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill ; and many a time, when I have been dry and bravely marching, it hath served me instead of a quart pot to drink in ; and now the word ' sallet' must serve me to feed on."

KlLLIGREW.

SYCOPHANT. In a recent article in one of the newspapers (I forget which) on the late Dean Liddell it was stated that there was one joke in Liddell and Scott's ' Greek Lexi- con ' : that, in mentioning the pretty story about the origin of this word, or rather of its Greek equivalent, this is called a figment, the fact being that the word in question is never found in the sense of an informer, though supposed to apply to one who informed against persons who were the means of Attic figs being sold for exportation. Allow me to point out if this were a fig I should be a sycophant in the strictest sense that the expression is altered in the seventh edition of Liddell and Scott, and "invention" sub- stituted for " figment." Probably the authors came to the conclusion either that the intro- duction of the latter word was a bad joke or that a joke of any kind was not appropriate in a lexicon. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

ANECDOTE OF ARCHBISHOP BLACKEURNE. The Kev. John Lambe, of Clare Hall, Camb., M.A., rector of Ridley, co. Kent, has recorded (c. 1724) in one of his interesting MS. note- books, now in my possession, the following curious contemporary anecdote, which has probably not hitherto appeared in print :

"The present A.B. [=Archbishop] of York, Dr. Blackbourn, was translated thither from Exeter (Vir pb flagitia, Impudicitiae & Adulteriorum Spurcitiem, etiam a vulgo notatus) : before he left that Diocess, after he was nominated to York, he went down to visit it, for reasons of his own. The

g readier of the Visitation Sermon, at which the ishop was present, discoursed upon this text, Revel, xii. 12, latter part (y e Epis Michaels Day [in opposite margin]). The Devil is come down unto you, having great Wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."

This Dr. Lancelot Blackburne, born 1658, who has been described as a "jolly old bishop," was gay and witty, and of manners very free. He was during his lifetime the subject of various reports injurious to his reputation, and was in 1702 forced to resign his sub-deanery of Exeter being, however, subsequently reinstated. Thenceforward his rise was rapid. He became Bishop of Exeter in January, 1717, and so continued until his translation to York in 1724, which prefer- ment he obtained, according to the scandal of the time, for having married George I. to

his mistress the Duchess of Munster. He died 1743. From a poem published in folio that year, entitled * Priestcraft and Lust ; or, Lancelot to his Ladies, an Epistle from the Shades,' one may learn the then popular opinion of the character of this infamous pre- late's life. W. I. R. V.

TENNYSON'S ' AMPHION.' (See 9 th S. iii. 109, 218, 458.)

The gin within the juniper Began to make him merry.

We are told at the last reference that Tenny- son has been said to have cut out these lines from his poem because they are untrue to fact. It is the fact, however, that gin is made from juniper, in the sense that its dis- tinctive character and flavour are due to juniper, when not to turpentine or some other substitute. The juniper flavour is strongest, I believe, in Hollands gin, or Schiedam, which is much in demand as a diuretic. Juniper itself is strongly diuretic, and its essential oil is official in our Materia Medica. It should be distilled from the berries, but an oil obtained from the wood is frequently substituted. It is hardly neces- sary to say that the word " gin " is an abbre- viation of Geneva, a corruption of the Fr. genevre juniper. A better reason for the omission of the lines from Tennyson's poem is that they are too absurd even for such a light, fantastic effusion. C. C. B.

LEGHORN. Canon Taylor, in his 'Names and their Histories,' describes this as "an English sailors' corruption of Livorno, the Portus Liburnus of the Romans." In his preface he again alleges that it is " neither Latin, French, nor native, but distinctly Anglican." This is incorrect. So long ago as 1854, Rear- Admiral Smyth, in his book 'The Mediterranean,' p. 331, showed that the English form of this name was derived from Greek and Italian spellings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : Greek Legorno, Italian Ligorno, &c. JAMES PLATT, Jun.

PEACOCKS' FEATHERS AND MAY DAY. On 1 May last I saw in South Kensington a dustcart, the horse of which was rather elaborately decorated. Its most conspicuous ornament was a crest of a very Oriental character. The upper portion was shaped like a fat pear, stalk upwards, or like an in- verted heart, from either side of the base of which descended segments of circles. Per- haps the best idea which it is possible to convey, without a diagram, is to compare the design to an ace of clubs, with the upper leaf of the trefoil shaped like a spade. There was