like that of most persons who take the initiative in good works, a very chequered one, and rather, as he says, a struggle for existence than a path of prosperity. When a copy of the Cheap Magazine turns up the bookseller marks it high, as illustrated by Bewick; the little cuts strewed about it are certainly after that artist, but, with the exception of two or three, I should say of no interest, and the book is not in Hugo's catalogue of works so illustrated. J. O.

THE APPLICATION OF "COUNTY" (6th S. v. 346). The statement certainly is true as regards Kent, which represents a distinct autonomous kingdom; the natives speak with contempt of distant compatriots who live "down in the sheers." The meaning is that Kent has a separate history from time immemorial-say from the Deluge-but the shires were parcelled out (shorn off) from other states; referring back, no doubt, to the Heptarchy or Octarchy. LYSART.

As a native of Essex I can bear testimony to the fact that in my childhood we used to call a stupid fellow " a man from the shires." My good friend Mr. Freeman vindicated the claim of his adopted county to be called "Somerset," not "Somersetshire," in a most eloquent address which he delivered before the Congress of the Archæological Institute at Taunton in 1879. E. WALFORD, M.A.

Hampstead, N.W.

I have lived in Essex half a century, and, so far as I know, no native takes the least pride in its not being called a shire; their feelings could not suffer much if it was, for it is as much a shire as if called so. I do not forget the epigram upon Essex, which C. M. I. may not know :

"Essex, you say, is famed for calves;

We thank you really for your pains,
For thus you prove in our behalves,
We're famous most for head and brains."
J. W. SAVILL.

Dunmow, Essex.

"EAMER" (NOT "CAMER") (6th S. v. 269).Apropos of your correspondent's query it may not be amiss to quote the following from Miss Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book:

"Emo [ee'm], adj. near, direct. Com. Yo' bin gooin a mighty lung way round; cross them filds, it's the emest road a power. Eme, regularly declined in every degree, obtains throughout the county, but is in most general use in the northern parts, where it is constantly heard. A.-S. anemn-anefen=onefen-on-eme. Cf. Anunst, &c."

F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

BOLINGBROKE AND CLARENDON (6th S. v. 283). There is one anomaly in my friend MR. KERSLAKE's note to which I may be permitted to call attention. In a central paragraph he fills a blank

supposititiously with a suggestion of Dean Sprat ; later on Sprat appears again; but when Dean S-t is named later still he suggests Swift, not Sprat, the initials being the same. It is true that Dean Sprat became a bishop, but Swift was not a dean till 1713, and this edition of Clarendon is dated 1707. Is there any reason why Bolingbroke should delay his assumed notes so late? Sprat died in 1713; and in writing this I do not wish to impugn your correspondent's accuracy, but only to elucidate the facts. A. H.

"PEACE WITH HONOUR" (6th S. v. 346).-In an English translation of Horace, by Matthew Towers, LL.D., schoolmaster of Portarlington, published in Dublin in 1742, and dedicated to Dr. Delaney, there is in the preface a sly piece of sarcasm respecting the value of a rival translation by

"D-d W-n with his beautyful description fully set forth in a Key. He is a A.M. of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrew's, and I make no dout but I shall have shortly a long letter of Thanks from Him for obliging the Gentlemen of Ireland......with the following Specimen of his Work:

"O Mæcenas, descended from the Kings of Etruria or Tuscany your Ancestors! O you who are both my patron, having made my Peace with Augustus and a great Honour to me," &c.

W. FRAZER, F.R.C.S.I.

"EERIE SWITHER " (6th S. v. 327).-Eerie is most probably derived from the A.-S. earh, carg =pavidus, timidus, &c. For an early use of the word, cf.:

"He blisced me all wid his grace,

And said, 'ioseph be noght eri,
Biholde on me, his ilk es i."

Cursor Mundi, Göttingen Text, 11. 17,684-6
(E.E.T.S.).

The Trinity text has :

"He said Ioseph be not ferdy."

For further examples and differentiation of meaning, Jamieson's Dictionary may be consulted with advantage. F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

Cardiff.

KANGAROO (6th S. v. 326).-The wife of a parishioner lately told a friend of mine that her husband had "a kangaroo (gangrened) toe!" P. J. F. GANTILLON.

