Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/510

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

502


NOTES* AND QUERIES. [9* h s. vm. DEC. 21, 1901.


priest a year later. While Mr. Grundy was at Loudwater, High Wycombe, Mr. Disrael called upon him to solicit his vote and influence. Later, when at Hare wood, Yorks he read the lessons before her late Majestj Queen Victoria, then Princess Victoria. On the occasion of Mr. Grundy's first jubilee a* Hey in 1888, the late Canon Bardsley o Ulverston, whose works are from time to time quoted in your columns, wrote, " Almos the first sermon I can recall is one of his, anc one of the very earliest recollections of wor ship is in Hey Chapel." St. John the Baptist Hey, of which the old Oxonian was vicar, hac been built as a chapel-of-ease to Ash ton.

This " Grand Old Man " of the Church of England conducted service and preached so recently as 20 October last, and the writer can testify that a very few years ago the solemnity and impressiveness of his language and manner, and the clearness and beauty of his enunciation, were remarkable. Mr, Grundy's record is as creditable as it is exceptional. ARTHUR MAYALL.

PROOF-READING AND MISTAKES. A little experience of proof-reading and a little re- flection convince a man that it is a possibility for an author to leave unchallenged a word or phrase entirely unlike what he originally wrote and what he really intended. Because the printer has given an actual word (not a misspelt monster), and because the author- is now only proof-reading, not weighing each word as when he wrote, a whole argument may be spoilt by an inconsistent substitution. One or two examples that I have come on in the last few months may be of interest.

In Stanley's ' Life of Arnold ' (of which Mr. Murray has just announced a new edition), in the eleventh edition, there still persists a strange error. On pp. 16, 17 we read, "Arnold's bodily recreations were walking and bathing.

You know that to the last moment of

health he had the same predilections ; indeed, he was, as much as any one I ever knew, one whose days were

Bound each to each by natural piety. His manner had all the tastes and feelings of his youth, only more developed and better regulated." Only the other day, though I had again and again read the 'Life,' did I discover that to get a satisfactory sense I wanted "his manhood."

I have since found that the error remains uncorrected in the fifteenth edition.

In Dean Vaughan's ' Rest Awhile ' we are warned not to lead "sleeveless" lives, but to have some definite aim before us. It is to be


supposed that the word originally intended was "heedless." T. NICKLIN.

Rossall School.

[We are not sure of the first instance, but it must be remembered that Stanley's handwriting was unusually difficult to decipher. " Sleeveless lives " is probably correct, sleeveless meaning unprofitable. See ' Troilus and Cressida,' V. iv. 9, and Schmidt's 4 Shakespeare Lexicon.']

BURIAL OF A SUICIDE. A resident in the parish of North Kelsey, Lincolnshire, tells me the following story which he learnt from one of the men employed to bury the suicide under-mentioned.

About twelve years ago a tramp, who was a stranger, killed himself by placing his neck on the railway line, near Howsham, to be run over by a train. The verdict brought in by the coroner's jury at the inquest which followed was felo de se. The dead man was therefore buried at midnight, coffinless, and without any religious service, his head being carried to the churchyard wrapped up in a newspaper. The body was placed in the grave in a standing position, so that it was only about two feet below the surface of the ground, and a large stone was then laid above it.

"I have heard," says my informant, "that it is the general thing to lay suicides in the grave with their feet to the west, but an 'upright burial' of such a recent date as this Lincolnshire instance seems unusual."

M. P.

SAVILLE FAUCIT FAMILY. With the Editor's permission I should like to make a Pew remarks under a different heading from ' Sweeny Todd.' A Saville Faucit is described by MR. H. B. CLAYTON (ante, p. 274), on the authority of the late G. A. Sala, as a " melo- dramatic playwright," who is further identi- fied by GNOMON (p. 348) as E. F. Saville. Some time ago I was making inquiries into

he family (see 8 th S. viii. 488 ; ix. 33,

115, 157), and accumulated a great many terns of information, mainly owing to the dndness of your esteemed correspondent MR. W. DOUGLAS ; but the claim of authorship "es ts on very slender foundation, as far as

he British Museum Catalogue is concerned.

Colin Saville Faucit, the father of Helen Faucit, is credited with ' The Miller's Maid,' bunded on Bloomfield's poem of that name, be dedication to Miss Kelly being dated rom Margate, 30 August, 1821, and ' (Edipus,' i musical drama, avowedly a compilation rom the translations of Dryden, Lee, Jorneille, and Maurice ; but on the title- >age of the latter he is described as the uthor of ' Justice,' a musical drama in three