Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/402

 394

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VIL MAY is, 1901.

m'ent of decapitation by that instrument : to suffer it is " to be guillotined."

2. It was not the first, but the fourtfi Earl of Sandwich who invented those compendious compounds of bread and meat ever since called after him, in order, it is said, that he might be able to continue gambling without leaving off for meals. The first earl (Edward Montagu), after fighting on the Parliament side in the Civil War, took an active part in the Restoration, and was made Earl of Sand- wich by Charles II. The fourth (John Mon- tagu) was twice First Lord of the Admiralty, his second term (unfortunately for the coun- try) lasting eleven years, from 1771 to 1782.

W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

To ballhornize.

" We stumbled somewhere lately on the phrase 'der verballhornte Palast Pitti ' applied to the royal edifices lately erected at Munich. We ascribed it to our incapacity to grapple with German idiom, that we were altogether unable to guess what a Ball- horned Pitti Palace meant. However, by a fortunate chance, that page of the ' Conversations-Lexicon ' which immortalizes the name of Ballhorn opened before us to solve the difficulty. The reader, therefore, shall know (if he knew no more about it than we did) that John Ballhorn was a printer at Lubeck, who flourished between the years 1531 and 1599, and who printed, amongst other things, a primer or A B C book, on the last page of which he substituted for the embellishment which was usual at that time, of a cock with spurs, a cock without spurs, but with a couple of eggs beside him ; and on the strength of this substitution announced on the title-page 'Amended by John Ballhorn.' The ex- pression has since become proverbial ; and BaU- hornisiren or Ver- RaUhornen signifies 'to make unmeaning or useless alterations in anything to make anything worse, instead of making it better.' " 'Review of Designs for rebuilding the Royal Exchange,' 1840, by Joseph Gwilt, F.S.A. (?)

To grahamize.On 14 June, 1840, Mr. T. Duncornbe, M.P., presented a petition to the House of Commons from W. J. Linton, Giuseppe Mazzini, and others, complaining that their letters had been opened when passing through the Post Office. Sir James Graham, the then Home Secretary, acknow- ledged^that he had given instructions for this being done, and incurred great obloquy in consequence ; but it appeared subsequently that it had been done by the Foreign Secre- tary, Byron's "travelled thane, Athenian Aberdeen," at the instance of the Neapolitan Government and with the concurrence of the Cabinet. This proceeding excited great indignation in this country, and Punch issued a sheet of anti-Graham wafers, with appro- priate devices and mottoes, with a view to prevent the continuance of the practice, one of the best having as a device a bee with the

motto " Touch my wax, you '11 feel my sting." " Not to be grahamized " was another of these mottoes; and for sometime after 1840 "to grahamize " was used to express the clandes- tine opening of letters.

Graham took the public censure very much to heart, and declared in after life that when all he had done for his country was forgotten his conduct in connexion with this miserable affair would be remembered ; which is the fact. JOHN HEBB.

To endacott. This has certainly never been in general use. The case, which was a cause celebre amongst students of London police- court reports, was associated always more closely with the name of the woman taken than with that of the policeman. R. S.

The verb to nugentize has not been men- tioned in this connexion. It was invented by Horace Wai pole on the occasion of Robert Nugent, an Irish adventurer, having married a wealthy widow, and its meaning is indicated by that fact. See Tovey's ' Letters of Thomas Gray,' i. 172, note. C. C. B.

"SHOEHORNED" (9 th S. vii. 289). The Spec- tator applied the term " shoehorn " as a con- temptuous name for danglers on young women, encouraged merely to draw on other admirers. See Spectator, No. 536. Your correspondent is perhaps aware of the old slang sense in which it was commonly used, a "shoeing-horn" being an article of food, such as salt fish, which acts as an inducement to drink :

A slip of bacon

Shall serve as a shoeing-horn to draw on two pots of ale.

Bp. Still, ' Gammer Gurton's Needle,' I. i.

"Haue some shooing home to put on your wine, as a rasher of the coles, or a redde-herring!" Nashe, ' Pierce Pennilesse,' p. 54, quoted in Nares's 'Diet.'

J. H. MACMlCHAEL.

This is a word which, used as a verb, I have known for fifty years ; and " shoe-ironed " was in use as well. "Low-side" shoes were common wear, and it was almost impossible to get the heel of the foot in without using a shoehorn, shoe-iron, or shoe-lift, as the article was variously called. These were made in several kinds of material brass, iron, bone, horn, wood, and so forth and one or more was hung in every chimney corner with other articles which have now gone out of use. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

Is not this idea of the shoehorn taken from a paper by one of the old essayists in the Spectator ? W, C, B,