REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES.
Swot is, as the querist supposes, a military cant term, and a sufficiently vulgar one too. It originated at the great slang-manufactory for the army, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. You may depend upon the following account of it, which I had many years ago from the late Thomas Leybourne, F.R.S., Senior Professor of Mathematics in that college.
One of the Professors, Dr. William Wallace, in addition to his being a Scotchman, had a bald head, and an exceedingly "broad Scotch" accent, besides a not very delicate discrimination in the choice of his English terms relating to social life. It happened on one hot summer's day, nearly half a century ago, that he had been teaching a class, and had worked himself into a considerable effusion from the skin. He took out his handkerchief, rubbed his head and forehead violently, and exclaimed in his Perthshire dialect,—"It maks one swot." This was a God-send to the "gentlemen cadets," wishing to achieve a notoriety as wits and slangsters; and mathematics generally ever after became swot, and mathematicians swots. I have often heard it said:—"I never could do swot well, Sir;" and "these dull fellows, the swots, can talk of nothing but triangles and equations."
I should have thought that the sheer disgustingness of the idea would have shut the word out of the vocabularies of English gentlemen. It remains nevertheless a standard term in the vocabulary of an English soldier. It is well, at all events, that future ages should know its etymology.
T.S.D.
Pokership, (antè, pp. 185. 218. 269. 282. 323, 324.)—I am sorry to see that no progress has yet been made towards a satisfactory explanation of this office. I was in hopes that something better than mere conjecture would have been supplied from the peculiar facilities of "T.R.F." "W.H.C." (p. 323.) has done little more than refer to the same instruments as had been already adverted to by me in p. 269., with the new reading of poulterer for poker! With repect to "T.R.F.'s" conjecture, I should be more ready to accept it if he could produce a single example of the word pawker, in the sense of a hog-warden. The quotation from the Pipe-roll of John is founded on a mistake. The entry occurs in other previous rolls, and is there clearly explained to refer to the porter of Hereford Castle. Thus, in Pipe 2 Hen. II. and 3 Hen. II. we have, under Hereford,
"In liberatione portarii castelli ... 30s. 5d."
In Pipe 1 Ric. I. we have,
"In liberatione constitutâ portarii de Hereford, 30s. 5d."
Again, in Pipe 3 Joh.
"In liberatione constitutâ portario de Hereford, 30s. 5d."
A similar entry is to be found in other rolls, as well printed as inedited. I could indulge some other criticisms on the communication of your correspondent in Spring Gardens, but I prefer encouraging him to make further inquiries, and to produce from the records in his custody some more satisfactory solution of the difficulty. In the meantime, let me refer to a Survey of Wrigmore Castle in the Lansdowne Collection, No. 40. fo. 82. The surveyor there reports, that the paling, rails, &c. of the park are much decayed in many and sundry places, and he estimates the repairs, with allowance of timber from the wood there, "by good surveye and oversight of the poker and other officers of the said parke," at 4l. The date of the survey is 13 May, 1584.
Comparing this notice of the office with the receiver's accounts tempore Hen. VII. and Hen. VIII. (antè, p. 269.), in which the officer is called "pocarius omnium boscorum," I cannot doubt that his duty, or at least one of his duties, was that of woodward, and that, as such, he assigned timber for repair of the premises. How he came by his local title and style of poker is a mystery on which we have all hitherto failed to throw any light.
E.S.
Vox Populi Vox Dei,—about the origin of which saying "QUÆSITOR" asks (No. 21. p. 321.),—were the words chosen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Mepham, as his text for the sermon which he preached when Edward III. was called to the throne, from which the nation had pulled down his father, Edward II. This we learn from Walsingham, who says:
"Archiepiscopus verò Cantuariæ præsenti consensit electioni, ut omnes prælati et archiepiscopus quidem assumpto themate, Vox populi Vox Dei, sermonem fecit populo, exhortans omnes ut apud regem regum intercederent pro electo."—Tho. Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ed. Camden, p. 126.
