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of St. John's Church, Middleton, North War- Italian: "Battendosi la zucca wickshire :

All you who are Ringers
This do ye Mark,

He That Throws o'er A Bell
Pays a groat to the Clerk.
If with Hat on or Spur you
Perchance Should Ring,
You must pay two-pence

For that Very same Thing.
And for Every Oath taken
You one shilling do pay,
Or be expelled from the belfry
Without Any delay.

Langstone, Erdington.

I. HALL, Clerk. 1782. BENJ. WALKER.

Many such rimes have been printed in 'N. & Q. The largest collection, however, is to be found in Briscoe's 'Curiosities of the Belfry.' BELLRINGER.

An extensive collection of these rimes, including the one quoted by C. C. B. from Haxey Church, is given in Mr. J. Potter Briscoe's 'Curiosities of the Belfry,' London, 1883. Further examples are given in the Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer's Church Lore Gleanings,' London, 1891, chap. viii. H. ANDREWS.

I think there must be a good many ringers' rimes similar to those at Haxey still remaining; but the only ones I distinctly call to mind are the much earlier ones at Scotter. They are printed in North's Church Bells of Lincolnshire,' p. 632. North gives the Haxey rimes at p. 446. Durham.

J. T. F.

There are many such rimes displayed in belfry towers throughout the country. I remember noting a similar effusion at All Saints' Church, Hastings. This, with many others, will be found in the chapter headed "Laws of the Belfry" in 'Curious Church Customs,' edited by William Andrews, F.R.H.S., 1895. On 26 August, 1898, Mr. Harry. Hems, a frequent and valued correspondent of N. & Q.,' contributed to Church Bells the riming 'Rules, Orders, and Regulations of the Belfry of Brushford,' Somerset. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

"PERSIMMON" (6th S. ii. 107; 8th S. x. 295). -The question has been twice asked what De Quincey meant by saying, "It passes my persimmon." I would suggest that he probably had a vague notion of the size of the fruit, which is really like a small plum, and that he meant my head, i.e., my comprehension. Compare the use of zucca, a gourd, in

xviii. 124). Portland, Oregon.

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RICHARD H. THORNTON.

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CARRIAGE OF A SWORD-BELT (9th S. iv. 286). -The observations of KILLIGREW on this subject seem to require some comment, as he appears to be under the misapprehension that the "carriages' or "hangers" of the latter part of the sixteenth century were similar to the "billets or buckling pieces" he refers to, and that the H.E.D.' is wrong in 66 obsolete." The term stating that they are may be common, but is not now applied to the same article. The original carriages are scarce, but two or three were contained in the Meyrick Collection of Ancient Arms and Armour, exhibited some years back at South Kensington, but now dispersed; and the 'Dictionary' to Planche's 'Costumes,' plate iv., gives an engraving of a figure wearing one of these appendages. It appears to be attached to the waist-belt by a small knot, and has the appearance of three straps or bands, parallel and attached to each other, narrow at the upper part, but increasing in breadth as it descends, so that it may be roughly described as having superficially a long triangular form. These carriages were introduced for the purpose of carrying the long rapiers, the fashionable sword of the period. The great length of these weapons made it inconvenient to carry them by the side, as swords are now carried, and the broad end of the carriage helped to sustain them in a more horizontal position. They became so exaggerated in length that Stow relates, sub an. 1578, that Elizabeth, soon after her thirteenth year, issued a proclamation forbidding their use beyond à certain length,

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and that grave citizens were placed at every gate to breake the rapier's point of all passengers that exceeded a yeard in length of their rapiers." The carriages were made sometimes of leather, as were those, I believe, in the Meyrick collection, but they were frequently of velvet, embroidered and jewelled. When, in 'Hamlet,' V. ii., Osric says, "Three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very liberal conceit," we shall not, perhaps, be wrong in assuming that Shakespeare had in mind some of these decorated appendages that he may have seen in wear. Swords have been carried in different ways in different centuries: in the earlier centuries they were simply thrust through the waist-belt; in the seventeenth century they were hung from a shoulder-belt; the present method is comparatively of modern date. B. H. L.

PARRY FAMILY (9th S. iv. 398).-I should like to add one or two queries to MR. F. PARRY'S note. I am trying to identify two members of this family, or, at all events, two persons of the same name: (1) Ann Parry, whose portrait was painted by Romney and engraved by John Dean in 1778; and (2) Mr. Parry, whose portrait Romney also painted. In 1785 this Mr. Parry was living at Dulwich, but I presume he was in business in the City, as a copy of his portrait was some years afterwards sent to "The Warehouse, Whalebone Court." Boyle's 'City Companion' for 1798 gives a number of Parrys engaged in business or in professions in London. For instance, there was a Dr. Parry at 5, Highbury Place, Islington, and "Benj. Parry & Son, Esqrs.," at 21, Mincing Lane; a Philip Parry, of the Petty Bag Office, Chancery Lane, &c. I should be very glad of any information about either Miss Parry or Mr. Parry mentioned above. W. ROBERTS.

