LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1894. CONTENT 8.-N° 143. NOTES:-" Constitution," 221-Bunhill Fields, 222-MS. Prayer Book, 223-Brewer's Dictionary, 224 Parliamentary Nicknames-"They were each of them""Blim"-Lord Lynedoch, 225-Sea-monster-John Smeaton, F.R.S.-A Sister of Dickens-Deadlock-Relics of Charles I., 226. The quotations in illustration of that position are: 1689, Declar. Estates of Scotl.,' April 11 (which is given in extenso in Steele's 'Crisis'); 1735-8, Bolingbroke, 'On Parties'; 1750, Chesterf. Letters' (1744), iii. 2; 1789, Const. U.S., Preamb.; 1789-92, A. Young, Trav. France, 124; 1791, Paine, Rights of Man.' There is no such terminus a quo for the meaning QUERIES:-Tray-cloth - Inigo Jones-Royalist OfficersDomestication of Swallows-Disposition of Property from in this section of the great dictionary. Written the Pulpit-Coleclough of Tintern-Dr. Coyle-Pepys's documentary constitutions were no eighteenth cen'Diary-Will of Archbishop Chichele-Diplomatic Lan- tury novelties. The portent would have been-to guage at Madrid-George Charles, LL.D., 227-Stanstead Poems by T. K. Hervey--Greencastle-Recent Words- borrow Cicero's joke about the snake and the crowSnake Stones-Hill-"Holding my back hand"-Louis | bar-the sudden bursting of a full-blown unwritten XIV. and the Pyrenees-Miss James-Deft, 228-French constitution upon a startled world. The following Illustrations-Agostino Cozza-Authors Wanted, 229. REPLIES:-Joan I. of Naples, 229-Wolfe's Sword-Hamil-quotations have been picked up almost at random ton's 'State Papers-Sir David Rae-Sir William Rae- along the highway of English history; and any "Descamisado, 231-William Waller-Geason-Churches reader of 'N. & Q.' can easily add to them out in the City of London, 232-Address Wanted-Sir Martin of his own treasury. Wright-Skull of Sir T. Browne, 233-Place-names-Pronunciation of "Hindostan "-Lemon Sole-Queen of Sheba -A Pioneer Newspaper, 234-"Lengthy' -Yeoman— Village Superstitions-Burke's Landed Gentry'-"Betterment," 235-Protestant "-Pharaoh of the Oppression, 236-Burial in Point Lace-Robert Pollok-Abarbanel, 237 -Griffith, 238-"Bullifant"-Lady Charlotte EdwinKepler-Haggerston, 239. "CONSTITUTION" IN A POLITICAL SENSE. A glance at any book of reference (e.g., 'Chambers's Encyclopædia') in which this political term is treated will show that "it is commonly understood that (elsewhere than in England) since the formation of the federal government of the United States of America, or, at least, since the first French Revolution, the idea of a Constitution' has been generally that of a body of written public law, promulgated at once by the sovereign power." Macaulay says (' Hist.,' i. 1): ་ "A constitution of the Middle Ages was not, like a constitution of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a single document......As eloquence exists before syntax, and song before prosody, so government may exist in a high degree of excellence long before the limits of legislative, executive, and judicial power have been traced with precision." I think it will be acknowledged by the historical student that the treatment of this word-one of the most important in the English language-in the 'N. E. D.' is hardly satisfactory, so far as sections six and seven are concerned. Under section seven, there is a very long editorial note to the effect that the sense "the system or body of fundamental principles according to which a nation, state, or body politic is constituted and governed......gradually arose out of the prec. between 1689 and 1789." ་ Taking the last reference as a starting point, I find the following in "A Defence of the Pamphlet ascribed to John Reeves, Esq., and entitled Thoughts on the English Government,' by the Rev. J. Brand, A.M.” (not the antiquary), 1796 :"It will be of use, therefore, to commence these observations with a definition of the term Constitution, in its genuine and original sense. Our Laws are divisible into two classes: Those which relate to the subject as such; and those which relate to the Governors as such; or in the exercise of the functions of Government. The whole mass of the latter form the Constitution of Government; the parts of which are found scattered up and down in the Statute and Common Law, and the Constitution is, in this sense, what is so already constituted, and nothing else." From Reeves's 'Thoughts on the English Government' (1795), I may quote : "The abdication of King James the Second, and the transactions that ensued upon the vacancy thereby made in the Throne......have......been_vulgarly called the Revolution; upon what authority, I know not; it was not so named by Parliament, nor is it a term known to our Laws. This term had certainly no better origin than the conversation and the pamphlets of the time. ......Too many among us......have no love for the Constitution, but for that which was formed at the Revolution; and they are good subjects and loyal, only upon Revolution principles."