Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/475

 9 s. ix. J,TSE H, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

467

represented." Lady Luxborough, writing to Shenstone, 17 April, 1748, says : "1 feel that it would give me pain to see St. James's, Vauxhall, llanelagh, &c, &c., represented in so lively a manner as I see them through an optical glass which I have lately purchased, now that I am absent from them." That this was, or contained, a lense of some kind, appears from a later letter of 11 September, in which she says :

" Mr. Sanders, speaking of the dimension of his Optic Glasses yesterday, put me in mind of measuring mine It is near three inches and a half diameter, convex on one side, and flat on the other."

The usual sense of "optic" or " optical glass " was, indeed, a lense, hence any instrument consisting of or containing a lense, as a microscope or telescope. As Milton has it, the moon, whose orb

Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views

At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole.

Sometimes it seems to mean a convex mirror, or any glass used for refraction or reflexion of light. But what kind of " optical glass " could that be in which a whole province or the whole world could be represented, or through which Lady Luxborough could see the fashionable resorts of London "repre- sented in so lively a manner," now that she was absent from them ?

J. A. H. MURRAY. [Is Dee's magic crystal referred to?]

DR. JOHNSON. It would be interesting to learn who was the last survivor of persons known to have seen Dr. Samuel Johnson in the flesh. Dr. Martin Routh, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, who died in 1854 in his hundredth year, had seen the doctor, " in his brown wig, scrambling up the steps of University College." In the * Journals of Walter White' (assistant secretary of the Royal Society, 1861-85) is the following :

" 1864, Sept. 24. To Earl's Colne Mr. Carwar-

dine told me he remembered having seen Dr. Johnson. He was walking, at four years of age, through St. Paul's Churchyard, holding by his fathers finger, when his father, pointing to an old man dressed in a snuff-coloured suit and worsted stockings, who stood as if resting by a post, said, 'That is the great Dr. Johnson.' Mr. Canvardine also remembers Cowper."

Dr. Johnson died in 1784, and had thus been seen by one who was living eighty years later. " W. B. H.

"HOPEFUL": "SANGUINE." I had thought that to be hopeful and to be sanguine were one and the same thing ; but in his speech at Birmingham on 16 May, Mr. Chamber- lain plainly used the words to indicate two distinct attitudes of mind : " I am hope-

ful," he said, "but I am not sanguine. Does this strike your correspondents as it does me, as being an attempt to mark a difference where none, in reality, exists ; or do they, too, attach some signification to sanguine which would prevent them from employing it as an exact synonym for hopeful? In like manner, I confess that I always distinguish between like and similar. To my thinking, if things resemble each other precisely, they are alike ; if they differ at all they are only similar. Can nothing save us from a "combine"? ST. S WITH IN.

AIX-LA-CHAPELLE. What is the correct pronunciation of this name ? English autho- rities (such as Chisholra, Lippincott, Smith, Webster) give Aiks, yet I frequently hear Ai from educated Londoners, while I always heard Aiss from speakers of French during my stay in the town in 1889, and Aiss is given by such French authorities as Delille, Lan- dais, Levizac, &c. Some French orthoepists (e.g., Malvin-Cazal) discriminate between the various places named Aix ; according to them Aix in Provence should be called Aiks, and the Isle of Aix should be called Ai, but Aix- les-Bains and Aix-la-Chapelle should be Aiss. Are these distinctions still observed by good French speakers or are they obsolete ?

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

QUOTATION ATTRIBUTED TO COVENTRY PAT- MORE. R. L. Stevenson, at the end of * The Dynamiters,' makes Prince Florizel say :

"Is it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth ana saw vast circum valla-

tions troops manoeuvring, war-ships at sea and

a great dust of battles on shore : and casting

anxiously about for the cause of so many ana

painful preparations, spied at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her babe ?" Where in Coventry Patrnore's works does this occur? C. HUDSON.

THOMAS PHAER, OF CILGERRAN. In the list of members of Parliament ordered to be printed 1 March, 1878, appear the following entries for Cardigan : " Thomas Phayr. armiger, 2 & 3 Philip <fc Mary, summoned to meet 21 Oct., 1555." "Thomas Phayer, generosus, Cardigan Borough, 20 Jan., 1557/8." "Thomas Phaer, Esq., Cardigan, 1558." These three entries, in which the name has three different spellings, presumably all refer to the same person. I assume, though with some diffidence, that the M.P. referred to is identical with the famous Welsh writer who lived at Cilgerran or Kilgerran Forest, in Pembroke- shire, and died in 1560. I do not find in 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' any notice of Thomas Phaer's service in Parliament, and I have