498
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. v. j* 22. 1912.
In the copy sent by Saulcy to Prof.
Mommsen, and published in vol. xii. of the
' Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum ' (p. 53),
the second letter in the second line is an L,
and there is a full stop after PBEPON. No
explanation is given. L. L. K.
MARY P. JACOBI : MBS. ELUS (11 S. v. 289, 397). I came upon Mrs. Ellis the other day in ' Holderness ' (Paulson's, vol. ii. p. 369). It amused me to meet with her again, for, though she never made any appeal to my literary taste, I fancy she was read or, at any rate, bought sixty years ago by Evangelical parents, and recom- mended to their offspring. What brought Mrs. Ellis into the galere of ' Holderness ' is this. She was the daughter of Mr. William Stickney, who made a name as practical agriculturist, and as sole commissioner of the Holderness Drainage. He was a tenant of Sir T. A. Clifford Constable and a Quaker, though his landlord was a Roman Catholic the like condition having lasted between his forefathers and the soil-owners for a hundred years and he lived at Ridge- mond or Rugemont. Of this locality Paulson treated, and so came to make mention of Mr. Stickney and of his daughter Sarah, who married Mr. William Ellis, missionary, author of ' Polynesian Researches.' and herself produced ' Pictures of Private Life ' and ' The Women of England.' besides writing so Paulson asserts " some very sweet poetry."
ST. SWITHIN.
on 18o0ks.
Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by
Sir Sidney Lee. Second Supplement. Vol. I.
Abbey-Eyre. (Smith, Elder & Co.)
A FURTHER debt of gratitude is due to Mrs. George M. Smith, the proprietor of the ' Dictionary of National Biography,' for her patriotism in continuing this important work, of which her husband, the late George M. Smith, was the spirited originator. It is a matter of surprise that there has been so little public recognition of the service rendered to the nation by this perma- nent record of the men and women who have contributed to its greatness.
In the Prefatory Note to this volume it is stated that " the number of names in the present Supplement reaches a total of 1,660." They are those of noteworthy persons who died bet ween January 22nd, 1901 (the day of Queen Victoria's death), and December 31st, 1911; and they " embrace comprehensively all branches of the nation's and the empire's activity." The volume before us 1 contains 500 memoirs. In the
account of Canon Ainger we are reminded that
" Dickens early discovered the boy's dramatic
gift, and for several years Alfred was his favourite-
dramatic pupil, acting with him and Mark Lemon
in the amateur performances which Dickens
organised at Tavistock House ; subsequently
for a time he played with a fancy of making the
stage his profession, and he was always an ad-
mirably dramatic reciter." His own inclina-
tion afterwards caused him to take holy
orders,' and those who ever heard him preach
in the Temple Church will preserve his
sermons as a lifelong memory. He was full of
wit and humour. His first successful article
appeared in Macmillari's Magazine when he was
only twenty-two ' Books and their Uses '
(December, 1859, i. 110); he took for his pseu-
donym " Double Day " (doubled A). To the
' Dictionary ' he has contributed the articles
on Charles and Mary Lamb, on Tennyson, and
on George Du Mauri er, whose illustrations in
Punch were often suggested by Ainger's jests.
In his speech at the contributors' dinner on the
8th of July, 1897, he wittily summed up the
' Dictionary's ' principle of conciseness in the
motto " No flowers by request."
The letter A affords plenty of variety, for next to Ainger we have the contractor Sir John Aird, whose name will be for ever associated with the damming of the Nile at Assuan, begun April,. 1898, and finished in 1902, a year before the stipulated time. " One million tons of masonry were employed in its construction, and at one time 20,000 men (90 per cent of them, natives) were engaged." There is also a memoir of George Allen, the publisher and friend of Ruskin. Hi& start as a publisher was unique. Ruskin set him to work at a week's notice, despite his lack of any previous experience, and his premises were equally unique : " first his cottage at Keston, and afterwards an out-house in the garden of his villa at Orpington." Ruskin insisted that no commission should be allowed to the booksellers ; they were to be left to charge it to the public. This plan- was, however, presently abandoned. There is- an interesting account of Almond of Loretto. " The coatless, flannelled, bare-headed athlete was largely his creation. That the stamina of Loretto boys greatly exceeded the average was manifested year by year by the large proportion of them who won athletic distinction at the English Universities." In regard to the question of fresh air he anticipated the methods now employed as a preventive and cure of consump- tion. The Athenceum of the 8th of July, 1911, in reviewing ' Ixjretto School, Past and Present.' by H. B. Tristram, said of Almond : " We- cannot have too much about that great and unconventional character." We could have wished that in the memoir of the beloved Chief Rabbi Adler reference had been made to his patriotism and to his great love for the land of his adoption ; no more eloquent sermons on special national occasions are to be found than his.
Under Lord Amherst one turns, of course, to the reference made to the great sale by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge of the magnificent library. Under Alexander Anderson we find the history of a poet of Dumfries. He was the youngest son of a Dumfriesshire quarryrnan. While at the village school at Crocketford, where he got all his schooling, he began to write verses..
