The writer of the Tour started from R- & small town in Warwickshire, accompanied by a friend, Mr. S- They followed the track of Dr. Johnson over the Western Highlands, and closed the journey at Oxford. JAMES GIBSON.

Liverpool.

WELSH VERSE.-At the end of the commendatory verses prefixed to James Hayward's translation of Biondi's Eromena (London, 1632, fol.) are the following lines:

"Hawdd darllhen dalen liw dydd, hawdd siarad
Hawdd siwrneio glenydd,
Dbyr iaith bod ynieithydd

Gorchwyl faith gorchest y sydd.
THO. REVELL,

Ex hospitio Graii, Gen."
What is the meaning of these lines?
E. H, KNOWLES.
Kenilworth.

Queries with Answers. LONGMAN AND CO.-I find the name of T. Longman on the title-page of a book printed in London in 1753. I presume he was a predecessor of the firm since so well known. Can any one give the various changes in the name of the firm, with the dates of their adoption? It once extended to six names-"Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green." UNEDA. '

Philadelphia.

[The cradle of the Longman family was Bristol. It was on June 9, 1716, that the indentures were signed which bound Thomas Longman (the son of the last Bristol Ezekiel Longman) apprentice for the term of seven years to Mr. John Osborne, stationer and bookseller at the Oxford Arms in Lombard Street, London not the Tom Osborne, gentle reader, whom Dr. Johnson discourteously knocked down with a folio. On June 9, 1723, Thomas Longman's indentures expired, and within a short time his master's daughter, Mistress Mary Osborne, became Dame Mary Longman, the newly-married couple locating themselves at the Ship and Black Swan in Paternoster Row. Subsequently the matrimonial alliance was crowned by a commercial one; for in 1725 the firm was known by the names of J. Osborne, T. Longman, and J. Batley, in Paternoster Row, and in the following year as J. Osborne and T. Longman at the Ship in Paternoster Row.

In 1754, Thomas Longman took his nephew into partnership, after which the imprints were issued as "T. and T. Longman, at the Ship in Paternoster Row." The founder of the house, Thomas Longman, died on June 18, 1755, and was succeeded in the business by his nephew,

Johnson to Bozzy.-"Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him; but it was not in his shop: it was in my own chamber."

obit. Feb. 5, 1797. The son and successor of the latter was Thomas Norton Longman, who walked steadily in the footsteps of his uncle; completing the superstructure which the founder had reared, and leaving to his successor the business he had inherited, ripe for the expansion which the nineteenth century was to bestow on it. Mr. Owen Rees entered in 1794, and shortly afterwards the business was carried on as Longman and Rees till 1804, when Mr. Cosmo Orme, an assistant, had entered into partnership with Mr. Thomas Hurst; but it was

thought desirable to retain his services, and the firm became that of Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; in 1811 was added the name of Mr. Thomas Brown, and in 1824 that of Mr. Bevis E. Green.

Mr. T. Norton Longman died on August 29, 1842: his son, the present head of the firm, Mr. Thomas Longman, entered as partner in 1832, and William, another son, became partner in 1839.

Mr. Roberts, who was apprenticed in the house in 1826, was received into partnership in 1856, and in June, 1862, Mr. William E. Green, second son of the senior partner, was also admitted. The retirement of Mr. Green, sen. and the death of Mr. Roberts having made a further change necessary, Mr. Thomas Reader and Mr. Robert Dyer were admitted as partners. The firm now trades under the names of Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer. Thus, the history of the "Great House in the Row," it will be seen, extends over a century and a half.]

WILLIAM HALLET. Has any account been printed of this person, a well-known cabinetmaker of Long Acre, who in 1747 bought the Duke of Chandos' estate of Canons, near Edgware? I am desirous of learning when, and to whom, that estate was sold about 1808. Probably this was the same person who possessed the Townhill estate in the parish of Stoneham, near Southampton, which probably was sold about the same period. His name appeared in 3rd S. ii. 150, in connection with the statue of King George I., removed from Canons, and the figure of which now lies prostrate on the ground_in W. P. Leicester Square.

