Minor Notes.
Boston and Bunker's Hill.
—In the plan of Boston, among the maps of the Useful Knowledge Society, is to be found, near Charleston, and on Breed's Hill (the real site of the battle usually misnamed as of Bunker's Hill), the following notice, "Defeat of the British, 1775." My first idea was, that, Liberal though the Society might be, it was being rather too liberal to give away in this manner a victory which, however bloody and fruitless, was indubitably ours: but, on second thoughts, it seemed that the whole fault arose from copying too implicitly an American map. Now I am well aware that a very large part of the Americans, from continually vaunting (and with good reason) the valour they displayed, and the honour they acquired, on that occasion, have gradually worked themselves into the belief that they were the victors, even though their own historians tell a different tale; and they have even placed inscriptions on the monuments standing on the site of the intrenchments from which they were forced by the British; which inscriptions also assert a similar claim. This would be of no great consequence had it been confined to themselves; but its being transferred to an English publication not only tends to mislead many persons on this side, but enables the Americans to refer with confidence to it, as an admission of their victory on the part of the British; and no one who remembers the use they made, on the Oregon Question, of a similarly occasioned error in one of the Society's globes, can doubt that our Transatlantic friends would make the most of this trifling affair in confirmation of their claims to the victory.
J. S. WARDEN.
Snooks.
—This name, so generally associated with vulgarity, is only a corruption, or rather a contraction, of the more dignified name of Sevenoaks. This town is generally called Se'noaks in Kent; and the further contraction, coupled with the phonetic spelling of former days, easily passed into S'nooks. This is no imaginary conclusion, for I am told by a trustworthy friend that Messrs. Sharp and Harrison, solicitors, Southampton, have recently had in their possession a series of deeds in which all the modes of spelling occur from Sevenokes down to S'nokes, in connexion with a family now known as Snooks.
G. W. J.
Last Slave sold in England.
—Can any of your correspondents tell me the date of the last public slave sale in England? Till the establishment of Granville Sharpe's great principle, in 1772, announcements of these are by no means uncommon. The following, from the Public Ledger of Dec. 31, 1761, grates harshly upon the feelings of the present generation:—
"FOR SALE:
"A healthy negro girl, aged about fifteen years; speaks good English, works at her needle, washes well, does household work, and has had the small-pox."
SAXONICUS.
Hoax on Sir Walter Scott.
—The following passage occurs in one of Sir W. Scott's letters to Southey, written in September, 1810:
"A witty rogue, the other day, who sent me a letter subscribed 'Detector,' proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida's Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of; yet there was so strong a general resemblance as fairly to authorise 'Detector's' suspicion."
Lockhart remarks thereupon:
"The lines of Vida which 'Detector' had enclosed to Scott, as the obvious original of the address to 'Woman' in Marmion, closing with—
"'When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!'
"end as follows: and it must be owned that if Vida had really written them, a more extraordinary example of casual coincidence could never have been pointed out.
"'Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor,
Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.'
"'Detector's' reference is Vida ad Eranen, El. ii. v. 21.; but it is almost needless to add there are no such lines, and no piece bearing such a title in Vida's works. 'Detector' was, no doubt, some young college wag; for his letter has a Cambridge post-mark."
It may interest to know that the author of this clever hoax was Henry I. T. Drury, then, I think, of King's College, Cambridge, and afterwards one of the Masters at Harrow. The lines will be found in the Arundines Cami.
W. T. M.
Hong Kong.