Quam facili frueris nunc quoque nocte doces."
I may add, in conclusion, that several beautiful drawings of the Tradescant monument in Lambeth churchyard are preserved in the Pepysian library. These drawings were engraved for the Philosophical Transactions, vol. lxiii. p. 88.; and are printed from the same plates in the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, vol. ii.
Edward F. Rimbault.
MEANING OF VENVILLE.
(Vol. iii., pp. 152. 310.)
I observe, in p. 310. of the present volume, that two correspondents, P. and K., have contributed conjectures as to the meaning and origin of the term venville, noticed and explained antè, p. 152. The origin of the word is of course to some extent open to conjecture; but they may rest assured that the meaning of it is not, nor ever has been, within the domain of mere conjecture with those who have had any opportunities of inquiry in the proper quarter. The term has not the slightest reference to the ceremony of delivering possession, which P. has evidently witnessed in the case of his father, and which lawyers call livery of seisin; nor is there on Dartmoor any such word as ven signifying peat, or as fail, signifying turf. No doubt a fen on the moor would probably contain "black earth or peat," like most other mountain bogs; and if (as K. says) fail means a "turf or flat clod" in Scotland, I think it probable that a Scotchman on Dartmoor might now and then so far forget himself as to call peat or turf by a name which would certainly not be understood by an aboriginal Devonian. The local name of the peat or other turf cut for fuel is vaggs, and this has perhaps been confounded in the recollection of K.'s informant with ven. At all events, I can assure both P. and K. (who, I presume, are not familiar with the district) that the tenants of venville lands have no functions to perform, as such, in any degree connected with either turf-cutting, or "fenging fields," and that they do not necessarily, or generally, occupy peat districts, or rejoice in
"All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats," &c.;
but, on the contrary, they are the owners of some of the most valuable, salubrious, and picturesque purlieus of the forest. With regard to the name "fengfield," although I am pretty familiar with the records of the forest extant for the last five hundred years past, I do not remember that it is ever so named or spelt in the muniments of the manor or forest. It is so written by Risdon, and in some few other documents entitled to little weight, and from which no safe inference can be drawn. Whatever be the etymological origin of the term, it should be assumed as indisputable by any one who may hereafter exercise his ingenuity or his fancy upon it, that the four most prominent