Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/228

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

220


NOTES AND QUERIES, to* s. ra MABC& ie, 1001,


name and no more. The Procrustean treatment necessary to the accomplishment of the scheme is fatal to its value. Thumb-nail encyclopaedias are not as yet indispensable in a world even where people have not time for accuracy.

The First Part of King Henry IV. ; The Second Part of King Henry I V. With Introductions and Notes by John Dennis. (Bell & Sons.) THE two latest issues of the " Chiswick Shake- speare" consist of the first and second parts of 'King Henry IV.,' reprinted from the Cambridge text with the valuable introductions and notes of Mr. Dennis and the quaint and effective illustra- tions of Mr. By am Shaw. The volumes keep up their beauty and value, and the edition is the prettiest that has been issued in this size. The text is wonderfully clear and legible, and our only complaint against the work is that it is almost too beautiful for the drudgery to which a handy edition of Shakespeare should be assigned.

Winchester. By R. Townsend Warner. (Bell &

Sons.)

OF the series of "Handbooks to the Great Public Schools," of which three or four successive volumes have appeared, this upon Winchester by Mr. Warner, a late scholar, is the most interesting and readable. Winchester is not only the oldest of our great public schools, it is also the most pleasantly situated, and it can boast the possession of the quaintest and most picturesque customs and traditions. Mr. Warner is justified in com- plaining of the difficulty of writing a book for two classes of readers, one class of which knows all that is to be known, while the second seeks information on matters the most familiar to the other. Such difficulty is inherent in the series. By the aid of copious illustrations he conveys an excellent idea of the buildings and proceedings at "the mother of schools." A separate portion of his volume is devoted to school "notions" and customs, the former, as is known to all Wyke- hamists, indicating the school language. It is interesting, but not unexpected, to find in this many good old English words which have dropped out of use elsewhere. "Swink," for hard work, recalls thus not only Chaucer, who is quoted by Mr. Warner, but Milton, whose

Swinked hedger at his supper sat.

Most of the information now supplied is accessible in other works, of which a goodly number were issued in connexion with the celebration in 1893 of the tive hundredth anniversary of the opening of the school. Some unpublished historical matter has, however, been obtained from the Verney MSS. in the shape of school letters of the seventeenth century.

The English Catalogue of Books for 1900. (Sampson

Low Co.)

THIS annual, the most indispensable of all to the lover, the purchaser, and the seller of books, puts in once more its appearance. If, as has been said, the war has influenced unfavourably the production of books, no trace of such effect is to be found, the latest volume having the customary dimensions. Some new features present themselves, such as a list of the principal publishers in the United States, and a list of works on angling, fish, and fishing,


which supplements the ' Bibliotheca Piscatorla' issued in 1883 by Mr. T. Satchell. A never-failing welcome is once more heartily renewed.

THE March part of Man, including Nos. 27 to 38, has many articles of interest, some of them illus- trated. Mr. Henry Balfour, discoursing on Austra- lia, gives us some designs of boomerangs. Mr. F. Fawcett has some valuable notes on the Dombs of Madras, an outcast jungle people occupying the forests about Vizagapatam. Mr. Edge-Partington deals with Maori relics from New Zealand and with feathered arrows from the New Hebrides. Mr. C. M. Woodford writes on 'Tattuing,'and gives some striking illustrations of that art. It is desir- able that the spelling of words such as tattoo, taboo, &c., should be fixed on a definite basis.

DR. WILLIAM E. A. AXON has reprinted from the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Anti- quarian Society Simwnt Fychan's Welsh Transla- tion of Martial's Epigram of the Happy Life, 1571. It is taken from a unique broadside in the Chetham Library, one of the treasures of which it is, has great interest, and supplements the information given in the 'D.N.B.' concerning the translator. As Dr. Axon, an excellent judge, says, it has claims upon the philologist, the bibliographer, the antiquary, and the lover of literature.


Jt0tic.es to

We must call special attention to the following notices :

ON all communications must be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for pub- lication, but as a guarantee of good faith.

WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately.

To secure insertion of communications corre- spondents must observe the following rules. Let each note, query, or reply be written on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear. When answer- ing queries, or making notes with regard to previous entries in the paper, contributors are requested to put in parentheses, immediately after the exact heading, the series, volume, and page or pages to which they refer. Correspondents who repeat- queries are requested to head the second com- munication "Duplicate."

E. T. BRYDGES. A "Duns" man means a man learned in the theology of Duns Scotus, a four- teenth-century divine, who was followed in England by many " Scotists," as Erasmus terms them. See the works of the latter or any good encyclopedia.

H. G. H. ("Orientation of Churches in England.") You will find the subject discussed in the pages of ' N. & Q.' See 6 th S. xii. 165 ; 9 th S. v. 333, and under various headings the indexes generally.

CORRIGENDUM. P. 178, col. 1, 1. 35, for "and" read of.

NOTICE.

Editorial Communications should be addressed to " The Editor of ' Notes and Queries ' "Advertise- ments and Business Letters to "The Publisher at the Office, Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane, B.C.

We beg leave to state that we decline to return communications which, for any reason, we do not print ; and to this rule we can make no exception ,,