--P. 39. "They [i.e., "the Republicans, Presbyterians, and Sectaries......who had taken their stand among the Whigs"] invented the term Revolution, to blind and mislead......and by the glorious spell of-the Constitution they can conjure up any form, fashion, modification, reform, change, or innovation in Government they please, and it shall still be nothing more than the genuine true nothing in itself objectionable; a plain man might English Constitution...... The term Constitution has receive it without suspicion of any mischievous implication lurking under it. It might be understood as a short way of speaking, for the Constitution of the Government. But those who introduced this mode of expression were men famous for doing nothing without design."-P. 45. "But these visionary zealots were reserved for a disgrace more mortifying than this, and from a quarter where it was, to say the truth, not deserved, and not at all to be expected. We live in an age of Constitutions; all the world are writing and talking upon Constitutions. ......At this moment of culmination and triumph, the Constitution-makers of France and America, having arrived at such skill in this trade as to out-do their masters, turn upon them, and tell them, The English have no Constitution at all!' and they follow up this assault by attacking the Revolution itself; questioning and reviling it in such terms as if they would insinuate that we had no more of a Revolution than of a Constitution."-P. 54. To digress for a moment; I am here reminded of what the writer of the article "Constitution" in the Penny Cyclopædia ' (1837) says:— "The practice of torturing the words of all written law, till in effect the law or rule is made to express the contrary of what seemed to be at first intended, appears to be deeply implanted in the English race, and in those forms on the other side of the Atlantic. The value of all written instruments, whether called constitutions or not, seems considerably impaired by this peculiar aptitude to construe words which once seemed to have one plain meaning only, so that they shall mean anything which the actual circumstances may require, or may seem to require." of their descendants who have established constitutional But to return to my task of traversing the 'N. E. D.'s' century. In Arthur Young's pamphlet The Example of France a Warning to England' (second edition, 1793) I find the following on p. 123: "They have been paying their incomes into the hands of men who are ready to convert the interest they make upon it to the establishment of a Convention in England, to consist of brother citizens of equality; to subscribe money, food, cloaths, and arms for the assassins and regicides of France, to enable them, by success at home, to subdue the vices of the British constitution, by a radical reform. This supine inattention, which turns a man's money to his own destruction, is highly reprehensible. Let those who are real friends to the constitution, expend their income with men whose principles are known, and not become, unthinkingly, promoters of sedition, and encouragers of republicanism.' I pass by Burke's celebrated work, and only advise the younger reader to study it in Mr. Payne's edition, with its suggestive introduction and scholarly notes. See also 'Thoughts on the Present Discontents' (1770). Lord Chatham, in his speech on Jan. 9, 1770, said : "My Lords, it is to your ancestors, it is to the English barons that we are indebted for the laws and constitution we possess......My lords, I think that history has not done justice to their conduct, when they obtained from their sovereign that great acknowledgment of national rights contained in Magna Charta; they did not confine it to themselves alone, but delivered it as a common blessing to the whole people." Bolingbroke's brilliant Remarks on English History' swarms with the term constitution in its various bearings. Reever, in the pamphlet already quoted from, refers to a 'Discourse on the English Constitution,' extracted from Roger North's 'Examen.' The Examen' was finished in 1714, but the passage quoted by Reeves is probably much earlier than that date: "And here it may not be amiss to observe that instead of the old way of expression, the Laws of this Kingdom, or nation, his Majesty's laws, the laws of the land, or the common law, come affect to use the word constitution; which in itself is no bad word, and means no other than as before. But it is commonly brought forward with a republican face, as if it meant somewhat excluding or opposite to the monarchy, and carried an insinuation as of a co-ordination, or coercion of the monarchy." I cannot give the page, but it may easily be found, as the