DANIEL ROCK.
A living Dog better than a dead Lion.—I no not know whether your correspondent (No. 22. p. 352.) ever goes to church; but if he is not prevented by rain next St. Swithin's day, he will learn who was the author of this proverb. It will be a good thing, if your work should sometimes lead your readers to search the Scriptures, and give them credit for wisdom that has flowed from them so long, and far, and wide, that its source is forgotten; but this is not the place for a sermon, and I now only add, "here endeth the first lesson" from
ECCLESIASTES.
["J.E.," "D.D.," and other correspondents, have also replied to this Query by references to Eccl. ix. 4.]
Curious Monumental Brass (No. 16. p. 247.)—If "RAHERE" will turn to Mr. Boutell's Monumental Brasses and Slabs, p. 148., he will there find a description as well as an engraving of what, from his account, I doubt not he will discover to be the identical fragment to which he refers. A foot legend, and what remains of a border inscription, is added to it. In the above work, pp. 147 to 155, and in the Oxford Architectural Society's Manual for the Study of Brasses, p. 15., "RAHERE" will find an account and references to numerous examples of palimpsest brasses, to which class the one in question belongs.
I presume that "RAHERE" is a young brass-rubber, or the fact of a plate being engraved on both sides would have presented no difficulty to him.
ARUN.
[We have received several other replies to this Query, referring to Mr. Boutell's Monumental Brasses: one from "W."; another from "A CORNISHMAN," who says,—
"The brass in question, when I saw it last, had been removed from the Rectory and placed in the tomb of Abbot Wheathampstead, in company with the famous one of Thomas Delamere, another Abbot of St. Albans."
Another from "E.V.," who states,—
"Other examples are found at St. Margaret's, Rochester (where the cause of the second engraving is found to be an error in costume in the first), St. Martins at Plain, Norwich, Hedgerly Church, Bucks, and Burwell Church, Cambridgeshire. Of this last, an engraving and description, by Mr. A.W. Franks, is given in the fourteenth part of the Publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society."
One from "WILLIAM SPARROW SIMPSON," who says,—
"It is also described in the Oxford Architectural Society's Manual of Mon. Brasses, No. 6. pp. 6, 7. other examples of which occur at Rochester, Kent, and at Cobham, Surrey. A small plate of brass, in the possession of a friend, has on one side a group of children, and on the reverse the uplifted hands of an earlier figure."
And lastly, one from "A.P.H." (to which we cannot do ample justice, as we do not keep an engraver), from which we extract the following passages:—
"A friend of mine has a shield in his possession, taken from a slab, and which has been enamelled. It is of late date and rudely executed. On the back is seen the hands and breast of a small female figure, very nearly a century earlier in date. I can also remember an inscription in Cuxton Church, Kent, which was loose, and had another inscription on the back in the same manner.
"I am very much impressed with the idea that the destroyed brasses never had been used at all; but had been engraved, and then, from circumstances that of course we cannot hope to fathom, thrown on one side till the metal might be used for some other purpose. This, I think, is a more probable, as well as a more charitable explanation than the one usually given of the so-called palimpsest brasses.">[
Chapels (No. 20. p. 333.).—As to the origin of the name, will you allow me to refer Mr. Gatty to Ducange's Glossary, where he will find much that is to his purpose.
As to its being "a legal description," I will not undertake to give an opinion without a fee; but I will mention a fact which may assist him in forming one. I believe that fifty years ago the word Chapel was very seldom used among those who formed what was termed the "Dissenting Interest;" that is, the three "denominations" of Independents, Baptists, and Presbyterians. But I well recollect hearing, from good authority, nearly, or quite, forty years ago, that an eminent barrister (whom I might now describe as a late learned judge), who was much looked up to by the dissenters as one of their body, had particularly advised that in all trust-deeds relating to places of dissenting worship, they should be called "Chapels." I do not know that he assigned any reason, but I know that the opinion was given, or communicated, to those who had influence; and, from my own observation, I believe that from about that time we must date the adoption of the term, which has now been long in general use.
