has been-should be forgotten, nobody has a right to be astonished at. It is a well-known fact that in olden times, and up to the French revolution of 1789, the illustrious actions of the plebeians did not count; those of the nobility only were recorded and rewarded. If Dubois has really been a hero, his heroism will for ever be lost in the obscurity which surrounds the Klostercamp affair; but D'Assas cannot be deprived of his glorious attribute, that is quite certain. His noble sacrifice is a fact, but a fact altered and embellished by poetical and imaginary details in the popular as well as in the official version. So D'Assas did not go to watch the enemy in a wood, for the simple reason that there was no wood in the neighbourhood of Klostercamp. Between the Auvergne regiment, which formed the extremity of the left wing, and the canal of Rheinberg, there were only a few hedges and a heath. Besides, the most elementary knowledge of strategy would tell us that an army does not encamp near a wood without occupying it, at least by outposts. The measures of M. de Castries were perfectly sound: the French army was in a good position, covered by a vanguard of 3000 men at Rheinberg, by advanced posts on the canal, and by a division which had taken possession of the abbey of Camp

on the other side of the canal. It is true that the

French were on the point of being overtaken by the enemy: the Germans had surrounded silently the abbey of Camp, and driven in some of the outposts; but, says Rochambeau, "ces premières fusillades suffirent pour donner l'alarme." The combat was progressing when D'Assas's death occurred; there is not the slightest doubt left about that. All the brigades were fighting, or ready to do so, at a moment's notice. Thus, that brave officer could not well have saved the army, "en l'empêchant d'être surprise;" for there was no surprise, it was no longer possible. The following words of the official account, therefore, contain an evident and monstrous exaggeration: "L'armée va périr si elle ignore le danger qui l'a menacé." And the "environné de baionettes prêtes à le percer, il peut acheter sa vie par son silence," is also obviously a licentia poetica. Nobody has seen or told that. Dubois and D'Assas were dead, and the only witnesses who could have testified to it consisted of the German soldiers who put them to death. They have never been examined, as far as I know; and even if they had, it is not at all likely that they would have recollected or even understood D'Assas's exclamation; for a common German soldier (in those days especially) must not be presumed to know foreign languages. In concluding this inevitably long article, I must add, that the successful result of the engagement near Klostercamp, for the French, was not only due to the personal intrepidity of D'Assas (which, however valuable it may have been from

a moral point of view, could not have any material influence on the ultimate issue), but also to the talent of their officers, to the valour of their troops, and last, though not least, to the many heroic deeds of their soldiers, which in a battle remain almost always unknown. The Auvergne regiment alone lost fifty-eight out of eighty officers, and 800 men killed and wounded. The other divisions of the army fought with the same bravery, and sustained equally heavy losses. I end with a quotation from Jules Simon, containing a universal and everlasting truth:

"Les hommes aiment naturellement tout ce qui vient du cœur, tout ce qui est grand, tout ce qui éblouit, et même tout ce qui est étrange. Une action héroïque, ou simplement un acte de générosité, les émeut infailliblement et provoque leur enthousiasme. Ils voient ces actions; ils ne voient pas la justice dans le cœur du juste.

Soyez D'Assas, et votre nom sera immortel pour un moment de courage sublime. Mais Aristide, si le sort ne le place pas à la tête de la république, peut n'emporter au tombeau qu'une froide estime." Amsterdam. H. TIEDEMAN.

TOOTH-SEALING.

(3rd S. x. 391; xi. 450, 491, 523.)

tice ever existed may be removed by reference to The doubt of ANGLO-SCOTUS whether this practhe Rev. E. H. Dashwood's Sigilla Antiqua (Second Series), where, in plate 1, will be found a representation of "The impression of the teeth on the wax, in place of seal, of Agnes, the daughter of Agnes, the daughter of William Fiz of Fyncham, to a deed by which she enfeoff's Adam de Fyncham, in one acre and three roods there, s. d. temp. Edw. II."

This would, however, be the resource only of people of inferior rank, and who were actually unprovided with a seal: for the same collection, derived from the muniments of Sir Thomas Hare, Bart. of Stowe-Bardolph, shows how very customary it was for persons to use any seals of which they had become possessed, at secondhand, even if bearing the names and arms of their former (original) owners.

At an earlier date the

humblest parties who required seals for the transfer of lands, had them engraved in lead with a flower or other simple device, surrounded by their For a remarkable series see the deeds of

name.

the parish of Arlesey, in Bedfordshire, described in the Collectanea Topog. et Genealogica.

The rhyming charters attributed to William the Conqueror, John of Gaunt, and others are, of course, medieval pleasantries; but it may be remarked, with regard to that printed in p. 524, that in the line

"To me that art both Line and Dear," there is an obvious error in the word "Line," which should be "liue" or "lieve," an old word nearly synonymous with "dear."

