Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/66

 58

NOTES AND QUERIES.

s. v. JAN. 20, im

HEBB himself was long one of the greatest ornaments. I confess never to have dreamt that so ambitious and aggressive a body as the Council in question would be content with a site so small as that of Wigley'a Rooms, and I do not contest the statement that the multitudinous officials who look after every- body's business there are partly accommodated on the site of Berkeley House. Nevertheless, as an authority, I prefer the contemporary woodcut to which I alluded to the Hon. Grantley T. Berkeley's rickety recollections, as set forth in the ' Life ' named by MR. HEBB.

F. G. S.

ENGLISH TRAVELLERS IN SAVOY (9 th S. iv. 537). Many English works relating to Savoy are mentioned in the ' Bibliographic Nationale Suisse' (fascicule iii., 'Recits de Voyages'), compiled by A. Woeber, and published by K. J. Wyss at Berne, 1899, a considerable contribution to the bibliography of travel in Switzerland and neighbouring countries. The Catalogue of the Library of the Alpine Club (23, Savile Row, London, W.) might also be consulted. H. C.

The 'Saggio di una Bibliografia Ragionata dei Viaggi e delle Descrizioni d' Italia e dei Costumi Italiani in Lingue Straniere,' ap- pended to Prof. D'Ancona's edition of Mon- taigne's journal of his travels in Italy (published at Citta di Castello), might be con- sulted. It, however, only contains books before 1815. The edition of D'Ancona's book which I have is that of 1889, but a second edition has been published. R N.

" WITCHELT "^ILL-SHOD (9 fch S. v. 9). I strongly suspect that there is a regular muddle as to this supposed use. Surely the word referred to is the perfectly common word often pronounced nearly as wetchud, though it really should be wet-shod, i. e., wet- in the feet, well known in Lancashire and Yorkshire. In Shropshire it is wetchet, and in Oxfordshire watcherd. Wet-shod occurs in in our Bibles, Isaiah xi. 15.
 * Piers Plowman,' C. xxi. 1 ; and dry-shod is

WALTER W. SKEAT.

This is apparently a form of ivet-shod=web in the feet, which is very common all over the Midland counties as wetched. A child paddling about in boggy places will say, "It won't hurt me, I 've got good boots on ; I shan't get wetched" C. C. B.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (9 th S. iv. 499).

His time a moment, and a point his space. Pope, ' Essay on Man,' Epistle J. line 72. E. YARDLEY.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o. The Complete Works of John Gower. Edited by

G. C. Macaulay, M.A. Vol. I. The French Works.

(Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

NOTHING was further from our expectations than a complete edition of the works of John Gower "Moral" Gower, as he is called by Chaucer; " Ancient" Gower, as he is styled by Shakespeare. So well known are the shortcomings of the only available edition of the ' Confessio Amantis ' that we were prepared for the appearance of an autho- ritative text. Such alone was, indeed, meditated by Mr. Macaulay when he first approached the Delegate's of the Oxford University Press. To them is due the extension of the scheme by which we are to receive, in four volumes, the entire works, in Eng- lish, French, and Latin, of the grave and worthy, if not too plenarily inspired, poet whose remains repose in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the north aisle of the nave of the church of St. Mary Overies. That such an edition is now in course of publication adds one more to the claims on our gratitude of that noble and spirited corporation the Oxford University Press, to which philology, history, and other branches of scholarship are under equal obligation. In the monument to Gower in St. Mary Overies the effigies of the poet has the head resting upon three works the ' Speculum Meditantis,' the ' Vox Clamantis,' and the ' Confessio Amantis.' Of these works the last, which was printed by Caxton, and again by Berthelet, is well known. ' Vox Clamantis,' which treats of the servile insurrection in Kent, is a Latin elegiacal poem in seven books, in which Gower describes himself as " senex et coecus." It was printed in 1850 by H. 0. Coxe for the Roxburghe Club from the fine MS. in the library of All Souls' College, Oxford. The ' Speculum Meditantis,' mean- while, has long been regarded as lost. Grower's latest biographer, Mr. Sidney Lee, declares, so late as 1890, that it " has disappeared and left no trace." This work, originally called 'Speculum Hominis,' Mr. Macaulay has recognized in the ' Mirour de I'Omme,' upon which he came during his researches among the Cambridge MSS. That he is right in his judgment that the two works are the same there is no reason to doubt, and no controversy on the point is to be expected. This recovery of a mislaid treasure of literature for such, in a sense, the book is is a subject of congratulation. Not quite perfect is the MS., five opening leaves, com- prising, it is supposed, 564 lines, having been cut out. A few leaves are also wanting from the end, and there are other shortcomings. These deficiencies are to be deplored, though the reader who misses a few hundred lines from a poem extending to some thirty thousand may be congratulated upon his appetite. Now that the title under which the book appeared is known it is possible that other MSS., filling up the /cu-nnw, may be traced. " Mirrors " were common in mediaeval literature : see the ' Miroir de lame,' the 'Mirouer de lame Pecheresse,' the ' Mirouer des Femmes Vertueusos,' the ' Miroir du Temps,' and many others before we come to our own ' Mirour for Magistrates.' The work is a species of religious allegory concerning Sin and its offspring, the influence of these latter upon various classes of human beings, and the manner in which man is to be reconciled to his Maker. Mr. Macaulay fails,