Preston and Weymouth, is the site of a large Roman cemetery, from which hundreds of skeletons have been exhumed. There are yet two curiosities deserving some separate mention; one in the far east and the other in the far west of Dorset. The Agglestone is an isolated block of ferruginous sandstone, lying on the heathy moor of Purbeck, about three miles from the mouth of Poole harbour. Theories of its origin abound; the legendary one being, that the devil, seated on the Needles, threw his cap in a frolic at the towers of Corfe, and that the cap fell short on the heath. The least unlikely supposition is this: that for some religious purpose-perhaps Druidical-blocks of the ferruginous sandstone of the district were pieced together, and that the moist semi-oxygenated particles of iron had enough power of agglutination to fix the blocks permanently. The computed weight of this curious holy-stone '—if that is the right interpretation of the name is 400 tons. It is 37 feet long, 19 feet wide, and 15 feet high. The Pinney Landslip has been the wonder of West Dorset ever since the winter of 1839. It is near the Devon border, and close by Lyme Regis, a town that has stood almost as hard knocks as any in England. Twice burnt by the French in the fourteenth century, when just recovering from the ravages of a tremendous gale in the reign of Richard II., and nearly battered to pieces by Prince Maurice, in 1644, when Governor Ceeley, with Blake to back him, held out during seven memorable weeks, until the siege was raised on the arrival of Essex; Lyme is still a busy little port, and sends its member to Parliament. By the Cobb-that semicircular pier stretching out into the sea, which it has battled with under varying fortunes since Edward I.'s time-Monmouth landed from Amsterdam; and in the George Inn he slept four nights, spending his days in collecting the 2000 troops with whom he set forward on the ill-starred expedition which was to end in capture among the fern under the Woodlands ash-tree. Between Lyme and the mouth of the Axe, as at so many points in the. Isle of Wight, the chalk and sandstone of the down surface rest on loose sand, and this in turn reposes on an impenetrable bed of clay, shelving to the shore. The rain sinks through the upper beds, gathers on the clay, and by and bythrough constantly filtering out the loose sand or fox mouldcompletely undermines the superstrata ; while, by moistening the cernible. The Frampton pavement was found while passages for a hot-air apparatus were being dug at the church. Mr. Medhurst, of Weymouth-who has paid much attention to the Roman remains of this district, and has also opened more than fifty barrows-exhibits a very interesting Museum of British and Roman Antiquities discovered in Dorset. subordinate subordinate clay, it creates a greasy surface equivalent to that produced by tallowing the inclined plane before a ship is launched from the stocks. A very wet season adds to the weight of the incumbent mass at the same time that it more effectually carries on the filtering process; and it is during such seasons that the dislocations have principally occurred. A subsidence, on a scale large enough to form a kind of cliff at the sides of the sunk area, was the chief feature in the landslip of 1839; and this feature, coupled with the wide extent of area affected, distinguished the Pinney catastrophe from those which went before it in the district. The weight of the mass thus launched forward sufficed to turn up the strata below, on the shore, and under the sea in ridges, like the wrinkles which are made by pushing forward a cloth cover on a polished table. But the curiosities of that upheaval were soon obliterated by further convulsions, and changes are even now going on. It was on the night of Christmas eve, 1839, that the great chasm began to open, and all the sinking was over within twenty-four hours, during which forty acres had been lost to cultivation, while two cottages had been moved bodily, and set down with shattered walls on a much lower level. The only noise perceptible was like the rending of cloth, and was heard by a party of coastguard men, who witnessed the first opening of the fissures. The scene of this disaster now forms a curious hollow, containing the orchard which was carried down by the landslip, and a cottage built upon the site of the old ones; and the view of it from the overhanging cliffs is very interesting. It is in descriptions, more scientific than Hutchins could make them, of the natural and artificial curiosities of the county, and in accounts of archæological discoveries made since his time, that the re-issue of the 'History of Dorset' will have an especial value. For laborious collection of detail, and arrangement of it, too, according to his lights, Hutchins stands perhaps alone among his class. Mr. Shipp, of Blandford, in conjunction with the best-informed local antiquarians, is now working hard at a new edition, the first two parts of which have already appeared. To judge by Fuller's list,* Dorset has not been fertile in 'worthies; but Fuller's lists are not always satisfactory, to say nothing of the reputations that have been made since his time. Dorset, though perhaps without much enthusiasm, claims Matthew Prior as a native, who, if he was not born in London, was born at Wimborne. Blandford was the birthplace of a much worthier man, Archbishop Wake, the earnest promoter of schemes for bringing the Anglican and Continental Churches * Worthies, i. 314. into something like union. Cardinal Morton was born at Bere Regis, Stillingfleet close by Cranborne, Thornhill the painter (Hogarth's father-in-law) at Weymouth, Sprat (if we believe his epitaph rather than his biographer) at Beaminster, Henry Chettle (a dramatist cotemporary with Shakspeare) at Blandford St. Mary's, and Thomas Sydenham at Wynford Eagle. Raleigh owned Sherborne, and Sir Christopher Hatton lived at Corfe Castle. Wimborne St. Giles, the birthplace of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, is now possessed by the seventh, who has kept his historical name before the public during a long career of parliamentary and platform activity. Eastbury, a great house by Vanbrugh near Blandford, was an active literary centre in the time of Bubb Dodington, who used to entertain there Young and Thomson, and Fielding and Bentley; but the house has long since been pulled down. Fuller was a Dorset 'worthy' himself, for he held the living of Broadwinsor; Boyle spent several years at Stalbridge; and Christopher Pitt, who translated Lucan and Vida, and who fills up a little interstice in Johnson's Lives between