Examen' is indexed. But whether North wrote that about the time of the Scottish Declaration, or later, it is quite certain that the term meant at that date "no other than as before." men's Lives; or, the Trust, Power, and Duty of Somers's famous tract, The Security of Englishthe Grand Juries of England Explained,' begins as follows (I quote from the reprint of 1682. In the preface to the reprint of 1766 it is stated that "Bishop Burnet informs us that this tract was written on occasion of the Grand Jury of the City of London returning an Ignoramus upon a bill of indictment presented against Lord Shaftesbury in the year 1681"): "The Principal Ends of all Civil Government, and of Humane Society, were the Security of Mens Lives, Liberties and Properties, mutual Assistance and Help, each unto other, and Provision for their common Benefit and Advantage; and where the Fundamental Laws and Constitution of any Government have been wisely adapted unto those ends, such Countries and Kingdoms have increased in Virtue, Prowess, Wealth and Happiness, whilst others, through the want of such excellent Constitutions, or neglect of preserving them, have been a Prey to the Pride, Lust, and Cruelty of the most Potent." J. P. OWEN. 48, Comeragh Road, West Kensington. (To be continued.) BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL-GROUND: The annexed transcript of a MS. paper at this time in my keeping appears from its interesting character to merit publication in the columns of 'N. & Q.' Dr. Rippon's petition was presented at the meeting of the Court of Common Council held on Oct. 11, 1827 : "To the Right Honourable Anthony Brown, Esq., Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and Commons of the City of London, in Common Council assembled. "The Memorial of John Rippon, of Dover Place, in the New Kent Road, in the County of Surrey, D.D. F.A.S. "Showeth, That your Memorialist many years since contemplated writing the History of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, in the City Road (an estate which has been for nearly two centuries in the hands of the City of London), and of publishing the same, with the biography of several hundred of most eminent and learned persons who have been interred there since the year 1665, when the same was consecrated and 'enclosed with in the Mayoralty of Sir John Lawrence, Knight.' a Brick Wall, at the sole Charge of the City of London, "That with a view to such object, and particularly in order to avail himself of the fullest means of research as to the families and interments connected with that cemetery, your Memoralist first of all proceeded to obtain a copy of the Register of Burials from the time of its commencement in the year 1713, which your Memorialist was enabled to accomplish under the friendly auspices and permission of Mr. William Mountague, the then Keeper of such burial ground; and your Memorialist, with his own hand, and by the dictation of his son, Mr. John Rippon, then a lad, then penned from the said Register an Alphabetical and Chronological Copy of all Burials there, and down to the year 1790, consisting of nearly forty thousand names. "That in furtherance of such your Memorialist's design, be devoted two half-days of time weekly during several summers, aided by his said son and several other persons, in obtaining and copying all the inscriptions then visible on the several thousands of tombs and monuments placed in such ground-for the accomplishment of which, and in the brushing, washing, cleansing, and digging up of many hundreds of them which had either become nearly obsolete or had sunk below the surface of the earth, vast labour and expense were incurred. "That the only aid which your Memorialist and his said son have ever obtained in their research, has been afforded to them by the use of a very scarce and small publication of inscriptions, printed in 1717, by Mr. Richard Rawlinson, an antiquarian, and by Mr. John Strype's improved and enlarged edition of 'Stowe's Survey of the City of London, printed in 1720, both of which works, nevertheless, only contain about 150 inscriptions, and many of which have long since mouldered into dust. and that too lineally; and also pointing out the characters of letter in which they are cut; whether in Old English, Capital, Italic, Roman, German Text, or otherwise, and showing whether inscribed in words at length, or contracted, and how contracted; and the same have been bound in six large quarto manuscript volumes in alphabetical order. "That in the course of such labour and examination, several hundreds of tombs and head stones were found to be, and have since become, quite defaced, unintelligible, and incapable of future identity or use; nevertheless, great numbers of them have, during the series of years in which your Memorialist and his said son have continued