Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/374

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

366


NOTES AND QUERIES.


s. XL MAY 9, was.


second edition of 'Paradise Lost,' wanting four leaves. How it came to be so incor- rectly described I cannot understand.

W. ALDIS WRIGHT. Trinity College, Cambridge.

BONNET = TOQUE. It is always interesting to record an official definition of a word, and the most recent instance of such has been afforded in connexion with the visit to Scot- land of the King with Queen Alexandra. On 1 April there was published in the news- papers the Court newsman's formal notifica- tion that " The Lord Chamberlain is com- manded by the King to announce that their Majesties will hold a Court and Levee at the Palace of Holy rood on Tuesday, May 12, for Scottish ladies and gentlemen " ; and this concluded with the words : *' For ladies morning dress, with bonnets ; for gentlemen levee dress." This looked sufficiently clear, but it was followed three days afterwards by the further declaration from the Lord Cham- berlain that "The term 'bonnet,' as applied to the costume of ladies, may be taken to mean either bonnets or toques, but not hats." The inclusion of the toque may fairly be believed to be due to Queen Alexandra's habitual use of that special form of head- covering when out of doors.

ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

" PIP." The Athenaeum does not often make a mistake ; but in the number for 14 March (p. 332) it says : "Emerson, solemnly transcendental, is occasionally moved to wondrous slang," and gives as an instance : Montaigne's parish - priest, if a hailstorm passes over the village, thinks the day of doom is come, and the cannibals already have got the pip." Montaigne himself, in the passage referred to, says (liv. I ch. xxv. vol. i. p. 170 of Didot's edition of 1802) "et juge quo la pepie en tienne desia les can- nibales." Florio translates "and judgeth that the Pippe is alreadie falne on the can- nibals." Cotton has " and that the Can- nibals already got the Pip." Pepie is in Littre. R N.

DR. EDMOND HALLEY. (See 9 th S. x. 361 ; xi. 85, 205.) Lower, in ' Patronymica Britan- nica,' London, 1860, p. 144, says that Halley is local to England, but cannot name the place. Is there any evidence in existence to prove that that surname was not derived from the continental Halle? There was one Antoine Halley, a French poet, born at Bazamville, near Bayeux, in 1595, who diec at Caen, in Normandy, 3 June, 1675. His surname more frequently terminates witl


he letter y than otherwise (cp. ' La Grande Encyclopedie,' tome dix-neuvieme, p. 773, Paris, n.d., and ' Grand Dictionnaire Uni- versel du XIXe Siecle,' tome neuvieme, Paris, 1873). Is there any significance in the fact that Dr. Halley spelt his given name Ed- mond instead of Edmwnd ] He was the soul of candour, and proud of his English birthright.

It is not tradition alone (ante, pp. 205, 206)

which has changed Dr. Halley's name into

Haley or Haly. Those two forms, together

with" the correct one, are shown in Aubrey's

Brief Lives ' (Clark), Oxford, 1898, i. 282, 283.

Some authors who say that Dr. Edmond Halley was born 8 November, 1656, proceed to give the date of his decease as 14 January, 1742 (cp., e.g., 'Diet. Nat. Biog.,' xxiv. 104, 107). If the new-style calendar is used for the former date, should it not be employed for the latter, when the context affords no means of determining which is intended 1 Dr. Halley was born 29 October, 1656, O.S. (cp. Aubrey's 'Brief Lives.' Clark, i. 282). This is equivalent to 8 November, 1656, N.S. He died 14 January, 1741/2, that is 25 January, 1742, N.S. (cp. Gent. Mag., 1747, xvii. 505). Lysons's 'Environs,' i. 555 (1811), shows that Dr. Halley was buried 20 January, 1741/2, which statement is sub- stantiated by the published ' Register of the Church of St. Margaret, Lee,' p. 58 (Lee, 1888).

' Biog. Brit.,' London, 1757, iv. 2517, tells us that Dr. Edmond Halley's " tomb of Portland stone was erected by his two surviving daughters." If it was thus, in a certain sense, private property, why were the remains of Pond, a later Astronomer Royal, placed in the same tomb, as asserted by several authorities? Will a correspondent residing in the vicinity of Lee kindly eluci- date this point ?

Concerning the question-mark editorially inserted after the year 1779 (ante, p. 205), the writer begs leave to reaffirm that in Good Words, London, 1895, xxxvi. 755, to be seen in Chicago Public Library, the year 1779 actually is shown. Doubtless 1779 is a typo- graphical error. Was there more than one edition of that periodical printed for the year 1895? EUGENE F. McPiKE.

Room 606, 1, Park Row, Chicago, Illinois.

THE Music TO MRS. HEMANS'S SONGS. The following was in the Derby Mercury of 25 March :

" A correspondent has much that is interesting to record of Derbyshire's greatest composer, Mrs. Robert Arkwright, of Stoke Hall, between Griudle- ford and Calver. She was daughter of Stephen