[In the works quoted in our notice of the history of Canons (antè, p. 175) will be found some allusions to William Hallet. The following announcement of his death on Dec. 17, 1781, appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, lii. 45: "Wm. Hallet, Esq., of Canons, near Edgware, Middlesex, formerly an eminent cabinet-maker

in St. Martin's Lane. After the sale of the late Duke of Chandos's house piecemeal, he bought the site and estate, together with large quantities of the materials, which other purchasers refused or neglected to clear, and with them built himself a house on the centre vaults of the old one. This house and estate he has bequeathed to his grandson, a minor." The house passed to Dennis O'Kelly, and then to Patrick his nephew; and in July, 1811, it was sold to Sir Thomas Plummer, Solicitor-General, for 55,000%]

SIR W. DAVENANT'S WIVES.-Who were the wives of Sir William Davenant? I remember reading that he was twice married, but am unable to find any notice of the fact in Wood or Aubrey, or in any of the biographers I have consulted.

S. L. [It is somewhat remarkable that the biographers of Sir William Davenant were unable to give the maiden names of his two wives. In the Gentleman's Magazine for Oct. 1850, p. 367, are the following notices of their final restingplaces: "Burial of the first wife of Sir Wm. Davenant, 'March 5, 1654 5, Anne, wife of Sir Wm. Davenant, out of Castell Yard.'-Burial register of St. Andrew's, Holborn. Castle Yard is now Castle Street, and when Lady Davenant lived there was well inhabited." Again, "Burial of widow of Sir Wm. Davenant, Feb. 24, 1690-1. Lady Mary Davenant, old vault, fever.'-Burial register of St. Bride's, Fleet Street."]

My attention has been called to a communication in your columns respecting the proposed repaving of the chancel of the above-named church. If the writer states his case in ignorance of the facts, he may, perhaps, be glad of fuller information. The committee (of whom I suspect him to be a member) expressed a wish to repave the chancel, upon which I wrote to the chairman strongly urging the claims of deceased parishioners to have their memorials respected, and urgently dissuading the committee from removing them. I may mention that the tombstones were those of parishioners of the last century or two, not ancient memorials; but I strongly hold that such mementoes should be respected.

I went further: I had a specification prepared for the reparation and careful relaying of all these memorial stones, containing the strongest injunctions against the destruction of any of them. I was the more urgent because I had been inadvertently betrayed into the error of designing a pavement for the altar space before I knew of the existence of some similar stones; and I was most anxious not to allow a single monumental inscription to be lost in the part now under consideration.

I received the following letter from the committee on the receipt of my specification and plan:

"At the last meeting of the Restoration Committee a drawing of the floor of the chancel was laid before them

for their consideration, which had been prepared with a view to relaying the existing memorial stones as part of the permanent pavement. After long consideration the Committee felt themselves unable to adopt the plan.

"They are anxious to combine, if possible, the two objects the preservation of everything now in the church, and the decent, or rather handsome, appearance of the edifice. They consider that to use the old stones as part of the flooring is to defeat the object of preservation in the most effective manner, for some are already illegible, and the rest are rapidly becoming so. The treading over them for a very short time longer will absolutely efface every inscription. The blotchy appearance of such a pavement would also be thoroughly unsightly.

"Our committee therefore propose to have a perfect register prepared on vellum of all the inscriptions so far as they can now be deciphered, and also to have an accurate plan of the position of every stone made by a competent surveyor. These would be deposited in the fectly preserved. They then propose to level the whole parish chest, so that the parochial history would be per. of the present flooring, laying the old stones on a bed of material as you may advise." concrete, and over that to lay a new pavement of such

Then follow some suggestions about the new

floor:

"In either case brasses would be let in, as already done in the encaustic tiles of the sanctuary, with such particulars engraven on each as will identify every grave included in the proposed plan and register.'

In reply to this I reiterated my objection, while admitting that, if they were determined to remove the memorials, the plan they proposed as to recording them might be the next best alternative. And in sending a plan as requested, I wrote on the same that I sent it in compliance with their instructions, but that my own opinion and wishes were for the preservation of the old tombstones. All this while not one word of sympathy did I receive from one member of the committee in my endeavour to preserve the memorials of their fellow-townsmen; and it may be that your correspondent sat by, waiting for me to give way, that he might pounce down upon me, as if it were my doing instead of being done in spite of my remonstrances.

I may mention that the expression respecting "6 a Staffordshire farmer's kitchen is a quotation from a paper read by me before the Institute of British Architects, in which I was protesting against this practice of removing the memorials of the dead. It of course referred to Staffordshire tiles. The pavement in question is a tolerably good one in stone of two colours, in no degree such as is described. This, however, is neither here nor there. I agree with your correspondent that no pavement, good or bad, should oust the memorials of the departed, however I may differ from him as to the way in which he has ignored all I have done to prevent it, and that the tearing up of the tombstones, which he justly deprecates, is the deliberate act of the inhabitante of Wakefield, in spite of the urgent remonstrances of one

who, though a stranger, has more respect for the memorials of their fellow-townsmen than is accorded to them by their living representatives. GEO, GILBERT SCOTT.

