Permit me also to ask, in connection with this subject, for references to any works or treatises supplying information on the history of the Arabic numerals, their origin, and their introduction into Europe. I am already acquainted with Astle, On Writing, Wallis’s Algebra, Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique, the Huctiana, Pegge’s Life of Grostête, and the Philosophical Transactions; but I wish for additional, and, if possible, more recent information.
Does any one of your readers know what became of the MSS. formerly in the possession of the above-named Thomas Astle, formerly Keeper of the Tower Records? In Sir W. Burrell’s Sussex collections in the British Museum are copies of charters, “ex MSS. penes T. Aste,” with notices of curious seals appended, which I should be glad to be able to inspect.
E.V.
Stephen Eiton, or Eden’s “Acta Regis Edw. II.“—The interesting account of St. Thomas of Lancaster, with the appended queries (No. 12. p. 181.), reminds me of the work of Stephen Eiton or Eden, a canon-regular of Warter, in Yorkshire, entitled, “Acta Regis Edwardi iidi,” which is said still to remain in manuscript. Where is it deposited?
T.J.
Dog Latin.—Permit me also to ask, what is the origin of the expression “Dog Latin”?
T.J.
The Cuckoo—the Welch Ambassador.—In Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One, Act iv. sc. 5., Dampet says:—
“Why, thou rogue of universality, do I not know thee? Thy sound is like the cuckoo, the Welch Embassador.”
And the editor of the continuation of Dodsley’s Collection remarks on the passage,—