352
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. MAY e, m
wood, from great beams to spirally turned
balusters and a finely carved over-mantel, is
"Baltic." Why, it is wondered, is not the
very pleasant "linen panelling" included in
the query ? H. J. MOULE.
Dorchester.
CHINESE PUNISHMENTS (9 th S. ii. 27, 214, 513). If MR. ANDREWS will make a pilgrimage to " the cross galleries " behind the Imperial Institute he will find, in the South Kensington Museum collections there exhibited, a large Chinese picture of the Deity presiding over the torments of the damned. Although the work purports to be a representation of divine judgment, it is evidently free from idealization, and figures the earthly tortures with which the artist was conversant. No single mind can have invented so many horrors. As a supplement to the picture I commend to MR. ANDREWS'S notice the account of a series of executions in China which occurs in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xvi. p. 54. This paper is, however, without illustrations.
FRANK REDE FOWKE.
24, Victoria Grove, Chelsea, S.W.
LORD LYTTON AND IBN EZRA (9 th S. iii. 165). I cannot find the Italian form of the proverb to which Lord Lytton refers in 4 Money,' but in a small work entitled ' Book of Table-Talk' (1847), vol. i. p. 216, I find given as a proverb used by the Egyptians, " If I were to trade in winding-sheets, no one would die." This they put into the mouth of an unlucky man.
C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.
Bath.
" No GREAT SHAKES " (9 th S. iii. 169, 277). This phrase occurs in a letter from Lord Byron to John Murray, under date Ravenna, 28 Sept., 1820, " So it can be no great shakes." He is speaking of his own brain-child 'Marino Faliero.' Thomas Moore, too, uses the phrase in his lampoon on Leigh Hunt, provoked by Hunt's disparaging 'Lord Byron and his Contemporaries.' In the lampoon Byron figures as a lion and Hunt as a puppy-dog, who, after having been indiscreetly admitted to intimacy with the lion, thought " that the lion was no such great shakes after all." Touching the etymology of " shakes," I dare the audacious suggestion that it may perhaps turn out to be a slight corruption of the German noun Schatz = treasure.
PHILIP KENT.
It has been suggested that this expression has probably arisen from dice-play. If this be so, then we can find a fellow-phrase in
" I will do it in two shakes," or, " in a brace
of shakes," that is, in a moment. This Mr.
Wallace, in 'Popular Sayings Dissected,'
opines is an allusion to the shaking of a
dice-box : but what say our Transatlantic
brethren 1 ? In the States the phrase has, I
believe, no little vogue. I see by the ' Slang
Dictionary,' where " no great shakes " is said
to be equivalent to a bad bargain, that the
expression "a fair shake" is a fair trade
or a good bargain. Mr. W. S. Walsh in his
' Handy Book of Literary Curiosities ' notices
the phrase, defining it as "an expression of
disapproval," probably originating in the cur-
rent belief that character can be estimated
by the manner of hand-shaking. Another
explanation is that the phrase is an allusion
to the practice of shaking walnut trees to
dislodge the fruit, so that where the crop of
walnuts is scanty there will be " no great
shakes." Mr. Walsh is an American, and his
explanations are at least original. Whether
he hits the mean must remain an open
question ; but I must say that the first
explanation seems wide of the mark. This
character from hand-shaking is quite a
modern cult some good people nowadays
seem to have a mania for discerning character
in almost everything relating to the person
which the expression antedates. At least,
such is my impression ; but like most mortals
I am not of the infallible. C. P. HALE.
WALLER (9 th S. iii. 165). I was much pleased by reading MR. YARDLEY'S short appreciation of Waller. To Waller may be applied what De Quincey said of Donne, "a man not appre- ciated." But while " Go, lovely rose," is, con- sensu omnium, his finest lyric, as an admirer of Waller I could scarcely subscribe to the opinion that this alone has kept his memory green. There are many " one-poem men " in the language, but Waller is not one of the number. The song " To Flavia : 'Tis not thy beauty," c., makes a good second, and the " girdle " verses have been much admired. "Phyllis, why should we delay 1 ?" is another fine lyric. From Waller half a dozen lyrics, at least, could be selected, which, notwith- standing all our advance in lyric poetry, would yet be among the best short poems iii any anthology. THOMAS AULD.
"THE OLD FRENCHMAN " (9 th S. iii. 287). Christian Rimminick was of Swiss extraction, and was a well-known Echo seller in the Strand and Fleet Street. He lived in Chapel Court, Clement's Inn Passage, where he died (? 1898) at the age of seventy-eight. He sat as an artist's model, and a portrait of him is said to exist at the Savage Club ; another
