Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/581

. vi. DEO. 22, i90o.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 481 LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER it, 1300. CONTENTS.-No. 156. NOTES:—Lamb Jottings, 481—Walpole and hit Bdltora, 483 —Antiquity of College Gardens, 1st—Transliteration of Two Foreign Names — Bibliography of Christmas — "Penseroso," 488 — "Grudge" : "To Grudge "—Origin of Current Phrases — "English-speaking"— "Sonties," 48« — "Accredit"— Buller Pedigree — De Quinoey and •Aladdin,' 487. QUKHIBS:-" Crying 'notohell'" — Chain -mail in the British Army — Authorship of Lines —Mile Bad Gate Pottery—"Thamp" — 'Essence of Malone,' 488—Quota- tions— Wyvill Baronetcy—"Saint" or " St."—Waverley Identification — Reference Wanted — Miss Martineau B •Guide to the Lakes'—Old Olocks-Usk Castle-Achill Island, 489 — Hatton Charters—Abbott, M.P.—Sir John Warren—Swans—Qascogne —Cross and Brooke—" Phllo- scriblerius," 490. REPLIES :—Arnold of Hugby — Nursery Rimes, 491—Ser- jeant Hawkins—Corpse on Shipboard—Haydon's Pictures —••Getting up early" —"Hurtling" —"Khaki"—Mar- garet of Bourbon—Hulsh, 493—"Lanted ale "—•' Smous" —The Uphill Zigzag—Independent Company of Invalids, 493—" Gallimaufry "—Fiction or History ?—Winstanley— H. S. Ashbee, 494—"Lig-dewes,"—Little London—Mar- garet of Bavaria—Max MUller and Westminster Abbey— William Morris as a Man of Business, 495—Worcestershire Folk-lore—Grace Church — Double Consonants—General Sir John Cope—Mediaeval Tithe Barns—"Butty," 49«— Pitched Battle—Coat of Arms—" Hattock " —" Purcbaces " — " Khaki" as a Party Nickname—Hewlt or Hewitt, 497— "Pawky" — Lincoln House, Holborn — "Irenesse-bag," 498—Authors Wanted, 499. NOTES ON BOOKS:—Lady Dllke's 'French Architects and Sculptors of the Eighteenth Century*—• Extracts from Registers of High Halden, Kent'—Llnton's • Flora of Bournemouth'—'Collections of Books In Lancashire and Cheshire.' Notices to Correspondents. SOME LAMB JOTTINGS. Now that Canon Ainger's great edition has been completed, and judgment has been given in the Quarterly, perhaps an oaten pipe may be allowed to interlude. The critic pronounces the edition "prac- tically final. Alas! in this matter there seems no such thing as finality. Canon Ainger's latest edition gives 446 letters, but there are at least 570 in print whose chrono- logical order may be fixed with some approach to certainty. However unimportant some of the omitted letters may be as literature, they all have their value as biographical material. The addition of a list of published letters which it was not practicable to include in this edition would nave been a great assist- ance to students. The only complaint the Quarterly makes is the truncated condition of the notes on the 1 Dramatic Specimens." For this the editor could easily defend himself. To a rather excessive distrust of Lamb's voracity I have previously called attention in your columns (ante, p. 85). May I venture to add two minor points 1 The great difference between the type of the author's text and that of his quotations exaggerates a grievance which at east all readers of advanced age must feel too common ; and the reproduction of the old sub-titles of the volumes from the previous editions in fewer volumes detracts from the jeneral effect. Why label a volume " Mrs. Leicester's School, &c.," when it contains no >art of that work? And in a 'Life and forks' why should the Life be labelled Charles Lamb' because a volume of bio- graphy in a totally different series bore that itlet A matter more important from the editorial joint of view is the chronological arrange- nent of the letters. The Quarterly critic gives proper credit for the care taken to weave in the documents formerly relegated jy necessity to the notes. (In the alteration of the notes some slips occur, however.) But 1 ii TI• is still evidence that a faithful under- strapper might have been useful. It can only 3e due to a Homeric nod that the Canon places Letter No. 376 (to Elton) in 1829, when it is dated from the India House, which Lamb left in 1825. In placing No. 37 (to R. Lloyd) in 1798 he follows Mr. Lucas, from whose 1 Charles Lam b and the Lloyds' it is reprinted. But the reference to Lamb's parents as both dead proves that it must be subsequent to April, 1799, when John Lamb the elder was buried. When Lamb writes to Howard Payne (No. 221). " I saw it [' AH Pacha'] last night— the third night," it is easy to see by the theatrical advertisements in the Times that he must be writing on 23 October, 1822, not "November," as printed. The arrangement of other letters to Howard Payne, and of some of those to the Lloyds, requires reconsidera- tion, and will, it may be hoped, receive it before Mr. Lucas publishes his intended combination of Life and Letters (see Athenaeum, 25 March, 1899). The first pair of letters to Manning (Nos. 51 and 52) suffer seriously by being transposed. So do Nos. 17 and 18 to Coleridge, where "last night's epistle " must be looked for after, instead of before, No. 17. There are other instances, which I do not mention, as the evidence is internal, and might be disputed. Wherever Lamb annotates his own letters (as he sometimes does), his notes fail to appear in this edition, as they failed in that of 1888. See, for instance, No. 80 to Manning. As to omitted letters, one cannot but wonder why that of 17 December, 1799, to Robert Lloyd, given in ' Charles Lamb and the Lloyds (pp. 106-109), has been left out The omission of others printed there which are mere bundles of verbal comment, wrung out to order and unintelligible without the