47, Lansdowne Gardens, S.W. HOLY COMMUNION (9th S. iii. 427, 498; iv. 273, 384).—ST. SWITHIN has made a very amusing mistake, which he good-humouredly endeavours to father on another writer. In his quotation from the book of Mr. Anson Farrer, who refers to "Elmham" and "Livius" as authorities regarding the battle of Agincourt, your correspondent assumes that the second is the historian of Rome, and concludes that "it must have been in one of the lost books of Livy that he predicted Agincourt"! Of course, this is jocularly said; but ST. SWITHIN has been led into_error by substituting his "Livy" for Mr. Farrer's "Livius," who is evidently so called to distinguish the one

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from the other. I will candidly confess that, though I knew that the "Livius" mentioned was not the classic author, I had not the least idea who "Elmham was. He was a writer as much unknown to me as "Ogilvie" to Lord Rosebery (speech at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution after hearing Mr. A. Birrell's lecture, 3 Nov., 1899). However, thanks to 'N. & Q' (and heartiest congratulations on its Jubilee), it often happens that while one is endeavouring to solve the doubts of another, he is obtaining useful information for himself; and this is a case in point.

Besides Titus Livius Patavinus of ancient days, there is a chronicler of a later date, who bore the name of Titus Livius Foro-Juliensis, and wrote the life of King Henry V. of England. The full title of the book, which was edited by Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, is: "Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis Vita Henrici Quinti, Regis Angliæ. Accedit Sylloge Epistolarum,

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variis Angliæ Principibus scriptarum. Oxonii, 1716, 8vo." The same learned and indefatigable editor published Elmham's book at Oxford in the year 1727. It is entitled: 'Thomæ de Elmham Vita & Gesta Henrici Quinti, Anglorum Regis.' For these particulars I am indebted to Lowndes's manual.

JOHN T. CURRY.

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"GINNS" IN THE FYLDE (9th S. iv. 345).— The word ginn in some cognate form is used pretty largely to convey the idea of a ravine. In the north of England we find the placename Newbiggin (in Scotland Newbigging, also Kyleakin), and in the south we have the Chines of the Isle of Wight, deep fissures leading to the seashore. In French we have cheneau for gutter, and in English the related words channel, canal, &c. The Manchester Court Leet Records early in the seventeenth century use the word gynnell (and ginnell) for a gutter or drain, and the word ginnel is used to-day in the Lancashire dialect for a long narrow passage between houses. In Murray's New Dictionary' a quotation is given from Raynold (date 1545): "Betwene the Chines

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and gynks [ed. 1564, Chynes and Chynkes] unimportant privacies." With regard to financial of closely ioynyd bourdes."

CHARLES J. BULLOCK.

Miscellaneous

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his Family and Friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. 2 vols. (Methuen & Co.)

difficulties he was, though naturally unexpansive, less strictly reticent. He bewails in 1880, when in San Francisco, having to drop from a fiftycent to a twenty-five-cent dinner, and having to limit his entire daily expenditure in food and drink to a shilling and tenpence halfpenny. Three years later, when he had written some of his best work, was married, and was living at La Solitude, Hyères, he says that for the first time his income has much passed three hundred pounds. Subsequently, when, with a sort of irony too common in the case of writers, affluence has come too late to do more than bring comfort to declining days, he seems to have been rather embarrassed by the sums he received, a thing also not unknown with the more sensitive among the followers of literature. It is pleasant to learn, though it was to have been expected, that Stevenson was loyal to the extreme in money matters, and that, having contracted to supply a daily newspaper with articles at no excessive rate of remuneration, he refused to accept the full amount tendered, inasmuch as illness had prevented him from giving what he considered to be his best work. There are very many opinions, estimates, judg ments, which, if space permitted, we should like to quote. What Mr. Colvin says we take to be fully true, that the correspondence now given aids his friends to recall the man and his fine and stimulating talk. Accident so arranged matters that our own meetings with Stevenson were neither frequent nor intimate, and that we never came under the spell, acknowledgedly great, of his conversation. That it was pregnant and delightful we gather from these volumes, which others besides his chosen friends will value. It is pleasant to congratulate Mr. Colvin on his share in the task. The publishers, moreover, have issued the letters in most attractive guise, and the book will be handled reverently and lovingly by the bibliophile as an almost ideal specimen of the art of book production. Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight. By John Willcock, M.A., B.D., Lerwick. (Edinburgh, Oliphant & Co.)