I do not imagine that there was any idea of either assistance or opposition to the Church of England, in the mind of him who recommended, or those who adopted, the alteration, or that either of them expected or sought any thing by this measure but to obtain a greater security for property, or, rather, to avoid some real or imagined insecurity, found or supposed to attach to the form of description previously in use.
A BARRISTER.
Forlot, Forthlot (No. 20. p. 320.).—A measure of grain used throughout Scotland at present—query fourthlot. See Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language.
"Firlot; Fyrlot; Furlet.—A corn measure in S., the fourth part of a boll.
"Thay ordainit the boll to mat victual with, to be devidit in foure partis, videlicet, foure fyrlottis to contene a boll; and that fyrlot not to be maid efter the first mesoure, na efter the mesoure now usit, bot in middill mesoure betwixt the twa."—Acts Jac. l. 1526. c. 80. edit. 1566.
"—Ane furme, ane furlet,
Ane pott, ane pek."
Bannatyne Poems, p. 159.
Skinner derives it from A.-S. feower, quatuor; and lot, hlot, portio (the fourth part); Teut. "viertel."
J.S.
Loscop (No. 20. p. 319).—To be "Louecope-free" is one of the immunities granted to the Cinque Ports in their charters of Liberties.
Jeakes explains the term thus:—
"The Saxon word Cope (in Low Dutch still Kope or Koope), for trade or merchandising, makes this as much as to trade freely for love. So that by no kind of monopoly patent, or company or society of traders or merchants, the portsmen be hindered from merchandising; but freely and for love, be permitted to trade and traffick, even by such company of merchants, whenever it shall happen their concerns lie together."
In my MSS., and in the print of Jeakes, it is "Louecope," with which "Lofcope" may be readily identified; and f may easily be misread for s, especially if the roll be obscured.
If Jeakes's etymology of the word be correct, the inference would rather be that "Lovecope" was a tax for the goodwill of the port at which a merchant vessel might arrive; a "port duty" in fact, independent of "lastage" &c., chargeable upon every trader that entered the port, whatever her cargo might be. And the immunities granted to the portsmen were that they should be "port duty free."
I do not venture to offer this as any thing more than a mere guess. Among your contributors there are many more learned than myself in this branch of antiquarian lore, who will probably be able to give a more correct interpretation, and we shall feel obliged for any assistance that they can give us in elucidating the question.
"Lovecope" might perhaps be the designation of the association of merchants itself, to which Jeakes alludes; and the liberty of forming such association, with powers of imposing port duties, may have been dependent on special grant to any port by royal charter, such as that which forms the subject of your correspondent's communication.
After all, perhaps, "Lovecope" was the word for an association of merchants; and "Louecope-free" is to be freed from privileged taxation by this body.
L.B.L.
Smelling of the Lamp (No. 21. p. 335.).—"X." will find the expression Ιλλυχνιων οζειν attributed to Pytheas by Plutarch (Vit. Demosth., c. 8.).
J.E.B. MAYOR.
Anglo-Saxon MS. of Orosius (No. 20. p. 313.).—It may gratify Mr. Singer to be informed that the Lauderdale MS., formerly in the library at Ham House, is now preserved, with several other valuable manuscripts and books, in the library at Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, the seat of the Tollemache family.
M.
Golden Frog.—Ingenious as is the suggestion of "R.R." (No. 18. p. 282.), that Sir John Poley stuck a golden frog in his ear from his affection for tadpoles, I think "R.R.'s" "Rowley Poley" may be dismissed with the "gammon and spinach" of the amorous frog to which he alludes.
