LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1898. CONTENTS.-N° 133. am stondende contynueli bi day"; A.V., "I stand continually in the watch tower in the daytime." In Jer. xxxi. 21 we have, "Ordeyne to thee a NOTES:-Tothill, 21-Virgil, 22-Phil or Philo-Letter of toting place"; A.V., "Make thee high heaps "; and Grimaldi, 24-The Great Cryptogram-Epitaph-Elephant 2 Kings (2 Sam.), v. 7, 9, "David took the totehil and Aristotle-Robinson Cruso, 25-The Lincolnshire Poacher'-Lot-" Phiz" and "Alfred Crowquill," 26. of Syon," and "David dwellide in the totehil"; "the stronghold,' ""the fort." QUERIES:-Chame-Grant's 'Sketches in London'-Trinkets -Pitshanger - Order of the Southern Cross Muffled Moonlight"-Dympna-St. Colan, 33-Spanish WrecksDemocracy-0. Goldsmith-Adjectives ending in -ic, -ical, 34-Belgian Arms - Balk- Matthew's Bible, 35-CecilsCentury-"Of a certain age," 36-Use of York-The Curtin -Extract from Parish Register-F. Tavares, 37-"Dead Men"=Empty Bottles-"To chew the rag"-"To make up his mouth "New English Dictionary,' 38. NOTES ON BOOKS:-Murray's New English Dictionary Part IV.-Verity's Works of Etherege-Jacobs's North's Morall Philosophie of Doni.' Notices to Correspondents, &c. Notes. · TOTHILL, WESTMINSTER. I had imagined that the question of the etymology of Tothill had been long since settled, and that its derivation from tote or toute, to look or peep, connected with the Anglo-Saxon totian, to lift up, to elevate, was generally accepted, all being agreed that tothill or toothill was an early designation for a look-out post. But the saying that "errors die hard" is nowhere more true than in etymology, and the more far-fetched and improbable a derivation is, the more pertinaciously is it clung to, even when a clear and obvious derivation is close at hand. We may safely assert, pace "the Builder of 1875" (the Builder of 1888 would not, I think, have published such nonsense), that "the hill of Hermes" and the "teuthill of the Saxons" are not "the same," and that neither in Westminster nor anywhere else has the toothill any connexion with Taisco, or Teut, or Thoth, or any other fabulous deity. If, instead of puzzling their brains with old mythologies, our would-be etymologists had turned to Wycliffe's Bible, they would have found the word, in its true meaning as a beacon or look-out station, in more places than one. Thus, Isaiah xxi. 5, we read, "Set the bord, bihold in a toothill," where in the A.V. we have, "Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower"; and again, v. 8 of the same chapter, “Up on the toot hill of the Lord I A.V., In the Promptorium Parvulorum' we find, "Tote Hylle, specula, a hey place of lokynge," where the late Mr. Albert Way, in his learned note, says "the term seems to denote a look-out or watch tower." Mr. Way remarks upon the frequent occurrence of the word in many parts of England, as enumerated by Mr. Hartshorne in his Salopia Antiqua,' e. g., Castle Toote, Fairy Toote, Twt Hill at Carnarvon, &c. He also quotes a passage from 'Sir John Maundeville's Travels,' P. 378, occurring in a description of the gardens of a king of India, in which is mentioned "a litylle Toothille with toures, &c.," where the monarch was wont to take the air and disport himself. The Tothill in question at Westminster, whose name still survives in the locality, was the lookout hill of the Abbey, answering to the still existing mound at the north-east corner of the close at Peterborough known as the Toothill, on which a tower is said to have been built by Turold, the first Norman abbot, for the defence of his monastery. There is a similar mound at the south-west corner of the close at Ely, known at Cherry Tree Hill, and another in Deanery Garden, at Rochester. We learn from the late Mr. Burtt's paper on 'The Muniments of the Abbey of Westminster' (Archæological Journal, vol. xxix. p. 141) that the name Totehull occurs early in the thirteenth century for the large tract of land, the waste of the manor, afterwards called Tothill Fields, on which the inhabitants of the manor had common rights, extending from the Abbey Close on the east to Eye and Chelsea on the west, and from the Thames on the south to the manors of Hyde and Knightsbridge on the north. In the time of Elizabeth this wide waste was a common place for duels and assemblies of various kinds, "not generally of the best." To these fields the gentry also used to resort "for their recreation at bowles, goffe, and stow ball," and it was used "for exercize and discipline of horse and foote," "the herbage being very advantageous and profitable to many poore inhabitants." Horse races were also run in the eighteenth century in Tothill Fields, and booths and scaffolds were erected for the spectators, for admission to which payment was demanded "as for the use of the Dean and Chapter." The mob on these occasions proving unruly and riotous, the Government were not unreasonably "offended," and "the Dean and Chapter were highly reflected on" for allowing their land to be so used. The parents of boys at Westminster School also grew uneasy, and threatened that complaints should be laid before Parliament if these "riotous assemblies" were not