The Library.

A Greek-English Lexicon. Compiled by Henry
George Liddell and Robert Scott. A new
Edition Revised and Augmented through-
out by Henry Stuart Jones, Principal
of the University College of Wales, with the
assistance of Roderick Mackenzie, and
with the co-operation of
scholars.
many
Part III: διάλειμμα ἐξευτελιστής (Oxford,
Clarendon Press, in ten parts, 10s. 6d. each.
Complete work, £4 4s.).

FACH yearly instalment of this monumental
ACH yearly instalment of this monumental

the field of Greek literature, the importance of
the contributions which are being made to our
knowledge of the language by fresh discoveries
of papyri and inscriptions, and, we must add,
how far better the needs of classical students

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in English-speaking countries are met by
Liddell and Scott than they are by that
extremely inadequate Latin Dictionary which
shares with it the abbreviation of "L. & S."
Some of the many merits of this improved
edition have been already dwelt on in Ñ. and
Q. The compendious methods of reference to
Greek authors and works, by which so much
space is gained, may be unfamiliar at first,
but experience soon reconciles the reader, and
they are so judiciously devised that in most
instances they can be solved at first reading
with a little thought. No educated person
with a fair amount of general information
ought to pause in interpreting Aq. Hb. 3.4,"
unless indeed general information no longer
includes some knowledge of the history of the
Bible and its translations. There is one con-
venience, however, which we miss. In the
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae,' the 84 lines in
a column are numbered by tens and fives,
thus greatly facilitating reference and cross-
reference. In our Liddell and Scott," with its
89 line columns, we are provided with no such
help.

death."

66

It occurs

66

journalists runs tọ trying out." There will
always be examples of compounds where the
exact force of the prefix is doubtful. The
of "L. & S.," to diagipicoμai is "fight to the
meaning attached here, as in earlier editions
once, in line 781 of Ar.
Eq. In his edition of that play, R. A. Neil
suggests that as ξιφίζω, ξιφισμός, ξίφισμα, ξιφίνδα,
all mean a dance or game with swords the
above verb, quoted from this single place,
may= to play the sword-game with." Liter-
ary parallels in other places will naturally
suggest themselves. There seems to be some
misunderstanding in the interpretation of
diaπETTEúw,.. The meaning assigned to it is
gamble," and 8. rv rida Luc. Am.' 16, is
explained as try one's luck at play." But
the lover in the "Amores' is not engaged with
an opponent in a game of chance. He is em-
ploying a method of divination. He takes
four dice, or rather knuckle-bones, numbered
on four sides with 1-4, and when he throws
"the goddess
" (Venus, four different num-
Ders), regards this as an omen of success in
love. There still remain Greek words of
which the meaning, in certain passages at
least, is a puzzle. The explanation given of
the verb ἐμποδίζω in Equites," 755, where
Demos is said to sit gaping, as though
is that the phrase pro-
μπodítwv loɣádas,
bably means "playing bob-fig. i.e., catch-
ing figs dangled by the stalk (Tous)." This
certainly fits the situation, but the account
given of the use of the verb is unconvincing.
Could not μrodi(@v be employed here in its
ordinary sense of shackling, fettering, an ap-
parently less appropriate word being chosen
for the occasion, as often in Aristophanes, for
some topical purpose? Instead of snatching
or catching, the player is said to snare the
fig. If the word could suggest snaring or
trapping by the leg, the expression would be
analogous to the slang potato-trap" for
mouth." The meaning of the verb diadenia
given as strip of bark." Would not
bark "
(see the O.E.D.') suffice? We remem-
ber a line of Alfred Austin's-

66

Surely
the nature of the metaphor calls in English
idiom for blend." We conclude with a
search question. What is the Greek for bath-
ing-costume? For answer see p. 512, col. 2.

To touch brifly on some details of the
present number, it includes those old enemies
of the schoolboy, cipi (sum) and eiμ (ibo). Round barked oaks newly thrown,"
An examination of the article on the first of which his reviewer, Mr. A. R. Ropes, aptly
these will shew a great improvement in the termed "a mouthful of fishbones." Under
register of dialectic forms. Passing to pre- “¿ykeрávvvμ mix,
positions and the compounds of which they raidtáv from Plato, Politicus,' 268d, is trans-
esp. wine,” ἐγκεράσασθαι
form part, we note that compounds of diàlated "mix in a little amusement.
fill between twenty and thirty pages, in addi-
tion to eleven or twelve pages in the preceeding
section; eis and its compounds have six pages;
Ek about thirty-eight, stopping short at
ἐξευτελιστής ; while ἐν takes up, roughly, close
on forty. It would be a curious study to
trace the history of such compounds, those in
especial where the prepositional prefix seems
to be little more than intensive, if not otiose.
Observers of English manners in speech may
have marked that men of science seemed at
one time, to the literary at any rate, to be
overfond of dividing up.
But Robert Bur-
ton has butchered up
in the Anatomy of
Melancholy.' To-day the fashion among

The Elements of Book-Collecting. By Iolo A.
Williams. (Elkin Mathews and Marrot.
88. 6d.).