BURIAL IN AN ERECT POSTURE.
(1st S. viii. 5.)

A note was made by the present writer some years ago on a monumental slab at Stanton Harcourt church, Oxon, which led to a series of communications on the above subject tending to show that the practice was not uncommon at various periods in the case of military captains; and the suggestion was made that in that of the Claphams and Mauleverers at Bolton Priory they were marvellously buried as being marvellous men. At least this was assigned as the reason for leaving Howleglass in that posture when the ropes used in lowering the foot of his coffin broke. Fuller in his Worthies mentions that Sir William Paget,

who died in 1563, "is buried in Lichfield, and not in the vault under the church of Drayton in Middlesex, where the rest of that family, I cannot say lie (as whose coffins are erected), but are very completely reposed in a peculiar posture, which I meet not with elsewhere; the horror of a vault being much abated with the lightness and sweetness thereof." As to Ben Jonson, it seems undecided whether want of cash or want of space led to his erect interment. That he was so buried is stated to have been found to be the case on his grave being opened some years since. That want of space was not the cause is proved by many subsequent interments; but that economy was seems likely from Jack Young's eighteenpenny gift of an inscription, as related by Aubrey. The author of the Ingoldsby Legends, however, holds the other view, as he tells us

"Besides in the place

They say there's not space

To bury what wet-nurses call a 'Babby.'
Even Rare Ben Jonson,' that famous wight,
I am told is interr'd there bolt upright,
In just such a posture beneath his bust
As Tray used to sit in to beg for a crust."

Had the proof of burials in an erect posture merely rested on the legend of the Claphams and Mauleverers, I should have ventured to start the question whether it might not have arisen from a misunderstanding of the word "upright," which, as readers of Chaucer are aware, is used repeatedly by him for a recumbent posture, even to the extent of "bolt-upright." Possibly the practice may have been introduced by some knight who had met with it in a foreign land.

I lately had an opportunity of inspecting the Hobart vault under the north chancel aisle of Blickling church, Norfolk. It was probably con

structed by Sir John Hobart, son of Sir Henry, who acquired the property from the Clere family by purchase. Sir John built the hall, and the vault seems of the same date. It is of fine gauged red brickwork, and is formed into a series of niches, in and about which are nineteen coffins placed erect. The first is that of Sir John himself, who died 1647; the last, that of the first Earl of Buckinghamshire, who died 1756. The older coffins are of lead only, one formed like a mummy, showing, I think, a female form. The sexton's opinion was that the posture was devised to expose the least surface to decay by contact with the ground, but this is disproved by the fact of the older coffins being of lead only. It is resecond wife, Lady Frances Egerton, made it his markable that Sir John Hobart in marrying his first request to her upon her marriage day that she should be buried in this vault, which promise she duly fulfilled, as is stated in Collins's Peerage, think the worthy baronet must have been someiv. 366. Such a quaint request would make one what of an original, and thus he too might claim to be buried marvailously as being a marvelous A most remarkable instance of this posture of burial on a large scale I once saw at the Capuchin convent near Palermo, where, in an underground cloister, rows of bodies, preserved by a temporary interment in an air-tight cell for six months, are placed erect in niches, clothed in their monastic habit. The effect is both ghastly and grotesque, from the various attitudes in which the corpses hang out of their niches, and the expression of their fleshless visages. Besides the friars habit, there are members of other monastic socieand those who have chosen to be buried in the ties and ladies in full-dress. These last are carefully preserved behind glass or wire, while numbers of children in one part form a sort of cornice, and in another are placed in glass cases like stuffed birds. VEBNA.

man.

PROVERB: "THE BETTER THE DAY THE BETTER THE DEED."

(4th S. v. 147,)

This proverb is not nonsense, though the meaning is stupid, and such as it is it is often perverted. It applies, I believe, wholly to Sundays or great holydays, and means that the goodness of a good deed is enhanced by its being done on a good day. But I have often heard it perverted to mean, half in joke, that a bad or questionable action is, as it were, sanctified by being done on a Sunday. LYTTELTON.

As to the origin of the proverb, I can say nothing; but as to the sense of it, I cannot see that it is so inconceivable as R. C. L. finds it. Suppose a man is censured by some one for doing

work on a Sunday. He may be supposed to meet the officious interference of the objector with the above proverb, meaning that the supererogatory goodness of the day passes on into the deed done in it. Holy things consecrate things contiguous to them; why then should not holy seasons consecrate in like manner the deeds done in them, provided they be in themselves innocent? and if so, the more holy the season the more will the deed be so and the better. C. A. W.

