Obiit Die 10 Maii 1637."
The above epitaph is curious; but what is the meaning of the letters "S. R. Q. P.?"
NEDLAM.
Hair in Seals.
—Stillingfleet, referring to a MS. author, who wrote a chronicle of St. Augustine's, says:
"He observes one particular custom of the Normans, that they were wont to put some of the hair of their heads or beards into the wax of their seals: I suppose rather to be kept as monuments than as adding any strength or weight to their charters. So he observes, that some of the hair of William, Earl of Warren, was in his time kept in the Priory of Lewis."
Orig. Brit., chap. I., Works, Lond. 1710, tom. iii. p. 13.
J. SANSOM.
To "eliminate."
—The meaning of this word, according both to its etymology and its usage in the Latin authors, is quite clear; it is to "turn out of doors." Figuratively, it has been used by mathematicians to denote the process by which all incidental matters are gradually thrown out of an equation to be solved, &c., so that only its essential conditions at last remain. Of late, however, I have observed it used not of the act of elimination, but of the result; a sense quite foreign to its true meaning, and producing great ambiguity. Thus, in a recent Discourse, the object of biblical exegesis is declared to be "the elimination of the statements of the Bible respecting doctrine;" the author evidently meaning, not what his words imply,—to get rid of the statements of the Bible,—though that has been sometimes the problem of exegesis, but to present the doctrinal result in a clear form, and detached from everything else.