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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. JUNE 15, 1901.

worsted stockings. In 1769 Lord Sherborne paid six guineas for a mother-of-pearl powder horn, mounted in silver. M.

No. 26, Holland Street, Kensington, has a " powdering closet." It is a small room out of the back drawing-room. The house is said to have belonged to a lady who was one of Queen Anne's maids of honour.

IB AGUE.

FLOWER GAME (9 th S. vii. 329, 397) - 1 am surprised that K. should hazard the unac- countable statement that dandelion chains are " apparently unknown around North- ampton." The little village in which I am writing this note is not many miles from our county town, and I can assure him that here, at any rate, the children repeatedly amuse themselves by manufacturing these fragile ornaments. In my walks lately I have fre- quently come across groups of little girls busily engaged weaving daisy chains, daisy- and-buttercup chains, or dandelion chains.

JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

"ATTE" (9 th S. vii. 388). This word is not equivalent to de or de la, but to the Latin ad,

as Johannes ad Fontem = John atte Well; Robertus ad Montem = Robert atte Hill, &c. "Atte" denoted residence, and de origin. Unlike the latter, " atte " is not connected with a place-name proper, such as the name of a township or parish, but with some feature of the landscape which afforded ready identification of a person's abode.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS. Town Hall, Cardiff.

''Atte" denoted actual residence without implying-possessory title or rights. This may be gathered from the fact that it is applied almost invariably in relation to topography. Thus we have Atcliffe, Atfield, Athill, Atlay and Atlee, Attenborough and Atterbury, Atton, Atridge, Attree, Attwell and Atwell, Atwater, Atwood and Atworth. See 'Eng- lish Surnames,' p. 110. ARTHUR MAYALL.

SHAKESPEARE THE " KNAVISH " (9 th S. vii. 162, 255, 330). Poor Shakspere ! After 300 years to be accused of being a vulgar card- sharper and " bully - rook " ! But is MR. THORPE serious? If so, is he fair in his reference to the quotation from the ' Return from Parnassus ' ? The lines are :

His sweeter verse contains hart-robbing life,

Could but a graver subject him content.

It is Shakspere's verse alone that is alluded

to, not his life. Then, is not Shakspere spoken

of by his contemporaries as " generous in mind

and mood " (1603), " upright in dealing" (1592), "a king amongst the meaner sort" (1610), an " honest sower " (1610), " a worthy friend and fellow" (1623), "gentle Shakspere" (1623), "honest and of an open and free nature" (1623)? Did not Ben Jonson, in spite of some peevish satire against him, love Shakspere almost to idolatry 1 Were not numbers of persons of quality, such as the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke, his patrons, and men of intellect and integrity, such as Drayton, his friends 1 Queen Eliza- beth had a great partiality for him, and King James wrote him "an amicable letter with his own hand." Is it conceivable that any one can believe a man so regarded by his con- temporaries to have been a common cheat 1 It is incredible, except for believers in the Shake-Bacon delusion. That Shakspere was not so morally good as he was intellectually great is indeed probably true. The same un- fortunately holds good of Caesar, the " fore- most man of all this world." His 'Venus and Adonis' shocked even some of his contem- poraries, and there are too many traditions to the contrary to allow us to believe that Shakspere was an entirely moral man. But no one who is really familiar with the poet's works, and with what was said about him by his contemporaries, can doubt for a moment that he was a good friend and an honest man. The passages quoted by your corre- spondent from Harington and Middleton have no apparent connexion whatever with Shakspere. REGINALD HAINES.

Uppingham.

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER IN LATIN (8 th S. xi. 101, 289). In his valuable biblio- graphy of the Latin Prayer Book the late DR. SPARROW SIMPSON had overlooked a query in 5 th S. viii. 148. At that reference PAROCHTJS asked what was known of Thomas Parsell, the compiler of the fourth version, and what was the object of this translation, when an authorized version (Durel's) was in use. The first of these questions is answered by the short biography in 'D.N.B.' With regard to the second, it is likely enough that some of the clergy, who may be presumed to have made most use of these Latin versions, would prefer to read the Biblical portions in the reformed version of Castellio rather than in the Vulgate translation. Parsell's transla- tion evidently drove Durel's out of the field ; but it does not seem to have become im- mediately popular, as it took seven years to sell off the first edition. Surely the John Williams to whom Parsell dedicated his first edition (1706) was, pace the 'D.N-B.' bio-