their researches and investigation, been capable of identity by them; and can now by their said manuscripts be pointed out to the descendants of the families of any such of them who have not become extinct; or who, by receipts for premiums paid, and other proofs of title in them, may have just right to their appropriation and use; but without which, however, your Memorialist submits that the same will ever here-after be worse than useless, as such monuments occupy several hundreds of places which, in common justice, ought to be used and appropriated for the benefit of the public, and the increase of the annual revenue of the City of London, which would be produced from the employment thereof. That your Memorialist and his said son are, consequently, able, by their said manuscripts, to point out and identify all such tombs and other monuments, as have long been, or are now incapable of identity by any persons, except themselves, and they can likewise dis"That in order to the precise identity of all such tinguish therefrom, if necessary, all such of them as monuments, and particularly of those nearly obsolete, have not been interred in, or used within the last three most of which were monuments for persons of the great-generations, whereby the just rights of the public may est learning and celebrity, who have ever been deposited be ascertained and preserved, the eminence of the most there, your Memorialist then also identified the situations renowned depository of the dead in all Europe continued of every one of the monuments then erected and standing, and increased, and the annual revenue of the City of and at the same time corrected every manuscript inscrip- London arising from that estate must be greatly augtion taken, and inserted thereon, with his own hand, its mented. exact situation, according to certain numbers, then recently placed on the walls, for the purpose of future ascertainment of places of interment. "That in the midst of your Memorialist's pursuit and prosecution of such intentions relative to the said history, and after the preparation of the biography of several hundreds of the most learned and eminent persons interred in such ground, it pleased Divine Providence sorely to afflict him in his bodily health, insomuch that he was for a long time in imminent danger, and his life was despaired of; and he was also assailed by other considerable family afflictions, which became the occasion of the said work being then laid aside and abandoned by him. "That your Memorialist's said son, with a view to the final completion of such work, has since the year 1790, continued to obtain and copy a continued Alphabetical and Chronological Register of the burials there, down to the end of the last year (1826), and has also continued, from time to time, down to the same period, to obtain and copy verbatim et literatim all the inscriptions which have been subsequently placed on the same, and all additional monuments which have been erected; and he hath like: wise, within the last three months, identified the present situation of every tomb, head and foot stone, that is now standing there, with a view to the preparation and publication of a map of the said ground, and of its said intended history. "That all of such inscriptions, with their respective places of situation, additions, and variations, have been ascertained and examined up to the present time, designating the same as they now appear, or have appeared, "That it is the intention of your Memorialist and his said Son, to publish an elegant map of the ground, containing the names of all the persons upon whose tombs and monuments inscriptions are now visible, in the situations which they occupy, according to the numbers placed on the walls, and likewise to publish the said History and Inscriptions in chronological and alphabetical order, to be interspersed with the biography of the most distinguished persons whose remains have been deposited there, together with great numbers of their portraits, autographs, arms, and other embellishments, executed by the first artiste. subscription, and in parts, and to dedicate the same, if permission be granted, to the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of DANIEL HIPWELL. "It is also intended to publish the said History by London." A MS. PRAYER BOOK OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.