Minor Notes.
Biographical Dictionary.
—May I beg for the assistance of "NOTES AND QUERIES" to enforce a want which I am sure is daily felt by thousands of educated Englishmen? The want I speak of is that of a good Biographical Dictionary, coming down to the middle of the century; a dictionary as good as the Biog. Universelle for foreign lives, and a hundred times better for English lives. Every one knows how meagre and unsatisfactory is that otherwise magnificent work in its English part. Why should we not have an abridged translation, with the home portion re-written?
Z. Z. Z.
The Word Premises.
—The use of the word premises for houses, lands, and hereditaments, is surely incorrect. I have never found the word præmissa used in any Latin writer in a sense that can sanction the modern application of its derivative. Johnson's authority supports the view that the word is perverted in being made to stand for houses and lands, as he says it is "in low language" that the noun substantive "premises" is used in that sense, as, "I was upon the premises," &c. The office of "the premises" in a deed, say the Law Dictionaries, is to express the names of the grantor and grantee, and to specify the thing granted. "The premises is the former part of a deed, being all that which precedeth the habendum or limitation of the estate." I believe the term "parcels" is applied, technically, to the specification of the property which forms the subject of a deed. In an instrument, it may not be wholly incorrect to refer by the term "premises" to the particulars premised, and, if an etymological inaccuracy, it may be excused for the sake of avoiding repetitions; but surely we ought not to speak of houses, lands, &c. by this term. I see I am not the first to call an editor's attention to this point, for, in the Gentleman's Magazine of Jan., 1795, a correspondent complains of this improper application of the word, and attributes the perversion to the lawyers, "who," he says, "for the sake of brevity (to which, by-the-bye, they are not much attached), have accustomed themselves to the phrase, 'the aforesaid premises,' whence the word has come to be universally taken as a collective noun, signifying manors, tenements, and so on." The absurdity of such a use of the word is illustrated by putting it for animals, household goods, and personal estate, for which it may as well stand as for lands and houses.
W. S. G.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Play of George Barnwell:—
"Last Friday a messenger came from Hampton Court to the Play House by the Queen's command, for the manuscript of George Barnwell, for Her Majesty's perusal, which Mr. Wilks carried to Hampton Court early on Saturday morning; and we hear it is to be performed shortly at the Theatre in Hampton Court, for the entertainment of the Royal Family," &c.—Daily Post, Monday, July 5. 1731.
H. E.
Traditions from Remote Periods through few Links (Vol. iii., pp. 206. 237.):—
"My greatest boast in this line is, that I have conversed with Sir Isaac Herd, the celebrated herald, and he had conversed with a person who was present at the execution of Charles I."—Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. ii. p. 304. note.
E. H. A.