"In a street adjoining Hungerford Market, there is now living, 'to fortune and to fame unknown,' the great-grandson of the author of Robinson Crusoe. His trade is that of a carpenter, and he is much respected in the neighbourhood. His father, a namesake of this great progenitor, was for many years a creditable tradesman in the old Hungerford Market."
Has it ever been noticed by bibliographers that the History of Robert Drury, which came out the year before Robinson Crusoe, may have had an equal share with Alexander Selkirk's story in forming the basis of De Foe's narrative?
WILTONIENSIS.
English Surnames: Bolingbroke (Vol. v., p. 326.).
—During a visit to Bolingbroke, a village in Lincolnshire, the birth-place of Henry IV., the rapidity of the little stream, so unusual in a county remarkable for the sluggishness of its waters, suggested to me the probable origin of the name, bowling brook; "bowling along," and "running at a bowling pace," being not uncommon expressions. Here then, if we cannot meet with "sermons in stones" amongst the few vestiges of the castle, and in the church with its beautiful decorated windows, the heads of which are so disgracefully blocked up with plaster, we may "find books in the running brooks," and learn that "proud Bolingbroke" owed his appellation to this insignificant babbling rivulet.
C. T.
Waistcoats worn by Women.
—Now that we hear no more of Bloomerism, a feeble attempt has been made to introduce a spurious scion of the defunct nuisance, almost as masculine, and to the full as ugly. I have but little fear of its gaining ground, having full confidence in the good taste of our countrywomen: but it will be curious to see what our ancestors of the seventeenth century thought of the wearers of the aforesaid garment. Vide the Glossary to Beaumont and Fletcher's Works:
"WAISTCOATEERS. Strumpets; a kind of waistcoat was peculiar to that class of females."
Verbum non amplius addam.