Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/216

 178 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9"- s. VL SEPT. i, 1900. might have been Steele, who was certainly weak enough to do such shameful work. Have the lines under notice ever been ascribed to Steele ? Swift, of course, had given more than one handle to such grinders. The Judgment of the World by Jupiter' is an astounding production for a Churchman to write. GEORGE MARSHALL. Seftou Park, Liverpool. TEA AS A DECOCTION (9th S. vi. 87).—For the making of a " counterfeit and unlawful Tea, by dying and mixing of Sloe and other Leaves therewith, the Custom House Officers seized the Coppers and Utensils " employed for this purpose by a man at Deptford, " which being by Act of Parliament judg'd preju- dicial to the King's Revenue, as well aa the Health of his Subjects, the offender was also fined 50/. by two Justices of the Peace."—Mint's WeeUy Journal, 3 Sept., 1736. But doubtless old receipt books would pro- vide earlier instances. "Gazel-tea" is a favourite remedy for a cold in Sussex; by "gazels" is meant any kind of berries, but especially black currants (W. D. Parish, 'Glossary'). J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. A. W. CORNELIUS HALLEN (9th S. vi. 140). —Regarding the reference to MR. HALLEN, it may interest you to know that that gentle- man died at the parsonage, Alloa, on 27 March, 1899, and therefore his name would not appear in this year's 'Clergy List.' MR. HALLEN, who was sixty - five years of age, was born at the rectory. Dursley, Gloucestershire. He was educated at Gloucestershire College School ; St. Andrew's College, Harrow Weald ; and St. John's College, Cambridge. Graduated B.A. in 1858 and M.A. in 1860. In the latter year he was appointed curate of St. James's Episcopal Church, Leith, and in 1862 became incumbent of St. John's Episcopal Church, Alloa, a charge which he resigned a few weeks before his death. He transcribed and published the ' Registers of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate' (3 vols., 1889-95), and, with the Rev. J. M. S. Brooke, those of the united parishes of St. Mary Wool- noth and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw (1886). EDWARD M. BORRAJO. THE MOUSE, ISAIAH LXVI. 17 (9th S. v. 165, 446. 487).—One would like to hear more definitely as to the mouse in Egypt. What was its name 1 We have been treated lately to a primitive " Mr. Smith" in Egypt, probably a brewer, and it is said that Smithis was a form of Hathor. The very similar word Smintheus is found in Homer as an appellative of Apollo, and derived from Srainthos, a mouse, in Crete ; but Crete is not Greece or Egypt, and its earliest autoch- thones are yet unclassed. It does seem possible that, dropping the n, Smithis and Smintheus may have a common origin. We are referred, very indefinitely, to o-fidta, o-/iTJTai, " to wipe or cleanse." How then about the n, primitive or intruded ? Can we appeal to Dr. Petrie 1 A. HALL. Allow me to refer your correspondent to Herodotus, book ii. ch. cxli., and for the opinion of commentators upon the subject to 'Notes on Herodotus,' by Dawson Turner, p. 153, who quotes from Creuzer; Rawlin- son's ' Herodotus,' vol. ii. p. 189 ; Blakesley's ' Herodotus,' vol. i. p. 273. The mouse is well known to be a prolific as well as a destructive little animal. These works, published nearly half a century since, may probably not be up to date, and Egyptology was not then studied as it is now. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. Pictures of the Old French Court. By Catherine Bearne. (Fisher Unwin.) MRS. BEARNE'S sketches of the lives of Jeanne de Bourbon, Isabeau de Baviere, and Anne de Bre- tagne constitute a companion volume to the ' Lives and Times of the Early Valois Queens' of the same author, for which see 9th S. iii. 278. The difficulties besetting the writer in her first volume have not been overcome ; the various queens remain, fortu- nately in some cases, butshadows. The chief interest is still found in the picture of the disorganized con- dition of France during, perhaps, the most gloomy portion of her annals, and in the designs by Mr. Bearne of historic chdieaux, costumes, and so forth, | which are excellent as before. Special attention may be drawn to the views of the Chateau of Amboise, one of which serves as frontispiece, and of Loches, I one of the most picturesque spots in France, almost [ unknown to every place of „ fully shuns this. Licentious as the French Cour showed itself through centuries, life therein cannr-' have been much worse at any period than it —' during the time of Isabeau de Baviere, the ^ of Charles VI. Isabeau's relations with her,, hus- band's brother were prolonged and shameless. Mrs. Bearne, however, glides lightly over/ such matters, though she does not entirely /'ignore them, and the perusal of her work imfed not offend the most scrupulous. The character of Isabeau as she appeared in 1383, dnijfc-n by M. Vallet de ViriVille as a young girl "ujiii rayounait d'innocence : telle elle etait sortte'tles mains de I'univerael auteur," is valueless,-the girl being at this time only twelve years of *fee. Mrs. Bearne a own description is black, but Mardly black enough for a woman whose life w>as so shametul in itself and so tragic for her country. Isabeau is described as "inordinately vain, selfish, capricious, too shallow either reallv to love or hate, to the English traveller, who, visiting e of interest in the neighbourhood, care-j