-In the Catholic Magazine and Review of November, 1831, is a very interesting account of a beautiful MS. Latin Prayer Book which belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots. The writer of the article, who signs M. H., says he saw this relic some time since at Cheltenham, through the kindness of a Catholic gentleman there, in whose He describes the MS. as on possession it was. vellum, splendidly illuminated and adorned with innumerable pictures; a small quarto, with rich crimson cover and gold clasps. He adds that it far exceeded in beauty all the illuminated MSS. he ever saw, and, from internal evidence, he should judge it was written in France some 200 years before the time of Mary. He proceeds to say that it has been well ascertained that it was used by the captive queen in her prison of Fotheringay, and delivered as a legacy of departing affection to her faithful companion Dorothy Willoughby, daughter of Sir Christopher Willoughby and of Elizabeth, sister and heiress of Gilbert, Lord Talbois, of Kine, Lincolnshire. The book commences with a beautiful calendar. At the head of each month a sign of the zodiac is elegantly painted. The following very ancient and curious Leonine verses are also written at the head of each month : January. Quarta subit mortem, prosternit tertia fortem. Primus mandentem, disrupit quarta bibentem. Denus et undenus est mortis vulnere plenus. Tertius occidit et septimus ora relidit. June. Scorpius est quintus et tertius est nece cinctus. Septimus exanguis, virosus denus ut anguis. A detailed list of various pictures in the MS. is given, and from the Litany of Saints a number of names not commonly met with; among others, Oswald, Alan, Wollepande, Agapitus, Bavo, Amand, Petronilla, Amilburga, Ossatha, Tecla, Elena, Faith, Hope, Charity, and Susanna. St. Thomas of Canterbury is erased, in accordance with an order of Henry VIII. that his name should be blotted out from the calendar and litanies when his bones were burnt. At the close of the office of the Passion is a very curious antiphon, headed "Loco Salve Regina ista Antiphona est dicenda." There is also a long paraphrase on every word of the "Salve Regina" in Latin verse, preceded by these five lines : Has videas laudes qui Sacrâ Virgine gaudes, "Elysabeth ye Quene's," the last word, and two others which follow it, being nearly illegible. It may be that this volume is well known, and that it is safely housed in some great collection, but in any case I think these much curtailed notes may interest some readers of 'N. & Q.' The month verses seem to me particularly curious and noteworthy. JAMES HOOper. Norwich. BREWER'S 'DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE.'-It is a treat to find a new edition of this wide-embracing work, to which querists of all sorts have for many years been under obligations, issued in a form in which it can be easily interleaved, and bound at one's discretion. May I make humble objection to the retention of the phrase à l'outrance in the part just issued? In former editions the phrase was given as French; it is now given as Anglo-French. I would venture the assertion that it was never French, and that now it is not even Anglo-French, though in the early days of the 'Dictionary' it was so. An extract from a Standard of those days is retained as an example. Those were the days in which Taine wrote to an English paper an English letter, into which he introduced, for want of a good English equivalent, the French phrase à outrance, and found when it had passed through the press the Anglo-French à l'outrance substituted. But now in the office of a well-edited English paper the process would, if necessary, be reversed. Hayward, indeed, wrote à l'outrance in the Quarterly, but it is nearly sixty years since, and I do not think the Quarterly would pass it now. If we want to put on record current specimens of Anglo-French have we not our dear old chaperone, and, pace Dr. Brewer, nom de plume? KILLIGREW. All readers of 'N. & Q' will observe with pleasure that the venerable Dr. Brewer is issuing but in this age of "up-to-dateness" it is to be a new and enlarged edition of his valuable work; deplored that several old errors have been retained. Babrios was a Greek. Now Babrius has been shown Thus, under "Esop's Fables" we are told that by Crusius to have been a Roman, probably one Valerius Babrius, tutor to Branchus, son of the Emperor Alexander Severus. "Ave Maria" is said to be "the first two words of the angel's salutation to the Virgin Mary Under "Avalon" we are told that the name On the lower margin of p. 43 is written "the borough of the sons of Glæst." Under "Ambrosian Chant" Gregory the Great is made responsible for the introduction of Gregorian chants. There is no reliable evidence to show that Gregory the Great took the slightest interest in music, and the term "Gregorian" was merely used to denote the Roman method of chanting as opposed to the Ambrosian or Milan use. "It is more than probable (almost certain) that the system of music to which St. Gregory's name has, without any reason, been assigned came into existence between the eighth and tenth centuries" (R. C. Hope, 'Medieval Music,' p. 54). But perhaps the most startling information contained in the first part of Messrs. Cassell's issue is that Thomas à Becket wrote three of the Arthurian romances, viz. 