Pope and Thomson, was the rector of Pimperne, near the banks of the Stour. As if to make up for the want of discernment with which the last two centuries admitted men to the rank and title of poet, we seem in the present day to be jealous of any fresh candidate in the field. But no account of Dorset would be complete without some mention of a living writer, who has enriched his county dialect with real poetry, and who, though not yet widely read beyond the border, has long had his merits recognized by a few unquestioned judges-laudatus a laudatis. Born in the Vale of Blackmoor, its very centre, Mr. Barnes has a native's familiarity with every shade of pure Dorset speech. To this, in later years, he has added the observation that is sure to grow up and strengthen during a long and wide course of philological reading and inquiry. His first volume of poems was published in 1848, and to that he appended a glossary, full of interest, and comparatively free from the usual faults of word-collecting zeal. There was a Northamptonshire glossary published some years ago, which, among a great deal that was curious and valuable, told us that the people there say 'bodily' for all at once,' 'crazy' of old buildings, 'daddy' for 'father;' and that *He was originally a compositor, and seems to have been really a man of genius, but always out at elbows. Of his forty plays only four are known, and an account of these is given in Collier's 'History of Dramatic Poetry.' In Henslowe's 'Diary,' among several other similar entries, there is recorded a loan of fifty shillings to 'harey cheattell,' on the strength of a forthcoming 'playe called Troyes Revenge, with the tragedy of polefeme.' He has quite recently (1861) obtained the more public recognition implied in a pension on the Civil List. they they use phrases like to come off with flying colours,' and 'to burn the candle at both ends.' Mr. Barnes manages far better than this; and a few of his generalizations-not, however, all to be met with in the Glossary or in the Preliminary Dissertation— are well worth notice before we come to look at the poems themselves. The following catalogue has been drawn up, in full recognition of the fact that many of the modes of speech found in Dorset are common to all the south-western counties, and even to more remote parts of England with them. In no neighbouring county, however, would it be easy to meet with that aggregate of distinctive modes which exist together in Dorset, and which justify Mr. Barnes in regarding this dialect as a definite shape of the English language, 'broad and bold, as the Doric was in reference to Greek.' Foremost among the leading features is the Dorset theory of personification. This perhaps does more than any other single feature to make outsiders regard the county speech as something `barbarous, and beyond rule altogether. The rule, however, is not so far to seek. Genuine Dorset divides all things, besides men and animals of which the sex is known, into two classes, the personal and the impersonal. To the personal class belong all definite, individual things; and to the impersonal class indefinite quantities of things and abstract nouns. Things of the personal class are taken as masculines, with one set of pronouns ; and the impersonal things are taken with another set of pronouns as neuters. The pronouns of the masculines are he (with en objective), theüs for a nearer object, and thik, with soft th, for a farther one. The neuters have plain it, this, and that. The Dorset man would say, 'that water by thik tree is deep;' but 'this grass under theäs tree is green.' Of a wine-glass or beerglass he would say, 'teäke en up, he'll be a-broke;' but of a piece of glass, 'teäke it up, it'll cut zomebody.' Cutting cloth for a table, the cutter might say, this cloth is wide enough for theas table;' but when once the cloth is made up, it goes over to the other class of nouns, and becomes theäs cloth. Thik is regarded by Mr. Barnes as the Anglo-Saxon tha-yle, which in Chaucer's time had become thilke. The objective en is the Saxon hine. Anglo-Saxon Gospel.-Pilatus acsode hine. } Mark xv. So in Prince Lucien Bonaparte's 'Song of Solomon,' in Transylvanian Saxon, Mr. Barnes finds en in the Dorset form : Transylvanian.-Ech sacht en, awei ech faand en net. He He will not allow the plural em to be a corruption of them, but affirms it to be the old pronoun ham and hem of twelfth-century English and of Chaucer. The line, To have i-put ham from me of Chaucer, is, in Dorset, To have a-put em vrom me. This line contains a specimen of another leading feature, namely, the affix or augment joined to perfect participles, which is the same as the German ge, and answers exactly to Chaucer's y or i. It certainly softened our English speech, and was useful in distinguishing the past participle from the past tense. Chaucer's line, When Hector was y-brought all fresh y-slain, scans well in Dorset, When Hector was a-brought all fresh a-slain ; while, on dropping the affix, the line becomes impossible without an entire change of words. Dorset yields mostly weak preterites, though Mr. Barnes has heard joun for joined, and crope, scrope, from creep, scrape, are common. It has an odd way of distinguishing between aorists and imperfects, by means of the auxiliary do and did. Thus, 'he did beat the chile' is imperfect; he beät the chile' is aorist. A boy was last winter describing the daily state of things at a horse-pond, and said, "They did break the ice o' marnens, and did vind the water a-vroze ageän at night,' just as we use would of repeated action. A similar use is found among the Cornish Bretons, and Bunsen has mentioned its existence in some parts of Germany. There is a singular mode of the infinitive prevalent in the county with a termination in y: Can ye mowy? can ye zewy?' This is always used absolutely, and so differs from the Magyar termination in other respects analogous to it. If the verb is followed by its accusative, the y would at once be dropped: 'Can ye mowy? then mow this grass.' Dorset still keeps a few of the plural forms of nouns with the ending in en so rife among the Frisians, who not only say husen for houses and heäpen for heaps, but even hannen and fuotten for hands and feet. There is a curious metathesis in some words, as haps, claps, for hasp, clasp; but this peculiarity is found in several other counties, Northamp tonshire being an instance. Mr. Barnes claims priority of usage for this form, as in Anglo-Saxon ashes are acsan, though in Frisian they are yeske. The dialect deals largely in diphthongs, as meäde, haÿ, cwold, for mead, hay, cold. English. |