Conceiving that the origin of so singular a badge could hardly fail to be commemorated by some tradition in the family, I have made inquiry of one of Sir John Poley's descendants, and I regret to hear from him that "they have no authentic tradition respecting it, but that they have always believed that it had some connection with the service Sir John rendered in the Low Countries, where he distinguished himself much by his military achievements." To the Low Countries, then, the land of frogs, we must turn for the solution of the enigma.
Gastras.
Cambridge, March 9.
Sword of Charles I.—Mr. Planché inquires (No. 12. p. 183.), "When did the real sword of Charles the First's time, which, but a few years back, hung at the side of that monarch's equestrian figure at Charing Cross, disappear?"—It disappeared about the time of the coronation of Her present Majesty, when some scaffolding was erected about the statue, which afforded great facilities for removing the rapier (for such it was); and I always understood it found its way, by some means or other, to the Museum, so called, of the notoriously frolicsome Captain D——, where, in company with the wand of the Great Wizard of the North, and other well-known articles, it was carefully labelled and numbered, and a little account appended of the circumstances of its acquisition and removal.
John Street.
[Surely then Burke was right, and the "Age of Chivalry is past!"—Otherwise the idea of disarming a statue would never have entered the head of any Man of Arms, even in his most frolicsome of moods.]
John Bull.—Vertue MSS.—I always fancied that the familiar name for our countrymen, about the origin of which "R.F.H." inquires (No. 21. p. 336.), was adopted from Swift's History of John Bull, first printed in 1712; but I have no authority for saying so.
If the Vertue MSS. alluded to (No. 20. p. 319.) were ever returned by Mr. Steevens to Dr. Rawlinson, they may be in the Bodleian Library, to which the Doctor left all his collections, including a large mass of papers purchased by him long after Pepys' death, as he described it, "Thus et odores vendentibus."
These "Pepys papers," as far as I can recollect, were very voluminous, and relating to all sorts of subjects; but I saw them in 1824, and had only then time to examine and extract for publication portions of the correspondence.
Braybrooke.
Audley End, March 25.
Vertue's Manuscripts.—The MS. quoted under this title by Malone is printed entire, or rather all of it which refers to plays, by Mr. Peter Cunningham, in the Papers of the Shakspeare Society, vol. ii. p. 123., from an interleaved copy of Langbaine. Since the publication of that paper, the entries relating to Shakspeare's plays have been given from the original MS. in the Bodleian Library, in Halliwell's Life of Shakspeare, p. 272.
S.L.
Vertue's MSS. (No. 20. p. 319.) were in Horace Walpole's possession, bought by him, I think, of Vertue's widow; and his Anecdotes of Painting were chiefly composed from them, as he states, with great modesty, in his dedication and his preface. I do not see in the Strawberry-Hill Catalogue any notice of "Vertue's MSS.," though some vols. of his collection of engravings were sold.
C.
Lines attributed to Tom Brown.—In a book entitled Liber Facetiarum, being a Collection of curious and interesting Anecdotes, published at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by D. Akenhead & Sons, 1809, the passage attributed to Tom Brown by your correspondent "J.T." is given to Zacharias Boyd.
The only reference given as authority for the account is the initials H.B.
"Zacharias Boyd, whose bust is to be seen over the entrance to the Royal College in Glasgow, while Professor in that university, translated the Old and New Testament into Scotch Metre; and, from a laudable zeal to disseminate religious knowledge among the lower classes of the community, is said to have left a very considerable sum to defray the expense of the said work, which, however, his executors never printed."
After a few specimens, the account goes on
"But the highest flight of his Muse appears in the following beautiful Alexandrine:
"And was not Pharaoh a saucy rascal?
That would not let the children of Israel, their wives
And their little ones, their flocks and their herds, go
Out into the wilderness forty days
To eat the Pascal.
"H.B."
