Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/153

 IX. FEB. 22, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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unstamped-newspaper prisoners. I delivered the oration at his grave, as I did at the grave of Hetherington fifty-one years before ; but though I was in the Chartist agitation from beginning to end, I am not generally counted as one of the survivors, being better known to this generation in other agitations than that.

G. J. HOLYOAKE. Eastern Lodge, Brighton.

JACK = KNAVE The interesting review (9 th S. viii. 474) of the fifth volume of the ' New English Dictionary ' led me to refer to the work to see what it said on the above subject in its relation to playing-cards. I found therein the following definition and quotation (s.v. * Jack ') :

"5. Cards. Name for the knave of trumps in the game of all-fours ; hence gen. any one of the knaves.

"1674-80. Cotton, 'Compl. Gamester,' ix., This

game is called All Fours, from highest, lowest,

jack, and game, which is the set as some play it. Ibid., He turns up a Card, which is Trump : if Jack (and that is any knave) it is one to the dealer."

The conclusion come to that the term Jack was applied to a knave generally, through its use in the old game of all-fours, is the natural one, and without doubt correct ; but that Cotton employed it in the general sense, which is the inference meant to be taken from the form and position of the quotation, is quite a misapprehension. The record, therefore, from the historical or chronological point of view is misleading. The mistake is a natural and easy one to any one not thoroughly acquainted with the subject ; and, unfortunately, if there is any ordinary matter that savants show want of knowledge of in their writings, it is of games. Cotton's diction in the * Gamester ' is generally loose, and it is often unsafe to take him literally, without going below the surface to find out his meaning. When he applies the term Jack to knave in the above quotation, he means that any knave turned up will be Jack (as the turned-up card is trump, and Jack is the knave of trumps), and not that Jack is any or every knave two very different things. To Cotton, Jack is simply the term for the trump-knave in the game of all-fours, as Tom is the term for the trump -knave in the game of gleek. If his description of all- fours is carefully read with this knowledge, it will be found that in none of the several instances in which the word Jack is used does Cotton apply it to anything else than the knave of trumps. When he speaks of another knave, he calls it a knave. To term every knave Jack, where there is only the one Jack, would make the description a

jumble of nonsense. Nowhere, outside of all-fours, does Cotgrave, Cotton, or Seymour (our early describers of card -games) write Jack for knave. Nor have I met with it in any of the early writers. Accordingly, by the 'Dictionary' corrected, Benjamin Martin (1749) is the first recorder of the use of the term in the general sense. Do any of your readers know of an earlier ?

J. S. McTEAR.

" HAKATIST." This word deserves to be added to the list of those which, like cabal, are of political coinage. We have heard lately of weighty Prussian measures against the Poles in Posen, among the supporters of severity being three gentlemen named Hannemarin, Kinnemann, and Tidemann. From their initials this adjective is derived, and it is a curious accident that the termina- tions are identical.

FRANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Brixton Hill.

CORONATION INCIDENT. The following extract from the 'Memoir of Richard Red- grave, R.A. ; (Cassell & Co., 1891), p. 299, may be of interest. The writer refers to a visit to the late Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield in January, 1868 :

" In the course of an after-dinner conversation on the rather curious subject of the advantages of per- spiration, Lord Salisbury remarked that he was one of the train-bearers at the coronation of George IV., and that the weight of the robes gave each of the bearers a Turkish bath of some hours' duration. I added that the king seemed equally to suffer on that occasion (1 was in the Abbey and close to him). ' Ah,' said my lord, ' the king had an hour's rest and freedom from his robes ; for after the coronation he retired for a time before he left

the Abbey, and Lord, going into the room

which had been fitted up as a dressing-room, found the king walking up and down in a state of nudity, but with the crown on his head.' "

SIDE- WHISKERS. May I object to the word " side- whiskers " for whiskers'? I last met with it in the ' Dictionary of National Bio- graphy,' article * Ruskin.' R. S.

BEN JONSON'S REPETITIONS. The advo- cates of the Baconian theory of the origin of Shakespeare's plays seem to be par- ticularly struck with the fact that Ben Jonson employed the same phrase in writing of both Shakespeare and Bacon. In both cases he compares their works to anything produced by "insolent Greece or haughty Rome," and every one who has read the arguments of the Baconians knows the inference they draw from this fact. I should like to point out that this is not the only