Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/141

 9'-8.v.FEB.i7,i900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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York) accompanied by the organ, which was reserved for ceremonial uses. We learn this not only from Mace, but also from Pepys, who had never heard the effect of an organ with the congregational singing even seven years after the Restoration, and went specially to Hackney to hear this extraordinary novelty. Their testimony is undeniable.

ME. CUMMINGS would not answer me in the matter of " German singing-ornamentation "; he will find on reference that I did not discuss it, though I incidentally mentioned the survival of the word Coloratur in vocal music. I spoke of the German florid organ- playing, and the Italian and English florid singing. He has apparently not yet examined the reference I gave him (' Harleian Miscel- lany,' x. 191) concerning organs in taverns. I lay no great stress on it, in spite of the recorded preservation of the organ of Rochester Cathedral in a Greenwich tavern. As a practical organist, he knows (perhaps W. C. B. does not know) that an organ is not "destroyed "by being "pulled down." Witness the organ of Magdalen College, which was pulled down during the Commonwealth, set up by Cromwell's command in Hampton Court, pulled down again after the Restora- tion, set up in the college once more, pulled down a third time in 1737, and set up in Tewkesbury Abbey ; and it is riot destroyed even now.

The lists of music published during the reign of Charles I. and the Commonwealth may be seen in my ' History of English Music,' pp. 263, 274-6 ; cf. Burney's 'History of Music/ iii. 402-21. I may also recommend to MR; CUMMINGS'S notice Freeman's * Exe- ter ' and Kitchin's ' Winchester ' (in the " His- toric Towns" series), which will show him how little Ryves's 'Mercurius Rusticus' is to be depended on.

The allusion to Exeter in my list of organs really destroyed should be corrected by Free- man's * Exeter,' p. 208 ; for Durham Cathedral, see this month's Musical Times, p. 86.

As this discussion has lasted several months and is getting into technical matters, I sug- gest that it should be adjourned to one of the meetings of the Musical Association ; in any case, I shall soon exhibit there specimens of organ accompaniments from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. Some will be taken from the Mulliner MS.

I have more to say concerning Cromwell, but it does not touch specifically upon 4 Crom- well and Music.' I therefore at present simply reaffirm all my original communication (9 th S. iii. 341), as I cannot see that either W. C. B. or MR. CUMMINGS has succeeded in

shaking a single point which I advanced therein.

Should MR. CUMMINGS continue the dis- cussion, I ask him to quote me accurately.

H. DAVEY.

THE ENGLISH MILE (9 th S. iv. 497). The English statute mile was defined by an Act passed in the thirty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, as consisting of "8 furlongs of 40 perches of 16^ feet each = 1,760 yards of 3 ^Eeet each." Why this particular measure- ment should have been chosen I cannot say. However, it is clear that the anomalies that prevailed before the passing of the Act made its acceptance general at once, to say nothing of the legal obligation, which was very severe in Tudor times. The earliest reference in contemporary literature which I have been able to find to the subject is in an extremely curious book entitled ' A Concordancie of Yeares,' by Arthur Hopton, gentleman, who was the Whitaker of his time. In the edition enlarged by lohn Penkethman, and published in 1635, I read as follows, p. 165 :

" Also an English mile is 8 furlong, 88 scores, 320 searches, 1056 paces, 1408 elles, 1760 yards, 5280 feet, 63360 inches, 190080 Barley cornea, as you may see more at large in my Geodeticall Staffe, lib. 2."

These are Hopton's own words, for he is the author of the book named, which was printed in 1610, and " dedicated to the right honourable the Lord Treasurer," as he himself tells us in the volume from which I have quoted. His * Concordancie ' was given to the press five years later, with a dedica- tion to "The right honourable, Sir Edward Coke, Knight, Lord Chiefe lustice of England," and commendatory Latin verses by Robert Broughton and the famous John Selden, both members of the Society of the Inner Temple. Broughton's verses, twelve in number, are acrostic ("Arthur Hopton"), and very well describe the character of the book. But Selden's fourteen lines furnish the most convincing proof of the pedantry of the age that I have ever seen, and show him to be the most pedantic of pedants. There is nothing comparable to them, even in Robert Burtons 'Anatomy,' and that is saying a good deal. They fill three pages, four lines on the first, two on the second, and eight on the third, and are buried in a mass of notes in very small type, with innumerable refer- ences in the margin, ranging from the Homeric Batrachomyomachia' to Carnden's ' Britan- nia.' It isari extraordinary production, but very characteristic of that wonderful period. It reminds us of certain editions of the classics published in the early part of the seven- teenth century, wherein it is almost difficult