"TAKING FRENCH LEAVE" (6th S. v. 347).A query as to the origin of this expression was inserted in "N. & Q." 1" S. i. 246, but, according to the index, elicited no reply. In 5th S. xii. 87 there is a note by A. R. referring to Dr. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and to Hotten (Slang Dictionary, I presume), both tracing it to French soldiers either taking

is of Gaelic origin I think that he is indulging in a piece of unnecessary philology; for I do not believe that the word black has anything more to do with Gaelic bealach=a pass, than black has in black malice, an expression which I have heard used in a Yorkshire dale, where at one time there was a custom of levying, under the name of "pitchering," black mail on those who came on a "sweethearting" expedition. To me the whole term appears to be of Anglo-Saxon parentage. I suppose Dr. Mackay has not noticed the fact that mal is found in A.-S., meaning tribute or toll. The following passage from The Ormulum will illustrate its use :

"And forrpi badd hemm Sannt Johan
Forrbuzhenn grediznesse,

and sammnenn laghelike and rihht
pe kingess rihhte mále."

LI. 10,185-8.

The epithet black was evidently used with mail to denote a tax illegally levied, but which those on whom it was imposed could not well refuse, however much they might desire to do so. We have a somewhat analogous expression in black money, money taken by the harbingers or servants, with their master's knowledge, for abstaining from enforcing coin and livery in certain places, to the prejudice of others. See the State Papers, ii. 510" (Halliwell's Dict.). There are several phrases in English in which black is used with a bad meaning. Thus we have Black Monday, black-hearted, black witch, black envy (Shakespeare), black magician (ditto), &c. In Craik's Hist. of British Commerce, i. 157, black money or black mail is alluded to as being certain coins of inferior kind authorized to pass current in Ireland in the fourteenth century.

Cardiff.

F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

PRONUNCIATION OF "FORBES" (6th S. v. 269, 316, 397, 417).-I have no means of ascertaining the date to which MR. WALFORD refers. When I was in Edinburgh, Ochoncar, Lord Forbes, was Commissioner to the General Assembly. I never heard his name pronounced otherwise than as a monosyllable, nor was it otherwise with the banking firm of Sir Wm. Forbes. But I think the daughter of a don of the University of Aberdeen, with whom I was acquainted in Edinburgh, was called Miss For-bes; and Thomson, in his Autumn, addresses the illustrious Lord President (Forbes of Culloden)

"Thee, For-bes, too, whom ev'ry worth attends, As Truth sincere," &c. GEO. E. FRERE. A near relation of mine, born about a hundred and ten years ago, always used to pronounce his own first Christian name Forb's. He said, however, that when he was a little child, his father being stationed at Perth, the auld wives used to all him to their doors and treat him with hunches

of short-cake, saying, "Hoo 's a' wi' ye the morn', For-bess?" He spoke of a legend to the effect that the first of this name gained the hand of his lady-love as a reward for killing a wild animalwolf, bear, or boar (Sir Bernard Burke says that the arms of Forbes of Pitsligo are Az., three boars' heads, couped ar., muzzled gu., but D. F. C. is probably correct in saying that they are bears' heads)-which had troubled the country. He brought the head in upon his spear-point, saying that he had done this for Bess. He then assumed the name of For-bess. CALCUTTENSIS.

In Aberdeenshire, where the name of Forbes is common, it is pronounced by the upper classes as of one syllable, by the lower classes as having two. I recollect hearing a kind of legend as to the origin Two men were fighting a wild boar, and the one of the Aberdeenshire names, Forbes and Gordon. said to the other," Haud ye the fore birse and I'll gore him down." From this sprang the names If there is any argument to be deduced from the Fore-birse, or Forbes, and Gore-down, or Gordon. above, it would be in favour of the word being in the armorial bearings of both the Forbes and pronounced in two syllables. Boars' heads appear

Gordon clans.

I am afraid I cannot plead guilty to (in this instance) a faulty knowledge of natural history in mistaking lions' or leopards' faces for bears' heads (profile) muzzled. A friend of mine, one of the best authorities on heraldry in Scotland, to whom I submitted the coat, informed me that "Michel, in his Les Ecossais en France (i. 54), gives the chevron and three leopards' heads as the coat of the Scoto-French family of Forbin, which he seems to associate with that of Forbes, although his blazon for the latter is three bears' heads muzzled, with a cross crosslet in the centre of the shield."

Pitlochry.

A. A.

suppose that few persons could have been better fitted to undertake the memoir of_the_great critic and scholar of the Augustan age than Dr. Jebb. The learning and research that but suggest a larger learning and research behind are present on every page, and those whose knowledge of the famous controversy concerning the letters of Phalaris is derived from Macaulay's essay on Temple will find here new reason for distrust of that brilliant historian. Dr. Jebb's book is of necessity largely occupied with the discussion of Bentley's works; but the account of the domestic life of this "warmhearted, imperious man" is also exceedingly interesting, especially that passage which records his concern at the death of Sir Roger de Coverley. But some of Dr. Jebb's academic humour is a little grim, witness the description of the famous brazen bull on p. 45.