Mayfair, W.

Few things are more uncertain than the origin of a proverb. Though traced back to its first appearance in literature, it may then have been an ancient of days. Like the founder of a family, it probably has a previous though unknown genealogy; and as regards the present proverb, with R. C. L., I must leave its origin unascertained.

But that it has no meaning, or none founded on common sense, I can in no wise agree to. The usual form of it is, "The better day the better deed"; and I have always attached to it meanings such as these:

1. By way of precept: that the better day demands the better deed; as, remember the Sabbathday to keep it holy.

2. With reference to opportuneness, "the better day" is the present, and a good deed is better for being done at once; much as one says, "Bis dat qui citò dat."

3. By way of association: a deed indifferent in itself derives a character of "better from being found in a series of good or pleasurable actions, which impart to it their own peculiar tone. On festive days the proverb is often thus used as enjoining or excusing some detail of conviviality.

4. By a reflex action of the sentence, it may be said that the day on which the "better deed" is done derives from it a proportionate dignity and honour. I do not think that any of these interpretations are so far removed from the foundation of common sense as to make the proverb that absurd thing which R. C. L. insinuates.

CROWDOWN.

I always understood (and fancy that people universally understand) this proverb to be related to the Sunday or Sabbath controversy; as much as to say, "It is lawful to do good on the Sabbathday.' "And not only lawful," adds the proverb, "but peculiarly and pre-eminently lawful. It would be right to exert yourself in a good cause on any day; and the more sacred the day, the more appropriate does such exertion become." W. M. ROSSETTI.

56, Euston Square, N.W.

times used to commend work done on Sunday. That persons may characterise work done on this day as being all the better for it, may seem strange, but in that sense I have heard it used. "But surely," some Sabbatarian may indignantly exclaim, " you do not mean to tell me that our ancestors were so disrespectful of the Lord's day as to commend work done at that particular time? But, in reply, I can affirm that probably in the days when the proverb had rise our ancestors paid as much attention to saints' days as Sundays; and filled on a saint's day, it was put down as the that, when any particular engagement was ful"better the day the better the deed."

REPORTER.

THE SANGREAL, OR HOLY GRAIL.

(4th S. v. 29, 135, 148.)

Mr. Tennyson has good authority for his division of the word Sangreal. In the Morte d' Arthur compiled by Sir Thomas Malory, in the text of 1634, the vessel is frequently called "the holy called Romans du San Greal. Mr. Baring-Gould grale." A medieval romance on the subject is says the first to adapt the Druidic mystery to Christianity was a British hermit, who wrote a Latin legend on the subject. Helinandus (died 1227) says:

"At this time (A.D. 720) in Britain, a marvellous vision was shown by an angel to a certain hermit. It was of the basin or paropsis in which the Saviour supped with his disciples; concerning which the history was written by the same hermit, which is called the Gradal. In French they give the name gradal, or graal, to a large rather deep vessel in which rich meats with their gravy are served to the wealthy."

Garalis, in an Anglo-Saxon glossary, is explained by acetabulum, a vessel for holding vinegar. In Bennet College, Cambridge, Dr. Bell says there is a poem on the subject, of 40,000 verses, hitherto unpublished, in which the name is given Sank Ryal and Seynt Graal.* In a learned paper on the subject, in the Freemason's Quarterly Review (1, N. S. 1853), he points out that the fullest account of the Sangreal abroad is in an ancient German poem entitled Titurel. The legend is here divested of the subsequent machinery derived from Merlin and Arthur. Titurel builds a castle for the graal called Monsalvatsch (Mons Salvatoris), and in it a costly temple decorated with marbles and rare gems. One of the versions of Titurel is attributed to Wolfram von Eschenbach, who flourished at the beginning of the thirteenth

* MR. SKEAT is said to have discovered a fragment of 800 lines of an early "History of the Holy Graal" among the Vernon MSS. in the Bodleian Library. There is another history of the Graal by Skynner, c. 1440, in the

be edited by Mr. Furnivall for the Early English Text Society.

century. The poet commits the grail to the care of a community of chaste knights, or Tempeleise; proving, says Dr. Bell, that the order of Knights Templars was selected by the poet to guard it at a time when, if ever, it must have been at the height of its impiety and impurity, and this is a sufficient answer to the monstrous charges brought against that body.