STEVENSON'S fame as essayist, novelist—we might almost say dramatist and poet-is established upon a secure foundation. To his many claims upon consideration and admiration he will not add that built upon his merits as a letter-writer. His letters have neither the exquisite literary style nor the pleasant gossiping charm characteristic of the masters, conscious or unconscious, of epistolary art. They supply few and inexact details of his personal surroundings, and do not abound in passages of descriptive beauty, though such are to be encountered. It must not be supposed because of these shortcomings that the letters are without value or interest, or the book in which they appear is to be lightly dismissed. We hold, on the contrary, the volumes before us to constitute one of the best books of the year, and we think the contents indispensable to a proper knowledge of one of the most artistic and stimulating of writers and one of the most sensitive of beings. We have for the present, at least, if not definitely, to accept the introduction and the explanatory passages which occur in the course of the book in place of the sustained biography we had anticipated. So far as we can estimate, Mr. Colvin's chief task, which has been that of selecting from a large mass of materials, has been judiciously and sympathetically executed. To speak with absolute authority on the subject it would be necessary to know how much has been omitted, and for what reason it does not appear. Personally we are disposed to hold that, with the Vailima letters, the present correspondence is all that can be needed. Some judgments upon individuals have doubtless been held back with good cause; but Stevenson is seen to highest advantage in some of his rare incursions into politics, such as, for instance, his wail over the desertion and death of Gordon. So far as possible-for Stevenson, like many other men who should know better, was chary as regards dates-the letters are chronological in sequence. Stevenson's chief correspondents, besides his parents and other relatives, are Mr. Colvin, Mr. Henley (with whom he frequently collaborated, and whom he constantly addressed as "dear lad"), Mr. Gosse, and Mr. Archer, with Mr. James Payn, Mr. Lang, Mr. Henry James, and, in later years, Mr. Barrie and Mr. Crockett. His intimacies had obviously been made in the Savile Club, a popular and social gathering of professors, pundits, and writers. His letters depict a life of severe struggle and labour, long unremunerative. His ill health he keeps as far as possible in the background, disliking to be regarded as an invalid. In a characteristic passage, quoted by Mr. Colvin in his introduction, he says: To me the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood on my handkerchief are accidents; they do not colour my view of life; and I should think myself a trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the world to these

"CRANK" as he was, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie occupies, on the strength of his translation of Rabelais, a conspicuous niche in English literary history. His original works-such of them as survived the disaster at Worcester, when three large trunkfuls, containing one hundred separate books, were after the battle, in which Urquhart took part, ravaged by the Cromwellian soldiers, who used them for the purpose of lighting their pipes-have been collected and reprinted for the Maitland Club, the editor, Thomas Maitland, being animated, apparently, by a spirit of patriotism rather than of literary appreciation. How far the loss of the Urquhart MSS. may be regarded as a parallel to that brought about by Warburton's cook is a matter of conjecture. Perhaps, on the whole, their destruction was, so far as Urquhart is concerned, a blessing in disguise. Had they all survived, he might have been buried beneath them. It may safely be presumed that no influence of nationality or kindred taste could have induced Maitland to reprint such a lot. For one thing, at least, we may be thankful. The Rabelais was not among the contents of the trunks. Had that great work perished in lighting the Cromwellian pipes, it would have been a loss such as we shudder to con

