Various

“ Malone, thought that the most remarkable peculiarity of Irish pronunciation, as in say for sea, tay for tea, was the English mode, even down to the reign of Queen Anne; and there are rhymes in Pope, and more frequently in Dryden, that countenance that opinion. But rhymes cannot be depended upon for minute identity of sound."—Croker's Notes, A.D. 1776.
If this explanation be adopted, it will account for the examples I have been furnishing, and others which I find even among the harmonious rhymes of Spenser (he might, however, have caught the brogue in Ireland) ”

“ Wanted, a simple Test for a good Lens.—As all writers on Photography agree that the first great essential for successful practice is a good lens—that is to say, a lens of which the visual and chemical foci coincide—can any of the scientific readers of "N. & Q." point out any simple test by which unscientific parties desirous of practising photography may be enabled to judge of the goodness of a lens? ”

“ A SHAKSPERIAN BOOK.
"There exists," says Mr. John Wilson, "as it were a talismanic influence in regard to the most trivial circumstances connected with Shakspeare," and yet this enthusiast has not, in his Shaksperiana, alluded to the dramatic works of Mary Hornby, written under, and dated from, the dear old roof at Stratford-upon-Avon! ”

“ A surname, in short, may be called a matter of convenience; a Christian name, a matter of necessity. The giving two Christian names at baptism did not come generally into use till, owing to the multiplication of the patronymic, a single Christian name became insufficient to identify the individual. Consequently an instance of a double Christian name, previous to the commencement of the eighteenth century, is a rarity. ”

“ A good comprehensive work on this subject of Books of Emblems, not confined merely to the English series, but embracing the whole foreign range, giving an account both of the writers of the verses, and also of the engravers, and the different styles of art in each, is still a great desideratum in our literary history; and if ably and artistically done, with suitable illustrations of the various engravings and other ornaments, would form a very interesting, instructive, and entertaining volume ”

“ Those who are more familiar with Defoe than I am, will be better able to judge whether he was, as Psalmanazar says, "the person who Englished it from my Latin;" for the youth was as much disqualified for writing the book in English, by being a Frenchman, as he would have been if he had been a Formosan. ”

“ Crossley.
"AKE" AND ACHE.
John Kemble, it is well known, maintained that the latter was the mode of pronouncing this word in Shakspeare's days. He was right, and he was wrong; for, as I shall show, both modes prevailed, at least in poetry, till the end of the seventeenth century. So it was with some other words, show and shew, for instance. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to observe that the sounds k, ch, sh, kh (guttural) are commutable. Thus the letter h is named in Italian, acca; in French, ache, in English, aitch, perhaps originally atch: our church is the Scottish kirk, &c. ”

“ Purlieu.—Some of your correspondents seem afraid that an attempt to repair the deficiencies of our English dictionaries, by research into disputed etymologies in "N. & Q.," would tend to produce too much and too tedious discussion, and fill its space too much. ”

“ That a youth thus tutored and thus abandoned, before Johnson was born, should have lived to attract his society, and win from him the testimony that he was "the best man" whom he had ever known, gives him a claim to our respect, which seems to me to be strengthened by everything which I have been able to learn respecting him. ”

“ Poland was at that time very much frequented by itinerant traders, who, in a country of very little commerce and of great extent, where every man resided on his own estate, contributed very much to the accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little necessaries which it was very inconvenient to want, and very troublesome to fetch. ”

“ It may not be inappropriate to notice, that among Swift's eccentricities, we find a propensity to "out-of-the-way rhymes." In his works are numerous examples of couplets made apparently for no other purpose but to show that no word could baffle him; and the anecdote of his long research for a rhyme for the name of his old enemy Serjent Betsworth, and of the curious accident by which he obtained it, is well known ”

