Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/190

 156 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9» s. vi. A™. 25, woa. way, still in use and most expressive. Blis- chert, as the source of both, may seem a long shot; but to any one who sees the strange form in which some foreign wines were, and are, known in this country, it is by no means unlikely. GEORGE MARSHALL. Sefton Park, Liverpool. DANIEL DEFOE (9th S. v. 285, 483).—With regard to this matter I may mention that I have on my shelves 'Hours in a Library,' three volumes, London, 1874 ; and 'Defoe,' by W. Minto (" English Men of Letters Series," edited by John Morley). I am fully ac- quainted with the essays of Leslie Stephen and of Prof. Masson on the works of the author of the amazingly clever burlesque, ' Short Way with the Dissenters,' yet I think it not too much to say, in spite of Defoe's critics, that no book has been more generally admired than 'Robinson Crusoe.' No person, as Samuel Johnson remarked, ever laid it down without wishing it longer ; and, more- over, no story has ever been written that has given so much pleasure for over 170 years to the boys, old and young, of Europe as the allegorical story called by the great friend and biographer of Charles Dickens " the romance of solitude and self-sustainmont, [which] could only so perfectly have been written by a man whose own life had for the most part been passed in the independence of unaided thought, accustomed to great reverses, and of inexhaustible resources in confronting calamities." Perhaps the following lines by Wentwortl Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, the friend o! Dryden and the admirer of Milton, may noi be inappropriate on this occasion :— On sure foundations let your fabric rise, And with attractive majesty surprise; Not by affected, meretricious arts, But strict harmonious symmetry of parts, Which through the whole insensibly must pass, With vital heat to animate the mass; A pure, an active, an auspicious flame, And bright as heaven, from whence the blessini came. HENRY GERALD HOPE. Clapham, S.W. The recent Guildhall Exhibition had picture, No. 84, of Defoe in the pillory a Temple Bar. The houses may be true enough and Temple Bar exactly as we saw it, bu in Defoe's time it had three tall iron spike with traitors' heads on the top of them. E. L. G. 1 TOM BOWLING ' (9th S. v. 474; vi. 15).— Without going into the question of th meaning of the line Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, it may be of interest to note the origina itle of this well-known song. I have a olume of Dibdin's compositions, most of • hii'h are signed by him, in which this one ppears. It is entitled as follows :— " Poor Tom, or the Sailor's Epitaph. Written nd composed by Mr. Uibdin for his entertainment ailed The Oddities. London, Printed and Sold by lie Author at his Music Warehouse, No. 411 itrand, opposite the Adelphi. Pr. 1«." The last lines of the last two verses are, espectively:— For Tom it gone aloft and His soul /- gone aloft. !"he usual rendering now is "has." 'The Dddities' was produced at the Lyceum in 788-9. E. E. NEWTON. 7, Achilles Road, West Hampatead. Permit me to endorse MR. H. INGLEBY'S opinion that sheer is used in its ordinary sense. In the earliest editions of the song and the rhytntnical accent seems to settle In- question beyond doubt. E. RlMBAULT DlBDIN. CATALOGUE OF FIRST BOOK AUCTION IN ENGLAND (2nd S. xi. 463; 6th S. xii. 95, 211, 411 : 6th S. ii. 297, 417 ; 9th S. vi. 86).—If MR. McGovERN had consulted the Indexes of ' N. & Q.' I think he would have seen that the newspaper cutting did not contain any new information which could justify its transference in extenso to its pages. A note of the sale of a scarce book or pamphlet, and the price at which it changed hands, is always of interest; but to quote half a dozen as probably the number of copies of Seaman's catalogue extant must surely be a guess; and to say that this is the first occasion on which a copy has occurred for sale is a mistake, as I have one in my collection of early catalogues, which I see I purchased (with others for one guinea) in 1875, but have not any note of having met with a copy for sale since. A copy is also shown in the King's Library, British Museum, as a ? Cata- logue of the First Sale of Books by Auction in England.' As to MR. McGovERN's closing query, as the catalogue in question was not a book- seller's it can hardly be called the first of that class. GEORGE POTTER. 10, Priestwood Mansions, Archway Road, N. I do not think this is so rare as your corre- spondent imagines. There has been a copy exhibited in the King's Library, British Museum (near the Tapling stamps), for a long time. A second copy is in the hands of one of my friends, C, DAVIES
 * here is no hyphen between sheer and hulk,