8. VII. MARCH 23, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
237
and the other half on Delivery." The prin
was a whole-length, twenty inches by fou
teen (Daily Advertiser, 4 February, 1742).
There was a "Temple Exchange Coffee house," where the " Monthly Meeting of th Society for promoting English Protestan Working Schools" was held (Daily Advertise! 26 February, 1742). Here, says Wheatley, th Fire of London stopped ; and four of Gok smith's letters (in 1757-1758) are dated from this house, which ceased to be a coffee-hous about the year 1810. Whether or not thi was immediately within the precincts of th Temple one cannot say, but it was certainly "near Temple Bar." The "Temple Coffee house " was in Devereux Court, Strand, and was in 1803 frequented by "gentlemen of th law" ('The Picture of London in 1803
p. 354). J. H. MACMlCHAEL.
Wimbledon Park Road.
DATE WANTED (9 th S. vii. 27, 96, 153). The first two replies which have appeared agree that the "morrow after Corpus Christi Day, in the year 1543 A.D., fell upon 25 May. Thi date is no doubt a correct one, but only so according to the Julian style of reckoning.
GNOMON'S reply recognizes the inadequacy of those first two, but it seems that in at tempting to find the equivalent date accord ing to the Gregorian style, he has assumed too great a difference at that time between the two styles (supposing, of course, the Gre- gorian style to have been then existent), and he has also gone in his calculation in the wrong direction, deducting the number ol days of difference instead of adding it. Is it not simply thus ?
Just as at the present time (when the difference between the two styles is thirteen days) the equivalent of 25 December, old style, is 7 January, new style (being called in
- Whitaker's Almanack ' Old Christmas Day),
so likewise in 1543 (when the difference be- tween the two styles was but ten days) the equivalent in that year (and its anniversary every year afterwards) of 25 May, old style, would be 4 June, new style.
THOS. C. MYDDELTON. St. Albans.
Has GNOMON at the last reference really understood aright MR. SOUTHWELL'S phrase "in the present style of reckoning "? Surely this does not mean "in the present year" The " present style of reckoning" is the Gre- gorian, which was not established until 15 October, 1582 (in the old style 5 October, a difference of ten days). But had the re- form come to pass forty years sooner, the morrow after Corpus Christi Day in 1543,
25 May, would have fallen ten days earlier
than by the then reckoning, the equation
being 25-1015, i.e., 15 May. Is not this
what MR. SOUTHWELL wanted to know ?
F. ADAMS.
AUTHOR OF RECITATION WANTED (9 th S. vii. 150). Is not H. Y. S. thinking of the little poem 'The Way of the World,' beginning :
Laugh, and the world laughs with you ; Weep, and you weep alone ?
It will be found in 'Everybody's Book of Short Poems ' (Saxon & Co.), p. 89, where it is stated that the authorship is claimed both by Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Col. J. A. Joyce, a curious literary coincidence.
CHARLES E. BENHAM. Colchester.
"IN THE SWIM" (9 th S. vii. 29, 137). There is a fable that tells how a sharp shower washed apples and street refuse together into the guttter, and rolled them along to the river. As they went bobbing up and down on the current, a delighted cry ascended, " How well we apples swim ! " It did not come from an apple, of course. When people are spoken of as being " in the swim," it is
- requently implied that they are among
surroundings that, according to old-fashioned notions, are not theirs by right ; they are n the position, in fact, of that which tried
- o pass itself off as an apple. Perhaps the
- able may have had something to do with
the birth of the phrase. H. S. W.
DR. JOHNSON (9 th S. vii. 88, 176). As a Dendant to Boswell's remark about "John- ton" as the Scottish pronunciation of his lero's name, it may be stated that it is not mpossible to hear it expressed in that form n Scotland at the present time. I have myself heard it so pronounced from the )ulpit more than once. Our form of the urname is " Johnston" or " Johnstone," and ihe lapse in speaking of the lexicographer s, after all, not very remarkable. Besides, ohnston in both forms is a name of dis-
- inction in the annals of Scottish literature,
rt, and statesmanship. THOMAS BAYNE.
"BARTED"(9 th S. vii. 165). It should be eedless to point out that such abbreviations s bart , knt., esq., gent., are not nouns, but merely signs of nouns, and their use collo- uially is decidedly vulgar, while the attempt ,o turn them into verbs can only be charac-
- erized as the height of silliness, and our
editor's protest is one which every lover of English undefiled must heartily endorse.
X.