“ Your correspondent J. H. T. suggests a new direction for inquiry on this subject when he conjectures that the pronunciation now called Irish was, "during the first half of the eighteenth century, the received pronunciation of the most correct speakers of the day;" and Mr. Bede himself suggests that provincialisms may sometimes modify the rhymes of even so correct a versifier as Tennyson. I hope some of your contributors will have "drunk so deep of the well of English undefiled" as to be competent to address themselves to this point of inquiry. ”

“ Baker, the anonymous author of The Hanover Rat tells us, that, after thirty years' laborious research, he had {482} satisfied himself that this animal was not a native of these islands: "I cannot," he says, "particularly mark the date of its first appearance, yet I think it is within the memory of man;" and finding favour in its original mine affamée state with a few of the most starved and hungry of the English rats from the common sewer, he proceeds to show that it did extirpate the natives ”

“ Christian Names (Vol. vii., p. 406.) .—When Lord Coke says "a man cannot have two names of baptism, as he may have divers surnames," he does not mean that a man may not have two or more Christian names given to him at the font, but that, while he may have "divers surnames at divers times," he may not have divers Christian names at divers times.
When a man changes his Christian name, he alters his legal identity. The surname, however, is assumable at pleasure. ”

“ I apprehend the passage which Erica quotes from Lord Coke has not the significance which he attributes to it. A man can have but one Christian or baptismal name, of however many single names or words that baptismal name may be composed. ”

“ I should be glad it any of your readers would inform me how a failed negative calotype can be restored to its original strength. I last year took a great number, some of which have nearly faded away; and others are as strong, and as able to be used to print from, as when first done. The paper was prepared with the single iodide of silver solution, and rendered sensitive with aceto-nitrate sil. ”

“ A Briton must be aware that if we were so far to depart from our plan of avoiding religious controversy, as to insert his Query, we should be inviting endless disputes and discussions, such as our pages could not contain, or our readers endure. ”

“ We have submitted this Query to Dr. Diamond, who informs us that he never adopts the practice of washing off the developing fluid, and considers it not only needless, but sometimes prejudicial, as when such washing has not been resorted to, the hyposulphite solution flows more readily over the picture, and causes none of the unpleasant stains which frequently occur in pictures which have been previously washed, especially if hard water has been used. ”

“ Bede's explanation, that the rhymes in question "made music for their Irish ear." If, as he tells us, Mr. Bede was not "blind to similar imperfections in English poets," I am yet to learn why he should fix on "Swift's Irishisms," and call those errors a national peculiarity, when he finds them so freely scattered through the standard poetry of England? ”

“ Bede's company in a stroll over my native mountains, he might find that there are occasions on which he might be glad to put off {484} his London-made shoe, and "to wear the brogue, though speak none."
A. B. R.
P.S.—The postscriptum of J. H. T. respecting the pronunciation of English being preserved in Scotland, goes direct to an opinion I long since formed, that the Lowland Scotch, as we read it in the Waverley Novels, is the only genuine unadulterated remains we have of the Saxon language, as used before the Norman Conquest. ”

“ The title-page of the first volume (second edition) differs principally in having the statement that the book was "printed for E. Curll" (whose name does not appear in the earlier second volume, though perhaps it may have done so in the first of that earlier edition) , and an announcement that the fidelity of the publication is "attested, by Sir Edward Northey, Knight."
The work is a farrago of low rubbish utterly beneath criticism ”

“ Might I ask if any of your correspondents find an earlier use of the word; and can it be gifted with a probable paternity?
The tracing of the earliest known mention of disputed words is a task capable of being finished, and might perhaps be attended, in many cases, with happy results. It would rid us probably of many puerilities which degrade our current dictionaries. ”

“ Photographic Tent—Restoration of Faded Negatives.—In Vol. vii., p. 462., I find M. F. M. inquiring for a cheap and portable tent, effective for photographic operations out of doors. I have for the last two years, and in mid-day (June) , prepared calotype paper, and also the collodion glass plates, for the camera, under a tent of glazed yellow calico of only a single thickness: the light admitted is very great, but does not in the least injure the most sensitive plate or paper. It is made square like a large bag, so that in a room I can use it double as a blind ”

