simply assume the style of baronet by "legal advice," without further ado. The want of a competent court for deciding such claims is a great hardship to the order, as remarked by Mr. Serjeant Burke in an article on "Doubtful Baronetcies" (Herald and Genealogist, No. xix., Aug. 1866.)

James V.," if not a misprint, is an error; for it is certain that baronets were not invented till the reign of his grandson, James VI. There was not much" romance" in the origin of the order, which was simply a device to fill the pockets of the British Solomon, under pretence of colonizing Ulster and Nova Scotia! ANGLO-SCOTus.

FALSE QUANTITY IN BYRON (3rd S. xii. 127, 197.)- Had MR. BUCKTON, MR. NICHOLSON, R. M. C., H. B. C., and Messieurs "Legion," looked four lines higher up in the same stanza, they would have found Zoe's name rightly dissyllabled, as rhyming to snowy, or Chloe-whom neither Swift nor Prior ever chronicled as Clo. Not that I should have wondered at Byron's slip-❘ slopping a word, carelessly or conveniently. I forget where-and I decline to hunt his lordship's poetry over for its reference-but he actually rhymed real with zeal, or steel, or some such monosyllable even as Sir Walter rhymed Charles with perils, and Tom Moore girl with squirrel. Phoebus forgive them! E. L. S.

:

(1.) "Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis." In the Concordance to the Latin Vulgate, I find the following (Sap. iii. 9): "Qui crediderunt in illo intelligent veritatem.

"What is the reference for the tradition that Aristotle derived part of his knowledge of the physical sciences from some lost treatise of Solomon ?"

"Id autem mireris in Aristotele quod senex admodum ad Simeonis justi pedes sederit, si qua Judæis fides habenda, qua de re consuli potest. Buxtorfius, Ad Sepher Cosri, p. 31. Clearchus certe inter discipulos ejus haud postremus ipsum a Judæo philosopho multa percepisse prodidit libro de somno, quem Eusebius laudat, 1. ix. c. 3, de Præp."-Crenii Fasciculus Dissertationum, iv. 255.

BIBLIOTHECAR. CHETHAM.

THE OATH OF THE PEACOCK OR PHEASANT (3rd S. xii. 108, 173.)—I have read somewhere (but have no books where I am to refer to) that the oath was not upon these birds, but over them. The peacock or pheasant at solemn banquets was borne in great state, and placed on the table, covered or in some way ornamented with their

In addition to what has been written on this, perhaps the remarkable analogous instance of the royal and knightly vow of Edward I., in 1306, upon the swan, is worthy of notice here. At a feast given by Edward, after his son the Prince of Wales, the Earls of Warenne and Arundel, and nearly three hundred more, had been knighted, according to Mathew of Westminster (p. 454) —

"Tunc allati sunt in pompatica gloria duo Cygni vel olores ante Regem, phalerati retibus aureis vel fibulis deauratis," &c.

Thereupon

Swans, that he would take vengeance on Robert Bruce

"The King vowed to the God of Heaven and to the

for his insult offered to God and the Church; and this duty having been performed, that he would not, for the future, unsheath his sword against Christians, but would haste to Palestine, wage war with the Saracens, and never return from that holy enterprise."-Hailes' Annals of Scotland, 1797, vol. i. pp. 4, 5.

Ashmole, History of the Garter (ch. v. sect. 2, P. 185), says that Edward III. had these words wrought upon "his surcoat and shield, provided to be used at a tournament

Hay, Hay, the wythe Swan,
By Goddis soul I am thy man."
Which Lord Hailes observes:

"Shews that a white swan was the imprese (' emblem' or 'device,' Ital.) of Edward III., and perhaps it was also used by his grandfather, Edward I."

According to this learned authority, the vow of the peacock (which bird, as well as the pheasant, was accounted noble, and peculiarly the food of the amorous and valiant) was one of the most solemn taken by knights. The passage is curious, and worthy of perusal. ANGLO-SCOTUS.

66

THE WORD "Por" (3rd S. xii. 211.) There are two senses in which this word does not seem noticed in modern dictionaries:-1. "To make a pot of money,"-this may mean either a pouch or pocket full of money, or an earthenware pot; a crock." "Putting a man under a pot" would be, I think, to put him under the tiles, the potsherds, to bury him. "With pots on their heads" would, I think, mean a linen cowl, a cerement or cerecloth wound round the head: the skull-caps or head-pieces for men-at-arms were called pots.

