96
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. JA*. ao, wo*.
Wad Close. A dialectic form of woad, a
plant used for dying. This spot has perhaps
been a place where woad has been grown.
It was a crop very exhausting to the land,
and tenant farmers were often prohibited
from growing it. In many old leases a
covenant is found making the growth of
"woad, otherwise called wad," penal.
EDWARD PEACOCK.
Wickentree House, Kirton-in-Lindsey.
THE WYKEHAMICAL WORD "TOYS" (9 th S. xii. 345, 437, 492 ; 10 th S. i. 13, 50). I should like to thank PROF. SKEAT for the opinion which my solicitation (at the third reference) induced him to express (at the fourth) upon the various derivations assigned to this word. The question, When did the word come into use at Winchester ] may perhaps be material to the question, What is its true origin ] and for this reason I offer the following evidence that the word was already current among the boys in 1771. I have a manuscript copy of a series of letters written during 1770 and 1771 by a " commoner " to his brother who was absent from the school on account of ill- health, and the following passage occurs in one of these letters, which is dated Winton, 30 June, 1771 :
" The mice have found means to get into the well of your under Toys ; and to make a little havock with some of your Papers : your upper Toys I found open, nothing is missing as I can find except the sixth Volume of Pope's Works."
I imagine that the writer meant by " upper Toys " the cupboard which formed the uppei part of his brother's bureau, and that this bureau was similar to the bureaux which are sketched in the illustration at p. 20 of Words worth's ' The College of St. Mary Winton near Winchester ' (1848), and at p. 226 of Walcott'sr ' William of Wykeham and his Colleges (1852). (See also the picture of 'Seventl Chamber ' in Radclyffe's ' Memorials of Win Chester College.') Mr. R, B. Mansfield, m doubt, had bureaux of this kind in his mind' eye when he penned his definition of " toys which I cited at the third reference. Thes. simple movable bureaux have now been superseded at Winchester generally, if no entirely, by fixed furniture of a somewha more complex character. The word "toys has been transferred to this furniture, am accordingly a boy's "toys" now mean, as rule, certain fixed furniture which has been allotted to him for his own use. Specimen of the old bureaux, however, still exist, am one of them is preserved in the colleg museum.
The mere fact that space is occupied by th furniture allotted to each boy does not justif
cceptance of the derivation of " toys " front
Fr. toise=& fathom," which is offered by
ie authors of the useful book mentioned at
!ie last reference. They give no historical
vidence pointing to a connexion between
' toys " and toise, and until some evidence of
he supposed connexion has been given, it
eems prudent to abstain from regarding this-
erivation as satisfactory.
In view of PROP. SKEAT'S suggestion that he word may be only " a peculiar use of the ommpn E. toy" I venture to quote the follow- ng passage from Addison's 'Remarks on taly' (Kurd's edition of Addison's 'Works/ ro\. ii., 1811, p. 167) :
"One cannot but be amazed to see such a pro- usion of wealth laid out in coaches, trappings, ables, cabinets, and the like precious toys, in vhich there are few princes in Europe who equal hem."
This passage is cited in the ' Century Dic- ionary,' vol. vi., under " toy," with a reference o Bohn's edition of Addison, i. 504. H. C.
SADLER'S WELLS PLAY ALLUDED TO BY WORDSWORTH (10 th S. i. 7, 70). It may in-
- erest H. W. B. to know that in an unpub-
ished letter from Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, postmarked 11 July, 1803, is this passage :
" We went last week with Southey and Rickman and his sister to Sadlers Wells, the lowest and most London-like of all [of] any London amusements t,he entertainments were ' Goody Two Shoes,' ' Jack the Giant Killer,' and ' Mary of Buttermere'! poor Mary was very happily married at the end of the piece, to a sailor her former sweetheart we had a prodigious fine view of her father's house in the vale of Buttermere mountains very like large haycocks, and a lake like nothing at all if you had been with us, would you have laughed the whole time like Charles and Miss Rickman or gone to sleep as Southey and Rickman did."
E. V. LUCAS.
RICHARD NASH (9 th S. xi. 445 ; xii. 15, 116, 135, 272, 335, 392, 493 ; 10 th S. i. 32). The con- fusion over the so-called Chesterfield epigram has arisen mainly from the fact that there was always (at least for more than one hun- dred and fifty years) a statue, as now, of Beau Nash in the Bath Pump Room, but no picture of him. It was natural that some should conclude that the correct reading was "the statue (not picture) placed the busts between." The lines were, however, written before the statue was carved. When a second assembly room was opened on the Terrace Walk (called, after the lessee, "Wiltshire's") in 1729-30, it was adorned, it is believed, with a full-length portrait of Nash (then in the height of his popularity), which was sup- ported by the busts of Newton and Pope,