MR. Tolo A. Williams is well known to all

lovers of books, and his instructions will
be received both with a welcome and with
confidence. He combines a delightful humanity
with a taste both for minute accuracy and
for what is out of the way which would not
misbecome the Dry-as-dust he is not. More-

"

over, as a collector, and in this little treatise
for beginners, he has regard to the forgotten,
the now relatively inexpensive, the things
which, while worth having, are not beyond
reach of a slender purse. In his first essay,
Pleasures of book-collecting,' he says much
that is obviously true about the reasons for
prizing first editions; where these are of what
he calls the sentimental order who should
gainsay them? But we think his comparison
of a first edition to first-hand evidence rather
misleading; and, feeling some sympathy for
authors who have let mistakes or blemishes
through and chafe at the thought of them-
or who have been visited with second inspira-
tions too late to be incorporated on original
publication, we begin to think that somebody
should take up the cudgels for authors' cor-
rected editions as against the first. About
half the book is devoted to a careful account
of the main things to be learnt about the
sizes of books, and their parts, about what
constitutes perfection in a
copy, about
issues and editions, and the proper mode of
describing a book. Then we come to charac-
teristic chapters on the Formation of a Collec-
tion, and Modern First Editions. Mr. Wil-
liams, as he says in his first paragraph, con-
siders that the object of all collecting is to
increase the sum of knowledge upon some
particular subject, and, with that in view,
prefers the collection of old to new books,
adverting, too, in this connection, to the
obliteration of individual personality, which
is one result of modern mechanical efficiency,
and which diminishes the pleasant exercise of
the collector's judgment. In certain para-
graphs which deprecate collection of works
irrelevant to a writer's true fame, or which
he himself would wish forgotten, Mr. Williams
seems virtually, or logically, to unsay part
of what he has earlier said in the unqualified
praise of first editions. In the chapter giving
a Few Suggestions, after an appreciation of
Mr. Philip Gosse the collector of books on
Pirates and Piracy, he maintains that, if one
will but break away from what everybody is
collecting, there is no shortage of material for
bibliographical study. He instances, first,
Theology, and has hope, from any one who
should collect seventeenth century sermons, of
the discovery of much notable English prose.
Next he mentions the minor poets of the
beginning of the nineteenth century, whose
forgotten books, to be bought for next to
nothing, might furnish a whole anthology of
virtually new material. These for large sub-
jects for smaller, Mr. Williams suggests col-
lection of the work of individual illustrators
(Stothard, for example, or Francis Hoffman);
collection of old specimens of provincial
printing; or study of bindings and what they
contain and marks or writing in old books.
He gives a singularly charming find of this
last kind made by himself. Not the least
useful of these chapters is the final one on
Books of Reference.

Printed and Published by The Bucks Free

THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS. To the Editor, Notes and Queries.' Sir, I am engaged in the preparation of a new edition of the letters of John Keats, based on my father's library editions of 1883 and 1889, the two volumes of "Letters included in the complete Keats he edited for Messrs. Gowans and Gray in 1900-1901, and the additional matter he had gathered up to the time of his death in 1917. Many of the letters brought together under his editorship were derived from printed sources, and doubtless some of these, as well as many new letters, have come to light during the past quarter of a century. I shall be grateful to any of your readers who are the happy possessors of original Keats letters if they will communicate with me, with a view to publication, if unpublished, or collation, if already in print; or should they find it more convenient to correspond with someone resident in England, Mr. Humphrey Milford, of the Oxford University Press, Amen House, Warwick Square, London, E.C.4, has kindly undertaken to copy or collate any letters entrusted to his care. I need hardly offer the assurance that any manuscripts entrusted to us will be dealt with expeditiously and returned promptly to the ownerfs

I am anxious to include in the edition a census of letters, giving the course whence they are derived and, wherever possible, the present ownership of the originals, and information that will help in furthering this object will be very acceptable.

Yours faithfully,

MAURICE BUXTON FORMAN. 1100, Pretorius Street, Pretoria. December 7th, 1927.

APPROVED Queries are inserted free of charge. Contributors are requested always to gives their names and addresses, for the information of the Editor, and not necessarily for publication.