66

PUNNING MOTTOES (3rd S. xii. 178.) — In "N. & Q." is given "Dum spiro spero" sumed by the name of Spiers. I am acquainted with a gentleman who (although not called Spiers) has adopted that motto. It is unfortunately rendered singularly appropriate by his suffering severely from "asthma." *

A motto adopted by the family of Vawdrey is curious:

"J'ai valu, je vaux, et je vaudrai.”

"O narrow circle, but of power Divine,
Scanted in space, but perfect in thy line."
Absalom and Achitophel.

And again, in Eleonora, the poem on the death of the Countess of Abingdon : —

"Though all these rare endowments of the mind Were in a narrow space of life confined, The figure was with full perfection crowned, Though not so large an orb, as truly round." Dryden speaks also of "round eternity," Hind and Panther, part 3, line 19.

The meaning of the

passage

CH.

"O my soul Runs circular in sorrow for revenge appears to be that the soul in its sorrow runs about, searching round for the means of vengeance. It may also express the futility of the guest-the soul, whichever direction it takes, being unable to get any nearer its object, just as by running along the circumference of a circle, we can never arrive at the centre. In this case, the metaphor may be taken from the labyrinths or mazes once so popular. E. B. NICHOLSON.

DURANCE (3rd S. ix. 47, 84.)-One of your correspondents having very positively asserted that 66 durance is not so old as the time of Spenser, I beg to say that the word, in its literal integrity, occurs in lines 96 and 150 of the Faerie Queene, book VI. chap. xii.

French extraction!

R. B. PORTRAITS OF CRIMINALS (3rd S. x. 450; xi. 24.)-Upon this interesting point, vide Knight's London, vol. iv., "Old London Rogueries," where the following quotation is given from "A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabonds, set forth by Thomas Harman, Esq.," which was first printed in 1566. In giving the history of a counterfeit crank, or counterfeiter of epilepsy, Harman tells us that, being sent to Bridewell, he was put in the pillory at Cheapside, "And, after that, went to the mill while his ugly picture was a drawing, and then was whipt at a cart's tail through London, and his displayed banner carried before him unto his own door (in Maister Hill's rents), and so back to Bridewell again, and there remained for a time, and at

length set at liberty on that condition he would prove an honest man, and labour truly to get his living. And his picture remaineth in Bridewell for a moniment."

The author of the article adds:

"An engraving of this picture, which, we presume, was the displayed banner' that was carried before its original in his procession at the cart's tail, is given by Harman as an embellishment to this history of the Counterfeit Crank."

Nicholas Blunt, an "Upright Man." The drawKnight copies this portrait, and also one of ings are very clever and full of character. Are any more of these "Ugly Pictures" (an expression which must be familiar to many as applied to an adversary's countenance) to be found among old civic records, and is it still possible to discover the artists thus employed? CALCUTTENSIS.

520; xii. 54.) The following are the terms in "MANUSCRIT VENU DE STE HÉLÈNE" (3rd S. xi. which Napoleon disavowed the authorship of this work; and now that the true writer is known, we may see how far the speculations respecting him are verified by the facts:

"Cette brochure de 151 pages, traduite dans toutes les langues, a été lue de toute l'Europe, et grand nombre This motto has been assumed by fifty other families.

de personnes croient qu'elle est sortie de la plume de Napoléon; cependant rien de plus faux. Les journaux anglais ont nommé madame de Staël: cela n'est pas probable; il lui aurait été impossible de ne pas y apposer son cachet. Cet écrit a été fait par un conseiller d'état qui était en service ordinaire dans les années 1800, 1801, 1802, et 1803, mais qui n'était pas en France en 1806 et 1807, et qui s'est occupé particulièrement des affaires d'Espagne. Ce n'est pas un militaire: il n'a jamais assisté à une bataille; il a les plus fausses idées de la guerre."--Mémoires, t. ii. p. 205.

This piece was published by Murray in 1817; and the discrepancy between dates adds to my doubt that this is the same piece as Les Confessions de Napoléon Ier, published at Metz in 1864. In the following year a rival "Manuscript" was published, entitled

"Napoléon peint par lui-même. Extraits du véritable Manuscrit de Napoléon Bonaparte, par un Américain. Londres, 1818, pp. 108."