“ I have formerly read, without much reflection, of the multitude of Scotchmen that travelled with their wares in Poland; and that their numbers were not small, the success of this negociation gives sufficient evidence."
The title of Denham's poem is "On my Lord Crofts' and my journey into Poland, from whence we brought 10,000l. for his Majesty by the decimation of his Scottish subjects there." ”

“ The same, belike, Trithemius calls igneos et sublunares, qui numquam demergunt ad inferiora, aut vix ullum habent in terris commercium: generally they far excel men in worth, as a man the meanest worm; though some there are inferiour to those of their own rank in worth, as the black guard in a princes court, and to men again, as some degenerate, base, rational creatures are excelled of brute beasts."—Anat. ”

“ POLICIES effected before the 30th of June next, will be entitled, at the next Division, to one year's additional share of Profits over later Assurers.
On Assurances for the whole of Life only one half of the Premiums need be paid for the first five years.
INVALID LIVES may be Assured at rates proportioned to the risk.
Claims paid thirty days after proof of death, and all Policies are Indisputable except in cases of fraud. ”

“ An Essay on Irish Bulls is said to have found its way into a catalogue of works upon natural history; with which precedent in my favour, and pending the inquiries of naturalists, ratcatchers, and farmers into the history of the above-named formidable invader, I hope Mr. Hibberd will have no objection to my intruding a bibliographical curiosity under the convenient head he has opened for it in "N. & Q."
My book, then, bears the appropriate title, An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Hanover Rat, dedicated to P***m M******r, M.D., and S——y to the Royal Society, 8vo., pp. ”

“ Referring to An Amateur's inquiry as to where any pictures painted by Hogarth are to be seen, I beg to say that I have in my possession, and should be happy to show him, the portrait of Hogarth's wife (Sir William Thornhill's daughter) , painted by himself.
Lyndon Rolls.
Banbury.
The late Bishop Luscombe showed me, at Paris, in 1835, a picture of "The Oratorio,"—a subject well known from Hogarth's etching. He told me that he bought it at a broker's shop in the Rue St. Denis; that, on examination, he found the frame to be English ”

“ Another daughter would appear to have become the wife of Thomas Wilson, or Volusenus, as he calls himself, the editor of his father-in-law's poems and other publications.
E. H. A.
Cursitor Barons of the Exchequer.—Will you allow me to repeat a question which you inserted in Vol. v., p. 346., as to a list of these officers, and any account of their origin and history? Surely some of your correspondents, devoted to legal antiquities, can give note a clue to the labyrinth which Madox has not ventured to enter. ”

“ Burney observes, that "David Garrick always said shupreme, shuperior." Malone's note brings the case in point to ours when he says, "This is still the vulgar pronunciation in Ireland; the pronunciation in Ireland is doubtless that which generally prevailed in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth." And Mr. Croker sums up the case thus:
"No doubt the English settlers carried over, and may have in some cases preserved, the English idiom and accent of their day. ”

“ To these may be added the following fanciful use of the word, which occurs in the poems of Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset; the author of the well-known naval song "To all you Ladies now at Land:"
"Love is all gentleness, all joy,
Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace.
Her [Belinda's] Cupid is a blackguard boy,
That rubs his link full in your face."
Cuthbert Bede, B.A.
Talleyrand (Vol. vi., p. 575.) .—Talleyrand's maxim is in Young. I regret that I cannot give the reference.
Z. E. R.
Lord King and Sclater (Vol. v., pp. 456. 518.) ”

“ At Threckingham, Lincolnshire, I believe I succeeded in deciphering an inscription round the font, which was said to have been previously studied in vain. It is somewhat defaced; but in all probability the words are,—
"Ave Maria gracia p... d... t..."
i. e. of course, "plena, dominus tecum." The bowl of the font is Early English; but the base, round which the inscription runs, appears to be of the fifteenth century.
At Burgate, Suffolk, an inscription in black letter is incised on the upper step of the font:
" ”