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template. That, however, could not have been. As distinctly as Rabelais was born to tell us the fate of Gargantua, and give us the oracle of the bottle, so distinctly was Urquhart born to translate him. In a sense the two minds were complementary. To Rabelais belongs, of course, the credit of invention, and the Frenchman is as much superior to the Scotchman as Shakespeare is to Cibber or Molière to Cyrano de Bergerac; but they were in a sense men of a kidney, and Urquhart managed, even like Shylock, to "better the instruction." We welcome Mr. Willcock's life of Urquhart, which will introduce to the vast majority of readers a quaint, original, and highly flamboyant individuality. In order to understand Urquhart it is necessary to understand his epoch. He is to some extent a Scotch counterpart to Cyrano de Bergerac. He has something of the Admirable Crichton, whose life he wrote. At some moments he reminds us of Mad Meg of Newcastle, as men of the Restoration called the heroic duchess of that ilk. Brave, boastful, arrogant, and as capable of self-advertisement as the vainest of actor-managers, he left behind him a farrago of the wildest mixture of erudition and bounce that the world has seen. We know his works, with the exception of the translation of Rabelais, by report only, and, omnivorous as we are, should shrink from the attempt at perusal. Euphuists, Gongorists, and Marinists are lucid and sober beside this man, who, not content with tracing his pedigree to Adam, from whom he claims to be the one hundred and forty-third in direct descent, included among his ancestors the Queen of the Amazons. The subject is attractive, and tempts us to expatiate. The temptation must, how ever, be resisted. Mr. Willcock's book is pleasant and readable, and gives a full account of the life of Urquhart, and a still better account of his works. With Rabelais Mr. Willcock does not seem to have a very close acquaintance. Such, indeed, is not perhaps indispensable in the case of a biographer. He makes, of course, some protest against the indelicacy of Rabelais, but quotes the favourable estimate of Coleridge, and is, on the whole, very liberal for a Scot of the Scots. We have marked for quotation over a score passages, but considerations of space forbid the indulgence. The W. S. who contributed a distich under the portrait of Urquhart is probably Wye Saltonstall, the translator of Ovid. Two admirable portraits of Urquhart are inserted in Mr. Willcock's agreeable and scholarly book, and add greatly to its attractions.

London Souvenirs. By Charles William Heckethorn. (Chatto & Windus.)

MR. HECKETHORN's book may be taken up at any time and laid down at another with the certainty of amusement. It appears to consist, though the fact is not stated, of articles previously contributed to magazines, and it has not a dull page. Having said this much in its praise, we are compelled to say, out of regard for Mr. Heckethorn's previous work, we feel a sense of disappointment. Though compiled from known sources, much of the information is inaccurate and out of date. The book itself is, moreover, written in a carping style, the effect of which is displeasing. We cannot approve of a sentence such as "But does not our own time admire, or pretend to admire, the perky platitudes of a Tennyson, and the jejune prose, cut up into unmeasured lines, of a Browning, as poetry?" The

description, p. 12, of the tournaments of feudal times strikes us only with pity. Equally offensive, and more vulgar, is what is said, p. 20, of the Kitcat Club. Tennyson and Browning may console themselves in the shades when we find Mr. Heckethorn seriously asserting that the reputation of Shakespeare was "made in Germany," and adding that we have to thank the Germans "for a Shakespeare who is presentable to a modern audience, which the original writer was not; his plays were only fit to be acted before the savages who delighted in bull and bear baiting." We have marked many other passages no less regrettable or inept, but will spare Mr. Heckethorn and our readers.

Life and Books. By F. F. Leighton.
Unwin.)

(Fisher

TAKING for guide Lessing (and a better cannot be), Mr. Leighton discusses the relations of literature and the arts, and has the courage of his convictions. He disapproves of 'The Nude in Modern Art,' questioning whether "the unclothed human form is the highest and most beautiful subject for art representation." He is a great admirer of Sir E. Burne-Jones, and has much to say in defence of his own rather daring opinions. Every one of his eight essays furnishes matter for controversy, and we refrain from saying more than that his work is readable and suggestive.

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Prayer, and Praise. Adapted to the Course of the Christian
Year. Imperial 32mo. cloth, 3s.; Turkey roan, gilt edges,
4s. 6d.; morocco, gilt edges, 68. Foolscap 8vo. cloth, 4s. 6d. ;
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This favourite Manual is issued in Ten Editions, ranging in size from the smallest pocket Prayer Book to a large octavo, printed in very plain type, suitable for aged people whose eyesight is failing. Some of the editions are handsomely printed with red-line borders, &c.

The DAILY PSALMS. Vol. I. MornING; Vol. II EVENING. Each Volume complete in itself (sold separately); Meditations for Every Day in the Year. By the Author of The Daily Round.' Fcap. 8vo. cloth, 4. 6d.; Persian roan, gilt edges, 6s.; morocco, gilt edges, 9s. A Smaller Edition for the Pocket, imperial 32mo. is also ready, cloth, 39.; Persian roan, gilt edges, 48. 6d. ; morocco, 6s.

DAILY LIFE its Trials, Duties, and

DIFFICULTIES. Short Practical Essays. By the Author of The Daily Round.' Fcap 8vo. cloth, 4s. 6d. ; roan, gilt edges, 6s.; morocco, gilt edges, 98.

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Manual of Devotion. With a Guide to Confirmation and Holy Communion. 48mo. cloth, 6d.; or neatly bound in roan, with gilt edges, 18. 6d.

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