But this can hardly be the work lately reissued, as it was published by Colburn, and purports to be the record of conversations held with Napoleon when at Elba. May not the Metz reprint rather be a republication of a curious and scarce piece, entitled:

"Maximes et Pensées du Prisonnier de Sainte-Hélène. Manuscrit trouvé dans les papiers de Las-Casas. Tra

duit de l'Anglais." 8vo, Paris, 1820, pp. 120.

I do not know the date of the English edition; it would be about 1818, and, as in the case of the work lately reprinted, the original French, if it ever existed, must have long ago "disappeared." WILLIAM BATES. Birmingham.

THE LAST EPISCOPAL WIG (3rd S. xii. 205.) I do not think that JOSEPHUS is correct in his statement, that the late Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. J. B. Sumner) was the last prelate who wore a wig; for certainly, during the last few years of his life, he laid it aside. On a recent visit to King's College, Cambridge, I saw in the Combination Room there a very fine portrait of him in his Convocation robes, presented by him to that college, where he had been educated, in which he is depicted as wearing his own hair. My impression is, that the last prelate who continued to his death to wear the wig was James Henry Monk, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who died in 1856. The last head of a house in Oxford who wore it was the late vener

able President of Magdalen, Dr. Routh, who died in 1854, having nearly attained the patriarchal age of 100 years.

OXONIENSIS.

Bushey Rectory, near Watford, Herts. From an anecdote related in the Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, by his son (vol. i. p. 97), it appears that the late Bishop of London, and not the Bishop of Winchester, set the example of the disuse of the wig, having received from King

JOSEPHUS states that the late Archbishop Sumner wore the episcopal wig up to the time of his final appearance in public. Surely this must be a mistake in portraits, I believe, he is always represented without it. I remember reading, some years ago, that the late Bishop Monk was the last prelate who retained its use, but have forgotten where I met with the fact. In "N. & Q." (1st S. xi. 131) it is stated by a correspondent that the Hon. Richard Bagot, late Bishop of Bath and Wells, was the first to abandon the wig by the express permission of George IV. JOSEPHUS will find several communications on this subject in "N.&Q.," 1st S. xi.

ONALED.

"RICH AND POOR: " THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

(3rd S. xii. 79, 155, 172.)—S. BLYTH has not paid attention to my note at p. 156. Subsequently to my first note at p. 79 I had some doubts as to Mr. Barham being the author. I merely supposed that Mr. Barham might have written it, because it originally appeared under one of his noms de plume, and also because it had been ascribed to him in a defunct suburban magazine called The Ratepayer, and in other more important publications. As to its being "like nothing Barham ever wrote," I would remind MR. BLYTH that "Thomas Ingoldsby," alias "Peter Peppercorn, M.D.," alias "Barney Maguire," alias the Rev. R. H. Barham, was a very versatile genius: he could pass from "grave to gay, from lively to severe," from a song to a sermon; he was Democritus and Heraclitus combined. "Misce seria ludo" would have been an appropriate legend for his family coat. The version given by MR. BLYTH is certainly not the original one that appeared in the Globe and Traveller, though I do not dispute that it is a correct transcript from The Paper Money Lyrics; and, as revised by its author, "under the rose of wealth and station" is much" better than "hidden in the pomp of wealth and station." The omission of the word "man" after "poor" in the fourth verse, line three, is no improvement; nor is the substitution of "painted" MR. BLYTH's third for "close-sheet," fifth verse. verse (not in my copy) is a valuable addition. I have a copy of "Rich and Poor," said to have been a cut from the Manchester Guardian, in which the fifth verse of MR. BLYTH'S copy (my seventh_verse) was followed by four other stanzas, which I regret my inability to give. The poem has evidently often received additions, and very good ones too. Was Thomas Love Peacock not the author of "The Genius of the Thames, a

by Hieronimo, Act IV. Sc. 4. Hence, possibly, Shakespeare obtained them," &c. &c.

MR. RAMAGE calls attention to the coincidence that Cervantes, in his Don Quixote, uses this proverb; but, as Much Adoe was printed fifteen years before the second part of Don Quixote appeared, Shakespeare could not have been indebted to Cervantes, although the use of the word palabras would suggest a Spanish source.