put a stop to. An order was therefore issued September 28, 1736, by the then Dean (Bishop Wilcocks of Rochester) that the races, which were then just over, were "not to be revived nor allowed any more." The "booths and benches were to be "forth with taken away," and the fields reduced to their former state. The Abbey authorities, however, contented themselves with issuing the prohibition, taking no care to see it carried out. The races were renewed, and the Abbey Muniment Room contains a printed bill announcing the races held in Tothill Fields in 1747, in which "a saddle, bridle, and surcingle, value two guineas," were offered as the prize for the winning horse, and "a whip at half a guinea" for the second. This must have been nearly the end of these public nuisances, for the next year (1748) an action in which the rights of the Chapter were involved was settled by arbitration in a way which virtually devoted the fields to building pur poses. To to the best of my ability, as I cannot endure to think that such disrespect should be shown to "the sweet singer of golden throat and tongue,” as Mr. Swinburne calls Virgil, in a magazine of N. & Q.'s' high standing, and should pass unchallenged. I wish at the outset to say that I have no pretensions to profound scholarship; but one does not require to be a very profound scholar to feel the beauty of Virgil's diction and the charm of the "long roll" of his hexameter. The latter Lord Tennyson, in his address Virgil,' an ode worthy both of Tennyson and of his subject, calls "the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man." I should say rather the stateliest with one exception, namely Milton's blank verse, and I do not think Tennyson, judging from what he says of Milton's verse in his beautiful Alcaics entitled Milton,' would entirely disagree with me. Virgil's verse, however, without wishing to speak dogmatically, surely comes next to Milton's in grandeur of sound and rhythmic roll; and possibly if Latin were our native tongue we might consider it equal to Milton's. Mr. Gladstone, a critic "in the foremost files of time" in every sense of the word, in his Homer Primer' calls Virgil "a supreme master of versification," although he does not think that he possesses the same mastery over his hexameter that Homer possesses over his. As, then, two eminent living poets and one eminent living critic, not to speak of lesser lights, praise Virgil in terms sufficiently warm to satisfy Virgil's most devoted admirers as many devoted admirers I am sure he I can throw no light upon the connexion of St. still has-might not this alone give the iconoclasts Ermin with Tothill Fields. A St. Erminus is pause before speaking of him in terms so depreciamentioned in the 'Dictionary of Christian Bio-tory as those of the reviewer above mentioned? graphy,' a native of Laon, and Abbot of Lobbes in Hainault, who died A.D. 737; but it is hard to conceive that any church or chapel in England was called after him. There is a parish of St. Erme in Cornwall, north-east of Truro, and there was a chapel under the same dedication at Marazion, both named after a certain "Sanctus Hermes,"" who, according to William Wyrcester, was a confessor in that county, whose name is found in a Breton liturgy of the tenth century. But the name of an obscure Celtic saint is not likely to have been recognized beneath the shadow of the great Abbey of Westminster. Of one thing we may, however, be certain, that the Westminster St. Ermin has no more connexion with the god Hermes than Tothill Fields have with Teut or The mound, or tote hill, from which the district derived its name was removed, and the ground levelled, about 1658. In that year a petition of the commoners of Westminster against the encroachments on the fields speaks of " a great hill" having "lately stood there," the earth of which, when carted away, consisted of "many thousand loads." The petitioners complain that, through the neglect of its proper guardians, the site of the tote hill had become a pond," or quagmire, so deep that a horse had been lately "strangled or smothered" in it, and that in the daytime. Thoth. EDMUND VENABLES. VIRGIL AND MODERN ICONOCLASM. In 'N. & Q.,' 7th S. v. 400 it was stated by a reviewer that Virgil's olden pedestal knows him no more, and that his cultus is bygone. As Virgil is one of my most valued poets, I should be very glad, with the Editor's kind permission, to answer this In a very admirable passage quoted by Prof. Sellar in his 'Roman Poets of the Augustan Age,' Burke according to Lord Macaulay" our greatest man since Milton "-says that when we find we cannot admire a poet or painter whom the world has almost unanimously agreed to admire, we ought rather to believe that we are dull than that the rest of the world has been imposed on." One of the authors whom Burke mentions by name as an example is Virgil. Why is Virgil less great now than he was in the days of Burke, or in those of Milton, or in those of Scaliger? It is no doubt true that Dante was scarcely able to judge of the merits of his " dolcissimo padre" relatively to other great poets, because it is very improbable that Dante knew anything of Homer except