Speaking of Zachariah Boyd, Granger says, (vol. ii. p. 379.):
"His translation of the Scripture in such uncouth verse as to amount to burlesque, has been often quoted, and the just fame of a benefactor to learning has been obscured by that cloud of miserable rhymes. Candour will smile at the foible, but applaud the man.
"Macure, in his account of Glasgow, p. 223., informs us he lived in the reign of Charles I."
H.I.
Sheffield, March 9. 1850.
Passage in Frith's Works (No. 20. p. 319).—This passage should be read, as I suppose, "Ab inferiori ad suum superius confuse distribui."
It means that there would be confusion, if what is said distributively or universally of the lower, should be applied distributively or universally to the higher; or, in other words, if what is said universally of a species, should be applied universally to the genus that contains that and other species: e.g., properties that are universally found in the human species will not be found universally in the genus Mammalis, and universal properties of Mammalia wil not be universal over the animal kingdom.
T.J.
Martins, the Louvain Printer.—Your correspondent "W." (No. 12. p. 185.) is informed, that in Falkenstein's Geschichte der Buchdrucherkunst (Leipzig, 1840, p. 257.), Theoderich Martens, printer in Louvain and Antwerp, is twice mentioned. I have no doubt but this is the correct German form of the name. Mertens, by which he was also known, may very possibly be the Flemish form. His Christian name was also written Dierik, a short form of Dietrich, which, in its turn, is the same as Theodorich.
NORTHMAN.
Master of the Revels.—"DR. RIMBAULT" states (No. 14. p. 219.), that Solomon Dayrolle was appointed Master of the Revels in 1744, but does not know the date of his decease. It may be unknown to Dr. Rimbault, that Solomon Dayrolles was an intimate friend and correspondent of the great Lord Chesterfield: the correspondence continues from 1748 to 1755 in the selection of Chesterfield's letters to which I am referring.
Dayrolles, during all that period, held a diplomatic appointment from this country at the Hague. See Lord Chesterfield's letter to him of the 22d Feb. 1748, where Lord C. suggests that by being cautious he (Dayrolles) may be put en train d'être Monsieur l'Envoye.
In several of the letters Chesterfield warmly and familiarly commends his hopeful son, Mr. Stanhope, to the care and attention of Dayrolles.
I have not been able to ascertain when Dayrolles died, but the above may lead to the discovery.
W.H. LAMMIN.
French Maxim.—The French saying quoted by "R.V." is the 223rd of Les Réflexions morales du Duc de la Rochefoucauld (Pougin, Paris, 1839). I feel great pleasure in being able to answer your correspondent's query, as I hope that my reply may be the means of introducing to his notice one of the most delightful authors that has ever yet written: one who deserves far more attention than he appears to receive from general readers in this degenerate age, and from whom many of his literary successors have borrowed some of their brightest thoughts. I need not go far for an illustration:
"Praise undeserved, is scandal in disguise,"
is merely a condensation of,
"Louer les princes des vertus qu'ils n'ont pas, c'est leur dire impunément des injures."—La Rochefoucauld, Max. 327.
I believe that Pope marks it as a translation—a borrowed thought—not as a quotation. He has just before used the words "your Majesty;" and I think the word "scandal" is employed "consulto," and alludes to the offence known in English law as "scandalum magnatum." Your correspondent will, of course, read the work in the original; in fact, he must do so per force. A good translation of Les Maximes is still a desideratum in English literature. I have not yet seen one that could lay claim even to the meagre title of mediocrity; although I have spared neither time nor pains in the search. Should any of your readers have been more fortunate, I shall feel obliged by their referring me to it.
MELANION.
Endeavour.—I have just found the following instance of "endeavour" used as an active verb, in Dryden's translation of Maimbourg's History of the League, 1684.
"On the one side the majestique House of Bourbon,... and on the other side, that of two eminent families which endeavour'd their own advancement by its destruction; the one is already debas'd to the lowest degree, and the other almost reduc'd to nothing." —p. 3.
C. FORBES.
Temple.