Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/330

 388 [9lh S. IV. Nov. 4, '99. NOTES AND QUERIES. date of this building has been assigned to the latter part of the twelfth century. Also in the late Norman keep of Middleham Castle, Yorkshire, the shafts of the fireplaces, though much broken, still rise clear of the roof. In a view of the southern Jews' house in Lincoln, in my possession, dated 1780, the chimney over the door is continued upwards from the wall nearly as high as the crest of the roof. For the first half of its career it is square, then gabled, and it ends in a circular embattled shaft, much resembling that already mentioned on Pottergate Arch. E. Mansel Sympson. Deloraine Court, Lincoln. Clerks of the Board of Green Cloth (9th S. iv. 329).—A list of these officials will be found in Chamberlayne's 'Ang. Not.' for the period mentioned. All the MS. records of the Board of Green Cloth are located (so I am told) in Buckingham Palace with the papers of the office of Lord Steward of the Household. I would ask, Why are not these records (most valuable, and containing very much useful information) transferred to the custody of the Public Record Office, as have been those of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, where they could be consulted by the public? In their present depository they are quite inac- cessible to the public. C. Mason. 29, Emperor's Gate, S. W. D. will find the information he, seeks in Beaton's ' Political Index,' third edition, pub- lished by Longman, Hurst, Kees & Orme, 1806, in three vols. To the first of these volumes is added a supplement containing ' An Account of the Offices which were sup- pressed by Act of Parliament in the Year 1782.' The second item in this list is headed " Clerks of the Board of Green Cloth." Richard Welford. A "Skimmington " (9th S. iv. 287) is defined in the ' Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' of your late lamented contributor the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer. Q. V. The meaning of this word is fully ex- plained in Nares's ' Glossary,' Halliwell's Dictionary,' and in the 'English Glossary,' by the Rev. T. L. O. Davies, who gives the reference to its use by Horace Walpole. See a'.so'N. & Q./S'^S. iv. 451; 4th S. xi. 156 225,331,455 ; xii. 17. Everard Home Coleman. 71, Brecknock Road. [Other replies are acknowledged.] UltswIIaiuflus NOTES ON BOOKS, *c. Etienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance, 1508- 154G. By Richard Copley Christie. (Macmillan & Co.) With signal pleasure we welcome a reissue of Mr. Christie's admirable biography of Etienne Dolet, in many respects the most important contribution to a knowledge of French history and literature that has been made by an Englishman. Not in the least extravagant is the praise bestowed. We know the value to be attached to works such as, say, the ' Voltaire' of Mr. Morley. Mr. Christie is, how- ever, a discoverer as well as a critic, a biographer, and a historian. No pioneer had gone before him and made clear the way. Next to nothing was known in France concerning Dolet when Mr. Christie—attracted to the subject by bibliographical zeal as much as by interest in Renaissance times and in the associates of Rabelais and Marot—took him in hand. By dint of researches more assiduous and thoroughgoing than an Englishman is often capable of making, or permitted to make, he, so to speak, reconstructed the man, and made him one of the most distinct, recognizable, and interesting— though not, perhaps, one of the most heroical— figures of Renaissance times. Nineteen years have elapsed since the first apjiearance of a book that was accepted with acclamation by European scholar- ship, and thirteen since that of a French translation by Prof. Casimir Stryienski (see 7th S. ii. 159), with additions and revisions. These emendations con- stitute the basis of the second English edition now published. Mr. Christie has never, since the pub- lication of the original work, drawn breath in his task of accumulating further materials. Value will always be attached to the original edition. For scholarly purposes the new edition is, however, superior. We have not now to treat the work as a novelty, and most that needs to be said concerning enlargement and additional information has been said A propox of the translation. Something might yet, perhaps, be added as to the effect of Dolet in preparing the way for the libertim of the following century. Mr. Christie has established that the bloodthirsty execution of Dolet was due to his free- thinking, and not, as some French writers have vainly striven to maintain, to his sympathy with the reformed religion. Twenty years after the execution of Dolet, Aonius Palearius, the author of a poem ' De Animorum Immortalitate,' who is not known to have been a Huguenot, was burnt as a heretic in Rome, as was Geoffroy Vallee in 1574 at the Place de Greve for a poem published in his seventeenth year, entitled ' La Beatitude des Chretiens, ou le Fleau de la Foy.' We may not, of course, open out a question of this importance. Equally remarkable are the pictures Mr. Christie presents of the humanists of France and of the great centres of French thought and activity. To those not already familiar with the work we specially commend the chapter on Toulouse, one of the fairest-seated cities of Francfr, and, in the sixteenth century, one of the bloodthirstiest, where the students of its great university contended for the privilege of massacring heretics, and then, with a careful eye to the stocking-foot, demanded Iiayment for their infamous task, and that, again, on ^yons, the second city in France for literary activity, and perhaps at one time the first in turbulence.