The first impulse seems to have been given to the visionary reveries of the Troubadours from Spain. In the Grenville Collection, British Museum (10241), is a very scarce Spanish book in black-letter, the Sancte Grial, 1515. The earliest French translation was produced in 1516. The graal myth, when it got more extended, became less distinct in outline; but a dish was still the prominent feature.

Gervinus, in his History of Teutonic Poetry (i. 407), says it would be lost labour to endeavour to arrive at the bottom of the legend. In his belief it had no other foundation than the fancy of probably a Provençal or Spanish monk, to whom perhaps a costly relic gave the impulse.

The Sacro Catino at Genoa is believed by Chevalier Rossi to be a production of the Augustan age of Rome; but Millin thinks it cast during the Lower Empire at Constantinople or Cæsarea. M. Barthelmy obtained a sight of it in 1755, and saw by the air bubbles that it was made of glass. Napoleon took it to Paris; but it was restored in 1815, though broken in the transit. In 1319, when the town was besieged by the Ghibellines, a cardinal advanced a sum equal to two hundred marks of gold upon it, but it was afterwards redeemed. There is a tradition that it was given by the Queen of Sheba to the royal treasury of the Kings of Judah, and passed to the priesthood and family of Joseph, was used by Our Lord at his Last Supper, and then carried to the Roman colony of Cæsarea on the Mediterranean, and in 1101 transferred to Genoa. In the hall of the ducal palace at the latter place, one of the frescoes represents the division of the spoil at the taking of Caesarea. A young man is represented selecting the holy dish from piles of rich booty heaped JOHN PIGGOT, JUN., F.S.A.

around.

Ulting, Maldon.

That Sangreal should be a corruption of sang real is such a very obvious derivation, that it will probably always find acceptance; although it is always safe to regard popular etymologies with suspicion, and the more so if they were constructed in medieval times. As in all other cases, we must have some regard to chronology; and I believe it will be found that the word graal existed long before the idea of prefixing the epithet san was at all common, and consequently long before the corrupt etymology sang real was thought of. The history of the word is given at

pp. 102, 378 of tom. 1er of Les Romans de la table ronde, by M. Paulin Paris (see also the word gradale in Ducange). The many difficulties about the word are there carefully discussed. See also the edition of The History of the Holy Graal, edited by Mr. Furnivall for the Roxburghe Club, at the end of the first volume of which the original early French version of the romance was reprinted. At 1. 2653 of this romance the question is asked by some sinful men, "and what is the name of the vessel ?" The answer being"Qui a droit le vourra nummer, Par droit Graal l'apelera";

where the prefix san or saint is not used. The most ancient notice of the word is certainly to be found in Helinandus, who was a Cistercian monk in the abbey of Froidmond, in the diocese of Beauvais, and who died either in 1219 or 1223; and whose works are printed in vol. ccxii. of Migne's Cursus Patrologia. The passage is a one, and worthy of a corner in

curious

"N. & Q.":

"Anno 717. Hoc tempore, cuidam eremitæ monstrata est mirabilis quædam visio per angelum, de Sancto Josepho, decuriore nobili, qui corpus Domini deposuit de cruce; et de catino illo vel paropside in quo Dominus cœnavit cum discipulis suis; de qua ab eodem eremita descripta est historia quæ dicit Gradal. Gradalis autem vel gradale dicitur gallice scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda in qua preciosa dapes cum suo jure [gravy] divitibus solent apponi, et dicitur nomine graal," etc.

The word Gradale means a service-book containing the responses, &c., sung before the steps (gradus) of the altar. In the sense of an open platter it is said to be corrupted from cratella, the diminutive of crater, and four whole pages are devoted to a consideration of it in Roquefort's Glossaire de la Langue romane. I have no space

to plunge into a long explanation of the shape of the vessel, or to decide whether it ought to be called a cup or a dish-it is safest to call it a vessel. Spenser calls it holy grayle (F. Q., book ii. c. x. st. liii.)

As for the combination sang real, it is used in old English as well as in French, but much more commonly in the sense of royal than of true blood. I give two examples: —

"Alle with taghte men and towne in togers sulle [? fulle] ryche, Of saunke realle in suyte, sexty at ones."

Morte Arthure (ed. Perry), l. 178.

"He came of the sank royall,

That was cast out of a bochers stall." Skelton, Why Come ye nat to Court, 1. 490. Considerations as to space render this a very imperfect notice of the word.

1, Cintra Terrace, Cambridge.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

My late friend Dr. William Bell, who had well studied this subject, agreed with the Poet Lau