Minor Notes.

Book-keepers.

—There is a class of persons who fall under this denomination, and to whom the following lines may give a useful hint. Doubtless some of your correspondents, who are furnished with valuable libraries and works of reference, have suffered materially from a neglect of the rules herein laid down.

†.

Lines for the beginning of a Book.

"If thou art borrowed by a friend,

Right welcome shall he be,

To read, to study, not to lend,

But to return to me.

"Not that imparted knowledge doth

Diminish learning's store;

But books I find, if often lent,

Return to me no more.

"Read slowly, pause frequently,

Think seriously, return duly,

With the corners of the leaves not turned down."

The Substitution of the Letter "I" for "J" in the Names of "John, James, Jane," &c.

—Will you permit me to ask the reason of the absurd, and sometimes inconvenient, custom of substituting I for J in MS. spelling of the names John, James, Jane, &c.? If it be correct in MS., why is it not equally correct in print? Let us, then, just see how the names would read in print with such spelling: Iohn, Iames, Iane, &c.! Besides, if it be correct to put I for J in John, it must, of course, be equally correct to put J for I in Isaac, and to turn it into Jsaac. Indeed, if you happen in a subscription list, or a letter, or anything else intended for the press, to write in the MS. the letter I (which rightly stands as the initial in that case), as the initial of some person named Isaac, it is ten to one but the compositor substitutes J in its place in print. I have found Sir I. Newton in my MS. thus metamorphosed into Sir J. Newton in print. I see in "The Clergy List" more than one name which ought to be I, turned into a J. Now, Sir, it is folly to pretend that I and J are synonymous letters, or that they express the same meaning, unless we are prepared to allow Isaac to be spelt with a J or I, according to the writer's pleasure or caprice. May I, then, be permitted to ask whether it is not high time for every one to write I when he means I, and to write J when he means J? If compositors would always print MSS. as they are written in this particular, the palpable absurdity of putting I for J would, I am sure, soon be evident to all, and soon shame people out of the fashion. What if U and V were treated with as little ceremony as I and J? So it once was. Thus T. Rogers, in his work on the Thirty-nine Articles, A.D. 1586, will furnish an example. In it we read: "Such is the estate principally of infants elected vnto life, and saluation, and increasing in yeers." But this old-fashioned mode of spelling has long become obsolete: may the substitution of I for J soon become the same.

C. D.

Daniel de Foe.

—A son of Daniel shines in Pope's Dunciad. Does the following notice refer to a son of that son? It is extracted from an old Wiltshire paper:

"On the 2 Jan. 1771, two young men, John Clark and John Joseph De Foe, said to be a grandson to the celebrated author of the True Born Englishman, &c., were executed at Tyburn for robbing Mr. F——, the banker, of a watch and a trifling sum of money on the highway."

And the writer then proceeds to moralise on the inequality of that code of laws, which could visit with death the author of a burglary committed on another man, who, by the failure of his bank, had recently produced an unexampled scene of distress, in the ruin of many families, and was yet suffered to go scatheless.

My next notice, which is also extracted from a Wiltshire paper, is dated 1836.

"In a street adjoining Hungerford Market, there is now living, 'to fortune and to fame unknown,' the great-grandson of the author of Robinson Crusoe. His trade is that of a carpenter, and he is much respected in the neighbourhood. His father, a namesake of this great progenitor, was for many years a creditable tradesman in the old Hungerford Market."

Has it ever been noticed by bibliographers that the History of Robert Drury, which came out the year before Robinson Crusoe, may have had an equal share with Alexander Selkirk's story in forming the basis of De Foe's narrative?

WILTONIENSIS.

English Surnames: Bolingbroke (Vol. v., p. 326.).

—During a visit to Bolingbroke, a village in Lincolnshire, the birth-place of Henry IV., the rapidity of the little stream, so unusual in a county remarkable for the sluggishness of its waters, suggested to me the probable origin of the name, bowling brook; "bowling along," and "running at a bowling pace," being not uncommon expressions. Here then, if we cannot meet with "sermons in stones" amongst the few vestiges of the castle, and in the church with its beautiful decorated windows, the heads of which are so disgracefully blocked up with plaster, we may "find books in the running brooks," and learn that "proud Bolingbroke" owed his appellation to this insignificant babbling rivulet.

C. T.

Waistcoats worn by Women.

—Now that we hear no more of Bloomerism, a feeble attempt has been made to introduce a spurious scion of the defunct nuisance, almost as masculine, and to the full as ugly. I have but little fear of its gaining ground, having full confidence in the good taste of our countrywomen: but it will be curious to see what our ancestors of the seventeenth century thought of the wearers of the aforesaid garment. Vide the Glossary to Beaumont and Fletcher's Works:

"WAISTCOATEERS. Strumpets; a kind of waistcoat was peculiar to that class of females."

Verbum non amplius addam.

W. J. BERNHARD SMITH.

Temple.

"Thirty Days hath September," &c. (Antiquity of).

—Professor De Morgan, in his useful List of Works on Arithmetic, published in 1847, enters one, under the date 1596, with the following title: "The Pathway to Knowledge, written in Dutch, and translated into English by W. P., 4to." To this he notes:

"The translator gives the following verses, which are now well known. I suspect he is the author of them, having never seen them at an earlier date. Mr. Halliwell, who is more likely than myself to have found them if they existed very early, names no version of them earlier than 1635:—

"'Thirtie daies hath September, Aprill, June and November,

Febuarie eight and twentie alone, all the rest thirtie and one.'"

Now it seems to me noteworthy to be recorded in your pages, that these lines, so familiar to us all from childhood, appear in a more complete shape in Harrison's Description of Britaine prefixed to the first edition of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, &c., 1577, where at p. 119. the writer says:

"Agayne touching the number of dayes in every moneth:

"'Junius, Aprilis, Septemq; Novemq; tricenos

Unū plus reliqui, Februy tenet octo vicenos,

At si bissextus fuerit superadditur unus.'

"'Thirty dayes hath November,

Aprill, June and September,

Twentie and eyght hath February alone,

And all the rest thirty and one,

But in the leape you must adde one.'"

A. GRAYAN.