MR. RAMAGE'S quotation is slightly inaccurate. In my edition "En Haia, 1744, tomo 3o," p. 308, it is printed "Que ya sabe, que toda comparacion es odiosa," a comma following the "sabe." Shelton, in my edition (London, 1652), translates it"For you know all comparisons are odious," the "Que ya sabe" forms no part of the proverb, which is simply "That all comparison is odious." F. W. C.

Clapham Park, S.

UGO FOSCOLO (3rd S. xi. 437, 526.)-Only the first volume of Foscolo's Dante was published during his life. This volume contained the "Discorso sul Testo," a copy of which Mrs. Gatty has purchased. If the corrections are Foscolo's, it may perhaps be the very volume which Mazzini used in editing the Discorso when he published

the entire work in 1843. La Commedia di Dante Allighieri, illustrata da Ugo Foscolo. Londra, Rolandi. It is in four volumes; the first volume contains a preface by Mazzini, in which he refers to the first edition of the Discorso in the following

passage: :

"Il Discorso sul Testo pubblicato nel 1825 pieno zeppo d' errori dal Pickering e due anni dopo con nuovi errori da Ruggia, ed oggi ripublicato con maggiore esattezza di correzione e con emendazioni ed aggiunte considerevoli desunte da un' esemplare postillato di mano dell' autore."-Prefazione all' Edizione, xi.

The first volume also contains a facsimile of

TOWN AND COLLEGE (3rd S. xii. 147.)— Mr. TRENCH will find every possible information respecting town in the appended extract from Isaac Taylor's Words and Places, pp. 119, 120:—

"The primary meaning of the suffix ton is to be sought in the Gothic tains, the old Norse teinn, and the Frisian têne, all of which mean a twig-a radical signification which survives in the phrase the tine of a fork.' We widely diffused through the Aryan languages. Compare speak also of the tines of a stag's horns. The root is the Sclavonic tuin, a hedge, and even the Armenian tun, a house. In modern German we find the word Zaun, a hedge; and in Anglo-Saxon we have the verb tynan, to hedge. Hence a tun, or ton, was a place surrounded by a hedge, or rudely fortified by a palisade. Originally it meant only a single croft, homestead, or farm, and the word retained this restricted meaning in the time of Wicliffe. He translates Matt. xxii. 5: But thei dis

"Fac-simile della scrittura di Ugo Foscolo;-L'originale di questo sonetto trovasi attacato dietro al suo Ritratto, dipinto da F. Pistrucci e posseduto dal SigTM Hudson Gurney di Londra."

Mazzini states that Rolandi purchased the manuscript from Pickering for four hundred pounds (quattrocento lire sterline).

I beg to add Lord Broughton's opinion of the Discorso, as it may induce some of your readers to study the volume for themselves:

:

"I would strongly recommend to every lover of Italy, of Italian literature, and especially of Dante, the careful perusal of the first of the volumes published in 1842 by Rolandi, La Commedia di Dante Allighieri, illustrata da Ugo Foscolo. The preface to this edition, by an Italian (Mazzini), is worthy of the work, and shows the fervour of that worship of which Foscolo himself was deemed scarcely worthy to be a priest, although he has doubtless done more to illustrate the great object of Italian veneration than any preceding writer. From this preface a just conception may be formed of the character and

another to his marchaundise.' This usage is retained in Scotland, where a solitary farmstead still goes by the name of the toun; and in Iceland, where the homestead, with its girding, is called a tun. In many parts of England the rickyard is called the barton-that is, the inclosure for the bear, or crop which the land bears: in Iceland, the bærtun. There are some sixty villages in England called Barton or Burton-these must have originally been outlying rickyards. There are lone farmsteads in Kent called Shottington, Wingleton, Godington, and Appleton. But in most cases the isolated ton became the

nucleus of a village, and the village grew into a town, and, last stage of all, the word town has come to denote, not the one small croft inclosed from the forest by the Saxon settler, but the dwelling-place of a vast population, twice as great as that which the whole of Saxon England could boast."

College, in the sense mentioned by MR. TRENCH, is of course a collection of houses.

Tonbridge.

E. B. NICHOLSON.

Mr. Britton's definition of town, as "any collection of houses too large to be termed a village,"