If John of Padua had been a musician, we should most probably meet with his name in some of the accounts of plays and pageants during this reign; and the silence of your correspondents seems to imply that no information concerning him is to be obtained from those sources.
In the absence of further proof, then, I have no hesitation in proposing to the critical readers of "N. & Q.," a resolution that, It is the opinion of this council that there is no sufficient evidence that John of Padua was a musician.
ERICA.
Modern Greek Names of Places (Vol. iv., p. 470.; Vol. v., pp. 14. 209.).
—Your correspondent L. H. J. T. says, at p. 209.:—
"That with the utmost deference to SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT, he must deny that Cos, Athens, or Constantinople have been called by the Greeks Stanco, Satines, or Stamboul. These corruptions have been made by Turks, Venetians, and Englishmen."
This mode of expression would imply that the opinion which he corrects was held by me, whereas I have stated (Vol. v., p. 14.), even more explicitly than he, that—
"The barbarism in question is to be charged less upon the modern Greeks themselves, than upon the European nations, Sclavonians, Normans, and Venetians, and, later still, the Turks; who seized upon their country on the dismemberment of the Roman empire. The Greeks themselves, no doubt, continued to spell their proper names correctly; but their invaders, ignorant of their orthography, and even of their letters, were forced to write the names of places in characters of their own, guided solely by the sound."
J. EMERSON TENNENT.