'The Launcelot,' The Quest of the San Graal,' and 'The Mort d'Arthur.' E. S. A. PARLIAMENTARY NICKNAMES.-The few nick names by which Edmund Burke was, at various times during his parliamentary career, known, are probably familiar to most readers of N. & Q.' Of these Mr. Frey has recorded and explained some three or four in his work on 'Nicknames and Sobriquets,' but I do not find included there among them one which I have recently lighted upon, to wit, the "Dinner Bell." In an article dealing with Burke in Parliament in 'Curiosities of Orators and Oratory, Past and Present,' the compiler writes as follows: "One of his [Burke's] friends remarks: Though upon great occasions Burke was one of the most eloquent men that ever sat in the British senate, he had in ordinary matters as much as any man the faculty of tiring his auditors. During the later years of his life the failing grew so much upon him that he more than once dispersed the House, a circumstance that procured him the nickname of the Dinner Bell. There is a story told of a gentleman going one day into the House and meeting a great number of people coming out in a body. Is the House up?' said he. No,' answered one of the fugitives, but Mr. Burke is up.' · It is curious to observe how the phrase 66 is up," in a parliamentary sense, persists. Even at this day, in the now fashionable daily "pictures of life at Westminster," the descriptive writer frequently adverts to the excitement which prevails in the House when the word goes round that some one of importance "is up." In Macaulay's time things were very much the same in this respect. In a 'History of the Session 1852-3' the author makes passing reference to the effect of the intelligence on members of the House when the word was passed, "Macaulay 's up." From the lobby it was a veritable race by the members towards the House when they learned Macaulay was "in for a speech." C. P. HALE. "THEY WERE EACH OF THEM. "-In Mr. Leslie Stephen's account of the late Mr. Kinglake, in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' he takes occasion more than once to praise that writer's "refined" and "polished" style. But in his 'Invasion of the Crimea' there is one phrase— unnecessary in itself, and annoying by its repetition-which I submit is both inelegant and inexact. For instance, "they were, each of them, in a condition to be......rolled up"; "they were neither of them on ground from which any Russian could be seen " (1877, v. 194, 204). To what verbs, respectively, are each" and "neither" the nominatives? W. C. B. 66 "BLIM."-This word appears in Halliwell, where it is explained as meaning "to gladden on the authority of the 'Promptorium.' It is true that in the Harl. MS. of this dictionary there occurs blym, with the Latin rendering letifico; but in the King's College MS. the word is written blyym, and Pynson prints blithen. It is quite clear that blym is due to an older reading blyym, and that blyym is an error for blyyin, written for blypin (cp. the next gloss). In the Harleian and Winchester MSS. the character y frequently does duty for b as well as y. Halliwell also cites for the word blim a passage from 'Guy of Warwick,' quite unintelligible and hopelessly corrupt, and therefore properly ignored by Dr. Murray in the 'N. E. D.' A. L. MAYHEW. Oxford. LORD LYNEDOCH AND MRS. GRAHAM.-A fine portrait of Sir Thomas Graham, the hero of Barossa, three-quarters length, in a standing posture, wearing the uniform of a general officer, was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and is well engraved in Chambers's Dictionary of Eminent Scctsmen' (vol. v.). Is it known in what collection the original portrait is to be found? His military career, a very distinguished one, originated from the following circumstance. Born about 1749-50, he entered the army at the mature age of forty-three, owing to his inconsolable grief at the death of his wife, a most beautiful woman, to whom he was devotedly attached. Graham fleshed his maiden sword at an age two or three years younger than that at which Wellington and Napoleon fought their last battle (Waterloo), affording a parallel to Julius Cæsar, whose career was political until a similar age. Graham died in 1843, at the great age of ninety-four. There is a noble portrait of Mrs. Grahamperhaps the chef-d'œuvre of Gainsborough, which when once seen can never be forgotten in the National Gallery at Edinburgh. She is represented as a very beautiful woman, in the prime of life, in a standing posture, quite life sized, perhaps a little larger, with her dress thrown open in order to show the quilted satin petticoat underneath, and in her hand she holds a fan of feathers. The glazing of the picture has tended much to its preservation, for the colouring is remarkably fresh, |
