Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/428

 468 [9" S. IV. Dec. 2, '99. NOTES AND QUERIES. lectors. The shaft was then seventy-five feet below water-mark. Father Thames, we pre- sume, had not kept his agreement not to weep tears into it at that level. Rennie and Jessop reported in favour of its being sunk another seventy feet. On 10 Oct., 1802, a fire destroyed the engine-house ; Dodd reported a resump- tion of work in December, but the thing was evidently hopeless. Meetings were called and adjourned "as before"; and the last word was a note made by one of the com- mittee : " Total cost of Well! 15,242^. 10s. 4£d" One curious result may be mentioned. There was in the neighbourhood a pond which sub- sided at high water, and filled as the tide ebbed from a syphon in the bed of the stream. The chalk, &c, excavated was flung into this pond, with the result that it choked the supply, and the pond disappeared. Dodd was a man of ideas—and of ideas only. He lived to propose a canal from Gravesend to Strood, and an " improvement of the Port of London," both of which came to nothing. His son, George, was once supposed to be the designer of Waterloo Bridge. Both father and son died in absolute want. George Marshall. Sefton Park, Liverpool. In Timbs's 'Curiosities of London' it is recorded that " in 1799 an attempt was made to construct an arch- way under the Thames, from Gravesend to Tilbury, by Ralph Dodd, engineer ; and in 1804 the 'Thames Archway Company commenced similar work from Rotherhithe to Limehouse, under the direction of Vasey and Trevethick, two Cornish miners ; and the horizontal excavation had reached 1,040 feet when the ground broke in under the pressure of high tides, and the work was abandoned, fifty - four engineers declaring it to be impracticable to make a tunnel under the Thames of any useful size for commercial progression." Rich. Welford. [Other similar replies acknowledged.] Alphabetic Apophthegms (9th S. iv. 224). —In quoting Pushkin's quaint little dwarf play Mr. Marchant remarks that "it is hard to sec why Pushkin calls his comical little piece a tragedy." Is it not because he makes believe to treat things au grand se'rieux 1 Comical the play may seem to us who are behind the scenes and in the poet's confidence, but to the poor abbe it was no laughing matter, and as he shot downwards in his involuntary flight from window to Eavement it must have flashed upon the rain (so soon to be scattered) of the luckless man " of letters" that a tragedy in very sooth was being performed — himself the victim. It seems a fair inference to draw that the prince's command to the guards to seize the abbe and pitch him out of window was carried out with fatal result. H. E. M. St. Petersburg. " Heer-breeads " (9th S. iv. 417).—The word in use here is ear-breeds. Its origin I cannot ascertain, but the word is in common use in the sense given in Mr. Mayhew's note. The side-bars of the cart-bottom, on which the ear-breeds rest, are termed "soles." Similar bars, to give additional strength, are some- times placed lengthwise under the cart- bottom, and these are called " middle-trees." C. C. B. Epworth. NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. The Eve of the Reformation. By Francis Aidan Gasquet, D.D., O.S.B. (Nimmo.) The present book of Dr. Gasquet is a further out- come of the studies to which we owe his popular work ' Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries.' Writing as a Roman Catholic, Dr. Gasquet seeks to establish that the Reformation was, so to speak, superimposed upon the English public, and was not the outcome of any national and spon- taneous uprising on their part against ecclesiastical assumption, monastic misrule, and Papal preten- sion. A work with such aim must necessarily challenge controversy at every point. It is only because Dr. Gasquet, although one of the most earnest of advocates, is also one of the most courteous of disputants that we dare deal at all with sub- jects that threaten a prolonged polemic. Our author is, however, an admirable controversialist. What he himself says is unaggressively said; he fortifies himself with the utterances of such unim- peachable authorities as Dr. James Gairdner and the late J. S. Brewer; and when he wishes, as occasionally is the case, to hit hard, he does so not in his own language, but in that of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. It is superfluous to say that we in these later days are in a position to know more concerning the springs of the Reformation than were Burnet and Strype. The Record Office has poured a flood of light upon the condition of England in Tudor times. Other illumination breaks upon us from Simancas and elsewhere. Not yet, even, are we sure that we have anything approach- ing the date that our successors may possess. Le mteux ext Vennemi du bien, and the present genera- tion may not wait for information or conjecture concerning the Reformation until it is sure that all available sources have been laid under con- tribution. Though forming a congruous whole, separate chapters of Dr. Gasquet's work stand by themselves. In the case of some, moreover, we may take exception to conclusions without appearing to write as partisans of different views. Dr. Gasquet is particularly anxious to separate Erasmus from the party of the Reformers. This is easy enough as regards matters of dogma. These appear to have exercised little influence upon the great Dutch thinker, and it is probable that he would have accepted without flinching most things that thq
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