WHEN sending a letter to be forwarded to another contributor, correspondents are requested to put in the top left-hand corner of the envelope the number of the page of 'N. & Q. to which the latter refers.

WHEN answering a query, or referring to an article which has already appeared, correspondents are requested to give within parentheses-immediately after the exact headingthe numbers of the series, volume, and page at which the contribution in question is to be found.

The Publisher will be pleased to forward free specimen copies of N. and Q.' to any addresses of friends which readers may like to send to him.

Press, Ltd., at their Offices, High Street,
Wycombe, in the County of Bucks.

FOR READERS AND WRITERS, COLLECTORS AND LIBRARIANS. Seventy-Ninth Year.

NOTES AND QUERIES is published every Friday, at 20, High Street, High Wycombe, Bucks (Telephone: Wycombe 306). Subscriptions (22 28. a year, U.S.A. $10.50, including postage, two half-yearly indexes and two cloth binding cases, or £1 15s. 4d. a year, U.S.A. $9, without binding cases) should be sent to the Manager. The London Office is at 22, Essex Street, W.C.2 (Telephone: Central 0396), where the current issue is on sale. Orders for back numbers, indexes and bound volumes should be sent either to London or to Wycombe; letters for the Editor to the London Office.

Memorabilia.

virtually Librarian, liable. It is satisfactory to learn that the Dean replaced the damaged map by a new one. Sir Herbert George Fordham contributes an article recording the commencement of the English road-book in 1541, having discovered a series of road-tables, which begin in that year, in some little historical summaries which used to be brought out by early printers under such title as A cronycle of yeres. He gives one of these "Anno. 1544,' in facsimile. He is thus able to go back thirty years beyond the date given for the first road-books in the Catalogue he published in 1924.

THEA

Editor of the Journal of the English Folk Dance Society invites his readers to send him material of views tending to solve the problem of the origin of country dances. To set the ball rolling he puts forth two rival accounts of the matter, the one Mr. Cecil Sharp's, the other Mr. Thomas Hardy's. Mr. Sharp thought the country dance was a figure dance of " folk" origin, the shapes of the figures being the essentially folk "" element in it. The dances which we know he held to be made up of a few traditional dances and a large number of new dances elaborated from traditional material by seventeenth and eighteenth century dancing-masters. Mr. Hardy thinks that country dances are different altogether from folk-dances, being product and practice of a different stratum of society with which the dancers of folk-dances did not intermingle, and avers that where country dances were introduced into the villages they had to be learnt as something new, which, moreover, did not prove as acceptable to the learners as their original boisterous their jigs, "horse race, "thread-theneedle," and so on. References to old sources of information whence either opinion might be substantiated are specially asked for.

THE new number of the Library begins with Mr. G. B. Harrison's paper on Books and Readers, 1591-4.' Of the five sections on entries in the Stationers' Register the last is about books entered before they were written, and gives as examples accounts of the judgment and execution of criminals entered upon the very day of execution, shewing that the entry was used to stake a claim in a piece of startling news. The Register sometimes carries a proviso that the book to be written shall be in good form and order. Mr. Garrod has a delightful and useful paper on 'The Library Regulations of a Medieval College.' There was a curious custom, called at Merton electio librorum, of periodically distributing certain books assigned for this use among the Fellows. This was in working before 1338, and showing itself, besides, open to abuses, for complaint is made of Fellows keeping books when they are no longer Occupied with the subject, an example being THE December number of Literis is in rather cited of some which were retained for eleven large proportion taken up with philoor twelve years. If any one wanted the loan logy. Other subjects are the ideas underlying of a book not in electione (or as we should say the French emigration, 1789-1815; recent belonging to the lending library) he must studies in the life and works of Rivas; Ditprocure the consent to this of four "seniors,' trich’s Geschichte der Ethik'; the antesometimes even of the whole College. It is cedents of the war of 1870, and the new edirelated that the College agreed to lend the tion by M. Bréhier of Plotinus. M. BaldenDean of Wells a map of England belonging sperger reviewing an American study of to the Library provided he paid a deposit of Fielding quotes a recent work of M. L. L. 40s. as guarantee for its safe return. The Schücking which calls upon people (and it map was lent and returned, and the deposit is an inteersting point of contemporary litlikewise returned; but subsequent examina-erary criticism abroad) to be surprised "de tion showed that the Dean had so misused the voir 'Schiller compter encore un homme tel map that it was good for nothing. For this que Fielding parmi, les plus grands clasthe College made the Sub-Warden, who was siques As M. Baldensperger goes on to