Minor Queries with Answers.
Cadenus and Vanessa.—What author is referred to in the lines in Swift's "Cadenus and Vanessa,"—
"He proves as sure as God's in Gloster,
That Moses was a grand impostor;
That all his miracles were tricks," &c.?
W. Fraser.
Tor-Mohun.
[These lines occur in the Dean's verses "On the Death of Dr. Swift," and refer to Thomas Woolston, the celebrated heterodox divine, who, as stated in a note quoted in Scott's edition, "for want of bread hath, in several treatises, in the most blasphemous manner, attempted to turn our Saviour's miracles in ridicule.">[
Boom.—Is there an English verb active to boom, and what is the precise meaning of it? Sir Walter Scott uses the participle:
"The bittern booming from the sedgy shallow."
Lady of the Lake, canto i. 31.
Vogel.
[Richardson defines Boom, v., applied as bumble by Chaucer, and bump by Dryden, to the noise of the bittern, and quotes from Cotton's Night's Quatrains,—
"Philomel chants it whilst it bleeds,
The bittern booms it in the reeds," &c.]
"A Letter to a Member of Parliament."—Who was the author of A Letter to a Member of Parliament, occasioned by A Letter to a Convocation Man: W. Rogers, London, 1697?
W. Fraser.
Tor-Mohun.
[Attributed to Mr. Wright, a gentleman of the Bar, who maintains the same opinions with Dr. Wake.]
Ancient Chessmen.—I should be glad to learn, through the medium of "N. & Q.," some particulars relative to the sixty-four chessmen and fourteen draughtsmen, made of walrus tusk, found in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, and now in case 94. Mediæval Collection of the British Museum?
Hornoway.
[See Archæologia, vol. xxiv. p. 203., for a valuable article, entitled "Historical Remarks on the introduction of the Game of Chess into Europe, and on the ancient Chessmen discovered in the Isle of Lewis, by Frederick Madden, Esq., F.R.S., in a Letter addressed to Henry Ellis, Esq., F.R.S., Secretary.">[
Guthryisms.—In a work entitled Select Trials at the Old Bailey is an account of the trial and execution of Robert Hallam, for murder, in the year 1731. Narrating the execution of the criminal, and mentioning some papers which he had prepared, the writer says: "We will not tire the reader's patience with transcribing these prayers, in which we can see nothing more than commonplace phrases and unmeaning Guthryisms." What
is the meaning of this last word, and to whom does it refer?
S. S. S.
[James Guthrie was chaplain of Newgate in 1731; and the phrase Guthryisms, we conjecture, agrees in common parlance with a later saying, that of "stuffing Cotton in the prisoner's ears.">[