The name

--

"Marode" is evidently a misreading for "Mawde;" but whether Miss Strickland be correct in interpreting "Jugg" as Judith, I am not satisfied. The line

"Give to the Norman Hunter " means, "I William the King give to thee, Norman Hunter, who art so lieve and dear," &c.; and so in the first line also," the

27

means thee.

There is a place named Hope Baggot, not many miles from Hopton-in-the-Hole, otherwise called Hopton Cangeford, in Shropshire. Whether these were the places intended by the rhymes I cannot determine, nor do I know whether Mr. Eyton has condescended to notice this apocryphal charter in his History of Shropshire. I agree with ANGLO-SCOTUS that Hope and Hopton have been engrafted on the verses, which originally belonged to Ettrick Dale and the banks of Yarrow.

J. G. N.

"It has been thought that by a misnomer or bull on my part I alluded to it as a provision conspicuous by its absence,' a turn of phraseology which is not an original expression of mine, but is taken from one of the greatest historians of antiquity." F.

99

JUNIUS AND DR. JOHNSON (3rd S. xi. 444.)-I quite agree with your correspondent that the sooner Sir Philip Francis is acknowledged, by general consent, to have been an "unmitigated (qu. impostor) the better for the credit of political investigation and literary criticism in this country. But how the discussion, with merited contempt, of the hypothesis first broached some fifty years after Junius had ceased to write, and favoured, we are told, by the silly octogenarian, can tend to accelerate the appearance of Junius in propria personá is beyond all reasonable apprehension.

In Croker's Boswell (p. 122, 1 vol. edition, 1859) it is stated on the authority of Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, that "he (Johnson) delighted his imagination with the thought of having destroyed Junius."

Is there any other evidence to support the notion that the "mighty boar of the forest" was terrified into silence by the Johnsonian thunder in the False Alarm? or can you specify any commentator of Junius who has attributed to the pamphlet the cessation of the Letters? Mr. Prior, I am aware,

considers that his hypothesis of the disputed authorship is in some degree fortified by the probable unwillingness of Burke to retort upon Johnson-namely, on the score of friendship; but that I suppose gives no colour to the assertion, that the anonymous writer felt himself to have been destroyed-in other words, worsted in the encounter of sarcasm and invective

"Snuffed out by an article,"

which certainly was not the case.

the contemporaries of Junius. The inquiry was surely a very narrow one to Who had been specially aggrieved by the ministers principally assailed? and, in that class, what individual could have been singled among the number by the mark of intellectual competency? There were not "six Richmonds in the field." We might as well believe that any contemporary of Shakespeare ("whose magic could not copied be") could have written Macbeth, as that several opponents of the Grafton administration could have wielded the pen of "Junius." Besides, the mere discord of opinion, the "non idem sentire de Republicâ," could scarcely, in the political warfare of those times, have instigated the use of such envenomed weapons. The bitterness of personal hatred, the sense of intolerable wrong, are conspicuous throughout.

"The satire point, and animate the page."

66

Bishop Markham, an early friend and patron of Burke (resentful, no doubt, of the aggravated calumnies on his firm patron, the Duke of Grafton), taxed him, almost in direct terms, with the authorship of "Junius"-telling him that his house was a "nest of adders."

It is remarkable that the long and elaborate reply (fifty pages) was never communicated to the right reverend accuser, and that we find no positive denial on the part of Burke of the imputed slanders. Yet the piece is finished with all the force of his genius; indeed, it may be said that qualified degree, the astonishing power of the no other essay of his pen exhibits in a more unwriter. For the suppression of this letter, the only assignable reason, in my judgment, is that it lacked the "one thing needful," the disavowal of any share in the production of the "Letters."

On a reperusal of them (having given many days and nights in the interval, to the pages of Burke) I am struck with coincidences of thought, diction, and even cadence, such as seem to conduct to only one conclusion, namely, that Johnson narrowed the question with his usual force of discrimination, when he remarked that he "knew of no other man than Burke capable of writing those letters." Burke admitted to Sir Joshua Reynolds that he knew the author, thereby con

*

[* What evidence is there of this ?-ED. "N. & Q."]

"Pride of the dewy morning!

The swain's experienced eye From thee takes timely warning, Nor trusts the gorgeous sky. For well he knows, such dawnings gay Bring noons of storm and shower, And travellers linger on the way Beside the sheltering bower."

