Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/89

 9- s. ix. FEB. i, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

81

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1902.

CONTENTS. -No. 214.

NOTES :-Sarpi's 'Letters,' 1693, 81 Birthplace of Mar- garet, Countess of Richmond, 82' Burial of Sir John Moore,' 83 " Sitting on the fence " " Groat "Aero- nautics " Yard of ale "The Court of St. James's, 84-Sir Thomas Browne's Skull The Feast and the Reckoning, 85 " Late "Earl of Cardigan Christmas Decorations and Shrove Tuesday Death of an Aged Chartist Dis- traint on Wearing Apparel, 1790-4" Ludi magister," 86.

QUERIES: Drawing-knife, 86 "Say not that he did we ll_Method of testing Cloth Moore's 'History of Dunstable' Window Glass Psalmorum Codex Latinus Dalrymple on the Fur Trade "With affection beam- ing "Mummers Markoe or Marcou Family, 87 Corbyn Family Author of Poems Wanted CLIII. Fireplaces in Cathedral Churches Beranger : ' Le Roi d' Yvetot ' Wimpole Street Eighty-five Years Ago, 88 Chalices of Wood Royal Personages, 89.

REPLIES : Kipling in America, 89 Baron de Grivegnee and Power, 91 Staunton, Worcestershire The West Bourne, 92 Crispe Chaplains, 93 Sarten Duels, 94 Waterproof Clothing ' Leisure Hour ' Jubilee Bruce and Burns, 95 St. Teilo "Frail "Fourth Duke of Graf ton Birthday Cake and Candles Beau Brummel and B. d'Aurevilly Burial of a Suicide " Hep ! Hep!" 96 Dissington Family " Mine host of the Tabard" Weeks's Museum Carlyle on Symbols, 97 Seven Stowe Missal " As mad as a tup," 98.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Furness's Variorum ' Twelfth Night 'Wale's 'What Great Men have said of Great Men ' Zimmern's 'The Babylonian and the Hebrew Genesis.'

Obituary Dr. F. G. Lee. Notices to Correspondents.

gjtato,

FATHER PAUL SARPI'S 'LETTERS,' 1693. I CAN learn nothing of "Edward Brown, Rector of Sund ridge in Kent," the translator of these 'Letters, 5 except what he tells us in his dedication to the Earl of Notting- ham. The late Mr. Henry Huth issued in 1874 for private circulation a volume entitled * Prefaces, Dedications, and Epistles. I never had the pleasure of seeing that book but I am free to say that if Edward Brown's preface to Father Paul's 'Letters' has not bee included, the volume is infinitely, the poorer for it. But probably it might be found to be too long and too polemical for such a col- lection. A more truly unconventional preface could scarcely be Brown writes as if he hac his readers seated round his parlour table and in the intervals, so to speak, of dispensing the social amenities, pours fortfy all he knows about these ' Letters,' not in the forma language of the schools, but in the free ana-easy colloquialism of the market am the street. The very opening at once arrest attention :

" Courteous Reader ; It may be, upon the grea Credit and Repute that Father Paul has mos deservedly with religious, wise and learned Men that know how to value his Worth and Excellence you will be so eager to know what there is in thes Letters of his, which I have made ready for you

'erusal, that you will skip over Prefaces, and every hing else that stands in your way, between this and hem. And truly upon that Account, I could have een as well contented to say what I have to say bout these things, at the further End of the Book, nd to wait upon you there, but that a Preface must be what it is called, and cannot change its ^lace without changing its Name ; though a very xcellent Person [Dr. Donne], and a very good Mend of Father Paul's, was once of the Mind, hat a Man could not well be called a Reader, till e had read a Book over ; and did therefore design, e says, to have met his Reader at the End of his took, and there tell him what he had to say about b. And if you should really do thus, you are r elcome to begin where you please ; only be so sind, as to call in here as you come back, and let me ell you a few things about this excellent Person jtnd these Letters, and others, which you ought to enow, sooner or later, for your better Acquaintance vith them. But if this Conceit of mine should ihance to stop you a little here, and tempt you to tay till you come fairly to the Letters; I hope hat besides the Conquest of your Impatience, you trill find somewhat that may help you to read them with better Judgment, and a more settled and >ois'd Expectation."

The "Courteous Reader," it is to be pre- sumed, is paying due heed to all that is being said, but on the eighteenth page the author Dreaks the even flow of his discourse in this somewhat unceremonious fashion :

'Whilst I have been thus tediously talking of Letters in general, for ought I know, you have tis all one if you have, you will read this some bime or other. But to come a little nearer to our Business ; let me only tell you that this part of the Age has been happy (how miserable soever in other Respects) in the Publick Knowledg of many great Mens Letters."
 * iven me the slip, and are got somewhere else ; but

Then he goes on again in his usual breezy way.

I may here say Father Paul's ' Letters ' are, in themselves, singularly interesting ; and I am sure it is a matter for regret that Brown did not carry out his intention (as stated in the advertisement on p. cxviii) of issuing a second volume, which was meant to include a translation of Fulgentio's 'Life' of Father Paul (that of 1651, " by a Person of Quality," is a very disappointing production, and justly comes under pur author's censure) as well as other interesting pieces. The purpose of this note, however, is not with the ' Letters,' but simply to register a number of familiar phrases scattered throughout the volume :

Riff-raff stuff; no better than it should be? which has been a Bone for them to pick ever since; they call it a Nose of Wax, and the old Canary- bird Melchior Canus has a pretty Note to the same Tune ; Fardel of Lies ; addle-headed Greeks ; for ought I know, you have given me the slip ; the same Game they were playing ; 'tis not a farthing matter who sees it : finely japann'd and varnish'd over ; 'tis a thousand to one ; piddling Work ; 'tis