at second hand, and modern literature, except in his own person, had not begun. But this objection does not attach to the many devoted lovers that Virgil has had during the last two centuries, who have been able to compare him with Homer and Dante and Milton, and who, although not ranking him quite so high as these, have agreed that he is only immediately below them. Poetry is not like science. When one scientific invention supersedes another, the older at once becomes valueless, and is of no further use than as a curiosity in a museum; but this is not the case with literature and art. Here I will allow a better man than myself to speak for me. De Quincey, I do not know in which of his works, in speaking of the difference between what he calls "the literature of knowledge" and "the literature of power," says: "Let its teaching [that is, the teaching of the literature of knowledge] be even partially revised, let it be but expanded, nay, let its teaching be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest works in the literature of power, surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable amongst men.... The Iliad,' the 'Prometheus' of Eschylus, the 'Othello' or King Lear,' the Hamlet' or Macbeth,' or the 'Paradise Lost,' are not militant, but triumphant for ever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. To reproduce them in new forms or variations, even if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam-engine is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo." If De Quincey is right-and who can doubt that he is ?-must not Virgil's poetry be as valuable today as it was when the poet in the streets of Rome was pointed out "digito prætereuntium"? Spenser, Ben Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Burke, Wordsworth, Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo,* not to mention a cloud of other witnesses both in our own and in foreign lands, have, some in one way, some in another, borne testimony to the great merits of Virgil's poetry. Are we better judges of poetry than these great men were? Although Milton did not take a humble view of his own poetical genius, but regarded himself, justly, as one of the great poets of the world, I do not imagine that he ever thought himself equal to Virgil. I am not now speaking of what others think of the relative merits of the two poets, but of what Milton himself thought. I am not aware that Virgil has ever, at least since the revival of Greek learning in Europe, ranked amongst the poets of whom invention is the supreme quality; he is, I suppose, the highest development the world has seen of a literary poet as distinguished from elemental forces like Homer, Dante, and, remembering the colossal figure of Satan, I need not hesitate to add Milton. Cowley calls Virgil the wise, Whose verse walks highest but not flies. This is hardly just. Virgil's verse does fly, but not with so sustained a flight as that of the other three great epic poets of the world. But although Cowley speaks of Virgil so far with a note of seeming depreciation, he would, I am sure, have In Victor Hugo's ' Chansons des Rues et des Bois' I find no fewer than eight allusions to Virgil by name. been astonished and grieved could he have foreseen that in the nineteenth century critics would arise who would assert that Virgil has fallen from his pedestal, and that his cultus is bygone. Let I have called Virgil "a literary poet." But what literature Virgil's poetry is! I feel almost ashamed to indicate passages which must be much more familiar to your classical and scholarly readers than they are to myself. I will therefore content myself with selecting a few jewels from Virgil's inexhaustible storehouse "with diamond flaming and with gold." I have drawn them entirely from the Eneid,' because I believe that even modern iconoclasts admit the perfection of the 'Bucolics' and the Georgics.' But even the 'Bucolics' and the Georgics,' with all their finished beauty of form, would not by themselves entitle Virgil to rank amongst the Dii majores of poetry, as I think he does, or at least ought to do now. me first take the two similes, lib. i. 498-502, and lib. iv. 141-149. Might not any poet that ever lived have been proud to write these? In the first the numbers seem to dance, as they do in the best parts of the Faery Queene.' Equally beautiful are the descriptions of the constellations (lib. iii. of the bees (lib. vi. 707-709), of the calm repose 515-517), of the Elysian Fields (lib. vi. 638–647), and peace of night (lib. iv. 522-527), of Circe's For examples of Virgil's power and sublimity see dwelling (lib. vii. 10-14), and of Iris (lib. iv. 700-1). the description of an eruption of Etna (lib. iii. 571-577*), the description of Mount Atlas (lib. iv. 246-251), the description of Eneas's blazing helmet and shield, with the illustrative images of the comets and the dog-star (lib. x. 270-275), a passage of Miltonic splendour; the famous passage beginning "Excudent alii" (lib. vi. 848-854), and lib. iii. 583–587, and lib. viii. 429-432. The the idea of mystery and obscurity. (My authority last two passages were admired by Burke as giving for this is the "Globe" Virgil.) Burke might have added to these two other "mysterious" namely lib. iv. 460-468, and lib. vi. 268-272. sufficient to mention the story of the sack of Troy For examples of Virgil's sustained flight it is in the second book, and the almost Dantean power of the description of unhappy deserted Dido's woes and death in the fourth book. If each and all of these passages are not poetry of the highest, or at all events of a very high order, will the iconoclasts tell us why they are not so? passages, I must not intrude further on your space or on your readers' patience. I only wish that my power were equal to my will, and that I were able adequately to defend the divine Mantuan swan against modern iconoclasm. I can bring to my task only much love, and zeal I hope not entirely without knowledge. The adequateness I must * A translation of these lines was Sir Walter Scott's first attempt in poetry at the age of eleven. leave to better scholars than myself. I will now conclude with a question which is perhaps easier for me to ask than for Virgil's detractors to answer. If after nearly two thousand years of unbroken reputation we are to be told that the great poet, of whom Tennyson says that he has "all the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase," and that his "ocean-roll of rhythm sounds for ever of Imperial Rome," is now, like Dagon in Milton, "fallen flat and shaming his worshippers," what guarantee have we that the reputation of any poet, even that of Homer or of Dante, will endure for ever? JONATHAN BOUCHIER. This process, like the movement of the glacier, is imperceptible at any given moment, yet it is ever going on. It might be compared to the movement of the hands of a clock, or even to the geologic slowness of the evolutions which occur in the structure of the earth. Like pulsation in a living body, it continues while a language lives; when it ceases the language is dead. Without dwelling here on the various features of this process, I would advert now to those changes which arise from corruption; from the gradual advance and establishment of positive error. Changes due to legitimate and healthy growth are to be welcomed-those due to the creeping paralysis of error should be resisted. Of course, in matters of language, when error becomes universal it becomes law-communis error facit jus-but it should never be allowed to reach that stage without a struggle. Purists have by this time almost abandoned all resistance to the abuse of such words as mutual, reliable, and the like. Such abuses have now almost established themselves in the language, and there is no more to be said about it. But there are some creeping errors which have not yet attained general sanction; and, on the principle of principiis obsta, these should be resisted while there is yet time to do so. Conspicuous among these is the use, or rather the abuse, of the Greek derivative phil, or phile, or philo in the formation of English compound words. Here error, though not yet established, is creeping on apace, and it is time to make a stand against it. There would seem to be no clear idea of the correct law for the use of this factor; certainly there is no fixed and uniform practice in the matter. One writer adopts one way; another adopts its opposite; and sometimes the same writer, ay, and in the same sentence, adopts both ways. But there is only one right way. Phil, or philo, as a prefix has an active sense-as philanthropist, one who loves man; Philip, lover of horses. Phil, or phile, as a suffix, has a passive sense-as Theophilus, beloved by God. Thus when we wish to denote one who loves the Turks or the Russians we should not say Turcophile or Russophile, but philo-Turk and philo-Russ, as in phil-Hellene, philharmonic, and the like. In the Edinburgh Review for April, 1888, in an article on Froude's late book on the West Indies, both forms actually occur in the same sentence: "It may gladden the heart of the negrophile and the philanthropist." Both forms cannot be right; not, at least, until the law of communis error-here happily not yet established-make them so. It is worth while to try to preserve accuracy in this matter; and it is to be hoped that Dr. Murray will come to the rescue. Of course, if the sovereign English people prefer to be wrong, why then, as the Italians say, padronissimo! P. MAXWELL. LETTER OF JOSEPH GRIMALDI.-I beg to forward an accurate copy of an original holograph letter of the famous comedian Joseph Grimaldi, not before printed nor out of private hands, now in my possession. Except any notes there may be in his Memoirs' by Dickens, I only remember one printed letter of the greatest English pantomimist, viz., that in the Autographic Mirror (vol. iii. No. 75). ་ This letter of which I send a copy is intrinsically interesting as mentioning his family. Dickens does not give the name of either his father or grandfather. Whitehead supplies the name of the former only. This letter gives both fully, with the additional information that both were born in Italy. The address also is one not given by Dickens. The accuracy of the letter is confirmed by the fact that Grimaldi's brother's name also was John Baptist (Memoirs,' 6). The period of his father's arrival in England as "at least "forty years before, or 1770, is so far accurate, Giuseppe Grimaldi having first acted in London in 1758, and no doubt he arrived in England in 1757. This date also explodes the common story (repeated in every life) that Giuseppe Grimaldi came to England with Queen Charlotte, who did not come to this country until 1761, in the August of which year she was married to George III. This is only one of the manifest inaccuracies found in the printed notices of Joseph Grimaldi, the whole of which need thorough sifting. This could only be completely accomplished by a publication of his autobiography, mentioned in N. & Q.' as being a few years since in Mr. Stevens's possession, I think. This autobiography would be of great interest, and no doubt have a large sale; so it seems a great pity it has not yet, forty-three years after the writer's death, seen the light of publicity. Is there no possibility of its being published ? Mr Joseph Grimaldi's Compliments to Mr is extremely sorry Business prevented an immediate answer and that he is fearful he cannot give Mr that intelligence he wishes in respect to his family his Father dying when he was very Youug. My Father's name was Joseph Grimaldi! My grandfather John Baptist Grimaldi! both Natives of Italy what part thereoff I cannot Bay And have no Relative on my Father's side that I know off Living in England. the time of my Father's coming to this Country cannot exactly say but suppose at least it must be Forty years. No 4 Baynes Row Cold Bath square 16th May 1810. D J. THE GREAT CRYPTOGRAM.-Mr. Donelly professes to have discovered a cipher by which he can give a narrative of Shakspeare's early life. It would be waste of time to discuss at any length the absurdities and anachronisms which occur in this bogus tale. A few words, however, may, perhaps, be useful to warn those who may attach importance to the imposing array of figures prefixed to the words picked out for use. In pp. 763, 764, he makes "John" Babbington, Bishop of Worcester, the narrator of Shakspeare's youthful follies, which, he states, had been brought under his own notice at the time they were committed. The supposed narrator was Gervase, not John, Babbington, and was not Bishop of Worcester or connected with the diocese till A.D. 1597. All the references, therefore, to "my Lord John" of Worcester are gross blunders, of which no contemporary writer was likely to have been guilty. John Whitgift was Bishop of Worcester when Shakspeare was a youth, and was translated to Canterbury A.D. 1584. While Bishop of Worcester his residence was at Hartlebury Castle, more than twenty-five miles from Stratford-on-Avon by road. The notion that he knew such a boy as Donelly makes out Shakspeare to have been is ridiculous. The visits said to have been paid to the Bishop by Ann Hathaway with her troop of female neighbours are moonshine; the object of them is absurd. The bishop had no jurisdiction in the matter of the boy's debts; nor was the boy liable to arrest for them, being under age. The whole story is clumsy; events are crowded into a few days which would have occupied months. Again, Sir Thomas Lucy, Knt., was never styled "My Lord" (pp. 733, 737, 744), nor his manor a "barony" (p. 757); this is a Scottish term. Harry of Monmouth's father was not a Duke of Monmouth (p. 1708), but Henry IV., King of England, created Duke of Hereford A.D. 1397. In short, we are asked to believe a perfectly sickening mass of rubbish. A. W. CORNELIUS HALLEN, M. A., F.S.A.Scot., I am harbored here below with many of our fleet I am informed by a friend who was in the navy St. Austin's, Warrington. THE ELEPHANT AND ARISTOTLE.-The follow ing paragraph is cut by me out of the Globe of April 5:— "One of the elephants belonging to Messrs. John Sanger & Sons has recently given birth to a calf, which, though dead, has been preserved, and can be seen on application at the works in St. Ann's Road, Stamford Hill." The statement that an elephant has given birth to a calf here in England is curious; and it must, I think, be interesting to all students of natural history, if only for the reason that Aristotle tells us that this animal is never known to breed in captivity. E. WALFORD, M.A. 7, Hyde Park Mansions, N.W. ROBINSON CRUSO. (See 7th S. i. 89, 137, 158, 215, 295, 398.)-Some interesting information may be obtained from the lately published 'Admissions to Gonville and Caius College, 1558-1678,' by J. Venn, Senior Fellow. Four members of the Norwich family of that name were admitted to the college : 1. "Aquila Cruso, son of John Cruso, a Belgian; School, Norwich, under Mr. Stonham [private], aged 15, adm. 1610." Afterwards fellow. This is, I think, the Aquila Cruso of Sussex referred to on p. 398. He was tutor 1621-24. 2. "John Cruso, son of John Cruso, merchant, born at Norwich, age 14, admitted 1632." Probably a brother of Aquila Cruso. 3. "John Crusoe, son of John Crusoe of Norfolk, D.C.L., formerly fellow of the college, born at Bristol, age 16, admitted 1661." Probably son of No. 2. 4. “Francis Crusoe, son of Aquila Crusoe, citizen of Norwich, born there, at school under |