Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/307

 9*8. vii. APRIL is, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

299

To Dr. Fitzedward Hall's death we have previously referred. The section, which contains in all 2,160 words, with 7,576 illustrative quotations, supplies few words which require to be treated on an exten- sive scale. The group which occupies the greatest amount of space is land, substantive and verb, with their compounds and derivatives. These take up nine and a half pages. Lady and the related words till four pages. Attention is drawn to the fact that the pseudo-etymological statements concerning lad are refuted, though the conjecture offered in their place is owned to be doubtful. We shall have to wait to see what light, if any, is thrown by lass. We do not trace the conjunction before 1562, when we have " Lymmer lawdis and litle lassis." The main constituent elements in the English vocabulary are all represented in the present section, though in number the words of Greelc and Latin derivation preponderate. For this statement we were scarcely prepared. Short words, such as lace, lack, lad, lade, lag, lair, lank, lap, appear more frequent than in recent parts. In regard of many of these facts not accessible in other dictionaries are for the first time given. A curious recent revival is the general application of the term lackland, first employed as an equivalent of sine terra in the case of King John. Greene, in 1594, spoke of dubbing a man "Sir John lackland." Within a couple of years Cardinal Vaughan has spoken of "a lackland and beggared peer." A similar phrase, " Sir John lacklatin," is earlier in use. No employment of lacMustre earlier than Shake- speare has been traced. Under laden, past par- ticiple, we should like to have seen Shelley's " With white fire laden." In most cases in which a word is used with a literary association that makes it memorable we would have the phrase given. For scientific purposes the use may not be necessary, but science, though perhaps almost all, is not quite all. We should have thought la-di-da earlier in employment than 1883, but are probably wrong. We cannot find space for the history of lady, which, however, is interesting and striking. Have we or have we not known " lady of the mere" as a substitute for " lady of the lake "? In- stances of combinations such as lady-smock, lady's glove, applied to flowers are numerous. Lager beer seems to be first mentioned in 1853. Lakists, as applied to the Lake poets, comes into use in 1822. Many highly interesting illustrations are given under lament, lamentation. Late lamented, now in frequent use, is first used by Le Fanu in 1865. Lamia=a, fabulous monster, a witch, goes back to 1382 in the form lamya. A capital account is given of lance, a word the Latin source of which, accord- ing to Varro, was from Spain. We might go on with illustrations or instances of such, but can- not pretend to extract the contents of a page, let alone a part. So worthy of study is the work that we can but repeat a wish, unrealizable of course, that we could possess the parts in a portable form that would enable us to carry them with us on excursions. Was it not Dr. Johnson who chose an arithmetic as the proper companion for a journey ?

Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 1644-1658. Collected

and edited by Charles L. Stainer. (Frowde.) WE welcome this collection most gladly. Mr. Stainer has produced a work which has long been urgently required. Of lives of the Protector we have had in late days far more than were required ; but neither his letters nor his speeches have

received the attention which is due to them, e need not say that we do not forget Carlyle's memorable work. It is a something which can lever be displaced or become obsolete. Regarded, however, as a collection of documents, it is in- complete ; and the editing, though wonderful in its way, is hardly of a kind to meet any of the requirements of modern historical scholarship. It s tor the student, not for the lover of picturesque diction, that Mr. Stainer has laboured, and he has done his work in a most satisfactory manner. So tar, indeed, as we are able to test him, he has left out very little of importance. Those who have not worked among the records of the time, printed as well as manuscript, can form but a faint notion of how exasperatingly Cromwell's speeches have been reported. Sometimes the sense is so confused by redundancy or omission that it is next to im- possible as the words stand to make out what was the meaning the speaker intended to convey : at times the reader, if not very careful, is not unlikely to come to the conclusion that Oliver said abso- lutely the reverse of what was in his mind. The editor has done his best to remedy this confusion, and has in a great degree succeeded, though we may feel assured that we shall never recover the spoKen words absolutely as they fell on the ears of

move in that direction has, however, been made ; and as every word that has been added to the text as it has come down to us has been enclosed in brackets, the reader can never be misled by taking a conjecture of the editor for the original text. In most cases we hold that the practice of reducing the spelling of other days to the modern standard should be held in the deepest reprobation, but in this instance Mr. Stainer has acted wisely in doing so. No good end could have been served by preserving the original spelling, which is, of course, not the Protector's own, but only the hurried scribble of the reporters. We feel that the editor has been somewhat too concise in the introductions he gives to the speeches and the notes at the end of the volume ; but in a book of this kind, if it be a fault, it is an error in the right direction. A little more might have been done, with profit to the reader, in the way of identifying some of the more obscure persons with whom we are incidentally brought in contact. Who, for example, was the Major Tulida who was present and spoke at the convention of Saffron Walden, and complained of certain of Oliver's criticisms ? It is a strange name. Is any- thing further known of him ? He is quite obscure to us, unless he was the same person as the Alexander Tulidaffe who was an ensign in Lord Robartes's regiment at the beginning of the war ; if so, perhaps he may have been a Cornishman. The speeches on the whole give the impression of mild- ness, circumspection, and an earnest craving after conciliation which the great soldier's lightning-like activity on the field of battle would not have led us to look for. That the speeches show great concentration of thought and intellectual power no one will call in question, but not many will follow Mr. Stainer, we think, in regarding the Protector as " the greatest orator of his time." This collec- tion does not throw much light on what Oliver's opinions were on the subject 01 religious toleration, but those who read between the lines will probably come to the conclusion that, though never distinctly formulated perhaps not even in his own mind they were in advance of the thought of his