Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/367

 9. s. vii. MAY 4, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

359

the authors, and in the article on Whitgift signed S. L. the same statement is made. My third authority is Prof. Henry Marty n Baird, of the University of New York, who in his volume on Beza, published in 1899, gives them as authors of the 'Admonition to Parliament.' S. ARNOTT.

Ealing.

CARLYLE ON "MOSTLY FOOLS" (9 th S. vii. 108). Capt. Crowe (in 'SirLauncelot Greaves'), to the remonstrance of his nephew that all the world would think him mad, made this reply : " Mad ! What then ? I think for my part one-half of the nation is mad, and the other not very sound; I don't see why I han't as good a right to be mad as another man." Chatterton is credited with an ob- servation not unlike (Jarlyle's. There is another in Smollett ( * Ferdinand, Count Fathom ') ; and something very similar may be found, if I recollect rightly, in Aristo- phanes. In this connexion it is perhaps worthy of remark that the census was " made up " on 1 April, All Fools' Day.

THOMAS AULD.

TOAVNS WHICH HAVE CHANGED THEIR SlTES (9 th S. vii. 206, 273). I should think that the cases of towns that have changed their sites referred to by L. L. K. must oe almost in- numerable. In India alone there must be at least hundreds of such cases. The city of Delhi alone has changed its site twice, and the ruins of its former greatness cover a large extent of the neighbouring country. Among many instances in our own islands, that oi Sarum is notable. J. B. H.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o. Benenden Letter*, London, Country, and Abroad

1753-1821. Edited by Charles Frederic Hardy

(Dent & Co.)

IN presenting us with a series of letters by "a se of persons who were all more or less obscure in their day, and who have not become famous by the subsequent lapse of a century or thereabouts,' Mr. Hardy has been unduly reticent in supplying information. Benenden, in Kent, is known Iron its proximity to Hemsted Park and Cranbrook and some of its residents of whom we hear in th< book, as the Norrises and the Gybbons or Gibbons have a certain amount of position. Nothing is however, told us of the letters now published where or in whose possession are the originals and what percentage of them is published. S chary of information has the editor been, that w were for a time disposed to believe the letters ai ingenious forgery, and as we read looked out fo evidence in support of this view. They are however, genuine enough; introduce us to som

nteresting individualities, furnish us with inter- sting glimpses into domestic interiors, and have ven some historical value. The contribution by I. W. Cox has a certain Pepys-like quality, though rlr. Hardy has felt bound to excise some of the ,aivetes or crudities of speech which tend to trengthen the idea of resemblance. Against this we do not protest, the less so as the sense of the ew suppressed passages can be reached without nuch intellectual surmise. We do protest, how- ver, against a passage such as the following : ' Some passages in his letters indeed, one entire 'pistl'e, which is quite unfit for publication show low deeply he had imbibed the spirit of that >eculiar kind of gross ribaldry which disfigures Shakespeare." This is an unjust arraignment. Compared with his fellows, Shakespeare is cleanly ; ampared with his successors, he is a model of decency. The things which Mr. Hardy indicts as >ross ribaldry were not such to Elizabeth and the adies of her Court, and we have not to apply to past ages our own squeamishness concerning ' the outside of a platter which within hides as much mpurity as ever. Like Pepys, too, Cox supplies much information concerning the stage, to our knowledge of which the volume is a distinct con- Hardy having done that himself by aid of the generally trustworthy compilation of Genest.
 * ribution. We have not verified his allusions, Mr.

In reading this, as in perusing similar works, we are struck with the little influence over English society exercised by the terrible tragedy being enacted in France. William Ward, who is prac- tically the central figure, had in his later life to take refuge in France, and experienced something worse than mere inconvenience from the persecuting policy towards Englishmen adopted by Napoleon. in Valenciennes he died at the great age of ninety- three years, and with his death the book comes to an end. In his early life he was a partisan of the French Revolution. It is curious to find this Radical, who for more than the allotted span of life had lived in a Kentish village, having to cross the seas and obtain a personal experience of the working of institutions which had won his abstract admiration. Some contrasts between the acting of Garrick and that of Spranger Barry, supplied by Cox, seem satisfactory and just. The letters have much interest, and their contents throw light upon many obscure periods in the times of the Georges. They may be read, as we have tested, with constant interest, and form an agreeable addition to a class of work in which in England we are not over-rich correspondence sufficiently continuous almost to do duty tor memoirs. A facsimile of Ward's hand- writing, neat enough for copperplate, serves as a frontispiece.

The Social Lift of the Hebrews. By Rev. Edward

Day. (Nimmo.)

WHEN the first volume of this valuable "Semitic Series " appeared last year we were able to give it a cordial welcome. Coming from the capable hands of an original researcher like Prof. Sayce, it spoke with authority on the marvels of Babylonian dis- covery. We ought not to complain, perhaps, if the second issue of the series hardly attains to the same high level. Mr. Day, whose name is new to us as a writer in this branch of science, is no doubt a care- ful compiler of results already obtained. He has acquainted himself diligently with all that the most recent dictionaries of the Bible and they are