Prof. Ward's Dickens is hardly on a level with Dr. Jebb's Bentley, but his subject presented greater difficulties-difficulties which always more or less incommode the biographers of the recently dead. Mr. Trollope had to write the life of Thackeray without letters and in the face of an expressed desire on Mr. Thackeray's part that no life of him should be written at all. Mr. Ward has had the countenance of Mr. Dickens's family, and must therefore be assumed to be more or less committed to

the biographer whom Dickens selected for himself and who was the friend of his children. But a life written from an anti-Forsterian point of view is what is most wanted at present, though the need for anything immediate is not very urgent. The "Men of Letters" series would, however, have been incomplete without some account of the author of Pickwick, and Mr. Ward's volume falls naturally enough into its place.

The Shakspeare Phrase-Book. By John Bartlett. (Macmillan & Co.)

SINCE the first publication of Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Concordance to Shakespeare the task of arranging a phrase or text book has been much simplified. Another book almost equally useful to workers in the same field is the Shakespeare Lexicon of Dr. Alexander Schmidt. With all allowance for aid from such sources, a work like that Mr. Bartlett has now compiled must involve great zeal and labour. No equally voluminous phrasebook has as yet seen the light. Omissions may, of course, be found. We do not, for instance, find the phrase from the Merchant of Venice employed by Jessica :

"I would out-night you did nobody come." Nor that from the first part of Henry IV. to which recently a wide publicity has been assigned, "Doth give us bold advertisement.' Juliet's pathetic and ironical address to her nurse, "C Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much," and many other phrases of equal significance, do not appear. We are not disposed, however, in this instance to say as Sheridan is reported to have said at the sight of Dodd's Beauties of Shakespeare, "This is all very well, but where are the other eleven volumes?" It is easy to believe that a man wading laboriously and frequently through Shakspeare may arrive at the conclusion that certain phrases which to another man have a deep meaning are of little significance without the context. In the case of Shakspeare, however, the only rule is to give the reader the benefit of the doubt and insert everything. As it stands, Mr. Bartlett's volume extends to more than a thousand pages. To those who seek phrases from Shakspeare it will have much utility, and scholars who do not possess the more important works to which we have made previous reference may also find it of service.

The Bibliographer. Vol. I. (Stock.) THE Bibliographer has completed its first volume, and attained to the glory of its first title-page, on which, with the addition of spectacles, reappears the now familiar eighteenth century student of the cover. The editor has fairly fulfilled the promises he made at the outset, and the subscribers may be congratulated upon the possession of a bibliographical organ that is honestly bibliographical, and of genuine interest and value to book lovers. Despite certain ominous indications in the preface, we trust that the success of the enterprise will not be marred in the future by any attempts to over-popularize it. A specialist periodical should have the courage to be special, for it is its surest source of strength. We have also received the first number of vol. ii. It contains an instalment of Mr. Comyns Carr's recent lectures on "Book Illustration," a sketch of Feyerabend, the Frankfort bookseller, and other interesting papers.

MR. J. E. BAILEY has had the good fortune to come in contact with one of the lost volumes of John Byrom's Journal. He is not, strictly speaking, its discoverer, but it is to him we owe the publication of a portion of its contents in the current number of The Palatine NoteBook. Byrom was perhaps hardly a great man, but he life at a period when the moral virtues were commonly was a man of mark in his day and noted for purity of disregarded. He is noteworthy, also, as being one of the little band of men who took an interest in the "higher theology" in days when most people thought it sufficient to be well up in the "evidences" and to avoid enthusiasm. for mystics themselves. One of the strange people we He had a liking not only for mystical reading but also come across in these notes is Edward Elwall, the Jewish Arian Sabbatarian, as he is here called, of whom an interesting account appeared some time ago in our pages (6th S. iv. 50). Though tried on one occasion for blasphemy, he seems to have been a harmless and innocent person. The few specimens of the Journal Mr. Bailey has given will be interesting to all students of eighteenth century life. We cordially agree with him in thinking that the complete book should be printed by the Chetham Society.

KENT ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.-Messrs. Mitchell & Hughes have just issued to members Vol. XIV. of the Society's Transactions, illustrated by portraits, views of churches, houses, &c.

Notices to Correspondents.

We must call special attention to the following notice: ON all communications should be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.

E. R. V.-Consult Skeat's Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language.

SCOTUS ("Heraldic Glass at Hassop").-In your former paper ("N. & Q.," 5th S. xii. 305) you only appear to have described shields Nos. 1 and 2. Nos. 3 and 4 are omitted in that just sent.

FRED. W. W.-You should address yourself to some musical journal.

NOTICE. Editorial Communications should be addressed to "The Editor of Notes and Queries' -Advertisements and Business Letters to "The Publisher"-at the Office, 20, Wellington Street, Strand, London, W.C.

We beg leave to state that we decline to return communications which, for any reason, we do not print; and to this rule we can make no exception.