Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/433

 9* 8. V. MAY 26, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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threatening gesture, and that the latter start? back, as if to avoid a blow. The context if borrowed from the Sixth Satire of Juvenal who mentions the beating and even wounding of tirewomen by Roman ladies under similar circumstances. In the lines immediately preceding the passage quoted Nano says o1 Lady Would-be, when she begins to rate her attendant,

Anon, she '11 beat her women, Because her nose is red.

An actor would easily bring out the point, but Jonson is very sparing of stage-notes, most of those in the current text being supplied by Gifford.

Circumstances have prevented me from utilizing the reference to that valuable work the ' English Dialect Dictionary ' kindly furnished by MR. MAYHEW. But the fact that " bird-eyed " means near-sighted in North Lincolnshire raises an interesting point. Gifford so explained it in * The Fox,' but said nothing about the parallel passage in 'Cynthia's Revels,' where this meaning is impossible. This made me sceptical, and

g'ompted my inquiry in the pages of 'N. & Q.' ow is it that a word meaning " wild-eyed " or (if MR. ADAMS'S view is correct) " sharp- sighted " comes even in a localized use to have the meaning "near-sighted"? An explanation of this would be interesting.

PERCY SIMPSON.

' THE EVOLUTION OF EDITORS ' (9 th S. v. 166, 323). The earliest quotation given in 'H.E.D.' for " editor," as applied to one who conducts a newspaper or periodical publication, is dated 1803, and is an extract from George Rose's ' Diaries.' C. C. B. has shown that the word in this sense was much earlier used ; and in the Spirit of the Public Journals for 1799 (vol. iii. p. 67) is some elaborate ' Advice to the Editor of a Newspaper,' taken from a Paris print. Thackeray evidently thought this usage was earlier still, for in ' Esmond ' (book iii. chap, v.) he caused Swift to observe to Esmond, " I presume you are the editor of the Post-Boy, sir," to which the modest reply was given, " I am but a contributor, Doctor Swift."

C. C. B. gives some interesting information concerning the earliest "Letters to the Editor" in our present sense ; and it may be added from the Athenaeum of 6 January that William Woodfall had to intimate in the Public Advertiser for 23 Feb., 1769 :

"As a Letter flung into the Printer's House yesterday was almost trod to pieces before it was found, he takes the Liberty to remind his Corre- spondents, that a Letter Box is fixed in the window."

Up to that time three letters signed "Junius" had appeared in the Public Advertiser, and the warning is held to dispose of the legend that that writer, as a " tall gentleman, dressed in a light coat with bag and sword," afterwards threw a letter into the passage leading to the office. I would supplement this by noting that in the Gazetteer, a London daily news- paper of 1788 and 1789, there was the pro- minent announcement at the imprint, "A Letter-box at the Window."

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

The European Magazine, which purported to be under the direction of the " Philological Society of London," was " published " by J. Sewell, 32, Cornhill ; the Universal Magazine by John Hinton, at the "King's Arms," in Paternoster Row. Both serials contain letters addressed to the " editor " or " editors," from which it appears that "editor" and "pub- lisher " were used in different senses.

C. C. B.

THE FIRST BRITISH LIGHTHOUSE (9 th S. v. 186, 295). R. B R at the latter reference states that the first lifeboat was invented at South Shields by Wouldhave or Great- head in 1790. Had he taken the trouble, as I have done, of consulting the records at the Patent Office, Southampton Buildings, W.C., he would have found the following entry :

"To all to whom these presents shall come I, Lionel Lukin, of Long Acre, in the Parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, in the County of Middlesex, Coach Maker.

'Patent: 1st December, 1785. An improvement in the construction of boats and small vessels, for either sailing or rowing, which will neither overset in violent gales nor sudden gusts of wind, nor sink if they should by any accident be filled with water."

Then follows the specification. This patent was issued four years before

rreathead's alleged invention. He doubtless may have improved on the construction of the boat of his predecessor, but cannot be called the inventor.

1,/ukin died at Hythe in 1834. About three years ago I made the following copy of the nscription on his tombstone:

" This Lionel Lukin was the first who built a life- Doat, and was the original inventor of that principle of safety, by which many lives and much property lave been saved from shipwreck ; and he obtained 4 ,he King's patent in 1785/

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

THE DEVIL WALKING THROUGH ATHLONE

X 9 th S. v. 336). In Rudyard Kipling's ' Soldiers

Three ' Mul vany tells how he prevented the

lopement of his colonel's daughter, and says