Keble's lines tally with what MR. J. M. CowPER has heard said in Kent. On the other hand, MR. JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN (at Hampstead), MR. H. FISHWICK (in Lancashire), and A. H. (mentioning no county or place in particular), have found the expression used of a morning mist that is supposed to promise a fine day. And it was with this latter view of it that the gardener, or the farmer, or the farm-labourer in the east of Somersetshire used to say to me as a child, "That's the pride of the morning," or "That's only the pride of the morning."

JOHN HOSKYNS-ABRAHALL, JUN.

This phrase can scarcely be called a provincialism, as MR. HOTTEN supposes. He heard it in Middlesex, I have heard it in numerous parts of Devon and Cornwall, and a few days ago, when I spoke of it in a somewhat large party, it was stated, on competent authority, to be a common expression in Kent, Norfolk, and Dorset-, Worcester-, and Herefordshires. The prevalent form seems to be the "Pride of the morning."

WM. PENGELLY.

Torquay.

RUNIC INSCRIPTION AT ST. MOLIO (3rd S. xi. 194, 334, 499.)-So long as DR. WILSON fails to recognise the Icelandic sign týr, in the first letter of the intermediate word of the Runic inscription, carved within the water-worn recess on Holy Island, and confounds the Greek eta with the letter H, from its apparent resemblance to that character, he has more reason to correct his own

"epigraphy" than draw attention to my deficiencies in this respect, real or supposed.

DR. WILSON will be pleased to observe that I am not the author, but the expounder, of the inscription. I am not bound to explain why the characters tyr and hagl have been used, in this instance, in place of the usual thurs. Sufficient for my purpose that I have accurately represented the fact. I answer, once for all, that I submitted a cast of this inscription to a gentleman well skilled in Northern Runic literature, who quite confirmed my reading. The letters of the intermediate word certainly are, as I read, t, h, a, n, e. If your correspondent DR. WILSON can find in these anything other than the Norse word thane, he must possess a fertile imagination. I have not seen the new edition of the Prehistoric Annals, but do not accept DR. WILSON's representation of the character in dispute, as given in the first.

I cannot help what Professor Munch may have said in regard to this-to me at least-apocryphal saint. I am a disciple and tributary of Professor Fact. So far as I am aware, Professor Munch did not say that this inscription does not contain the word thane. J. C. RR.*

As I have occasionally contributed to "N. & Q.," and have usually signed my communications with the initials of my name, it may be well to state that the article on "Scottish Archæology" (p. 334) is not by me. J. C. ROBERTSON.

Precincts, Canterbury.

I have been attracted by DR. WILSON'S rejoinder to your correspondent J. C. R. with reference to the Runic inscription in St. Molio's cave. I beg leave to suggest that the character which ahane, is not accurately represented in the PrehisDR. WILSON reads as a in the imaginary word toric Annals. No doubt, as there given, it is the character ár in one of its forms; but in the inscription itself the diagonal line, projecting downward, proceeds from a point nearer to the top of the perpendicular line, and certainly suggests to me the idea of a carelessly-formed t. Another circumstance in favour of this view is that the actual letter a in the same word, and also that in the word raist, are in another form of the character, represented by a diagonal line intersecting the perpendicular line (projecting downward from before, and upward from behind). In anything of this kind which has fallen under my notice I have found the same form of character preserved in every recurrence of the same letter throughout the entire inscription. Upon the whole I am inclined to adopt J. C. R.'s reading of the intermediate word thane, which makes sense of it, and accords with the ordinary import and style of

[* We have ventured to make a slight alteration in the signature of our more recent correspondent, to avoid future mistakes as to identity of communication.-ED.]

Runic inscriptions. No doubt the th is usually represented by the character thurs. In this inscription, however, we appear to be presented with an exception.

The idea that two of the words are Norse and one Celtic seems rather far-fetched and fanciful, and, as it appears to me, not very probable.

Your learned correspondent DR. WILSON seems to set great store on an acquaintance with the Northern Runic alphabet. A knowledge of this might be acquired by any one during a lesson of a quarter of an hour. S. M. Glasgow.

"That the gods met one day in Chorcan, the paradise of delights, when the question came up whether it were All denied it possible to find a faultless prince or no. except Vachichten, who maintained that Achandiren his disciple-had no fault. On this Vichoura Moutren said that if Achandiren were placed in his power, he would show how much Vachichten was mistaken. The gods consented, and Vichoura Moutren put the victim to every conceivable trial; dethroned him; reduced him to poverty; killed his only son; carried off his wife," &c.

Achandiren, however, remained steadfast through all his trials, and was eventually rewarded by the gods in an extraordinary manner, and had his wife and son restored to him. Whence did the legend originate, and what is its age?

WM. PICKARD.

SWORD QUERY: SAHAGUM (3rd S. xi. 296, 431.) The Irish are particularly famous for absurd derivations, and their language being almost unknown