512
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VIL JUNE 29, 1901.
table." This would indicate a separate meal,
though it might cover only what the same
author had six years previously described in
- The Double Dealer ' (I. i.), when the ladies
were described by Mellefont as " at the end of the gallery, retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom after dinner." ALFRED F. BOBBINS.
RICHARD ESTCOTT DE LANCESTON (9 th S. vii. 444). I am able to add to MR. ROBBINS'S interesting article only that Richard Estcott was returned M.P. for Launceston to three successive Parliaments, 1625, 1626, and 1627-8, and that he was buried at the church of St. Mary Magdalene 25 July, 1635.
W. D. PINK.
PAINTED AND ENGRAVED PORTRAITS (9 th S. vii. 341, 438, 470). Your correspondent MR. RALPH THOMAS says, " MR. MASON makes no reference to the enormous collection of por- traits at the Bodleian in the Hope Collec- tion." If he will kindly re-read my note, he will see that I specially mentioned it thus : " Hope Collection, Oxford (has this a cata- logue yet ?)." C. MASON.
29, Emperor's Gate, S.W.
JOWETT'S LITTLE GARDEN (9 th S. vii. 405). The correct text of the epigram quoted by your correspondent is as follows : A little garden little Jowett made, And fenced it with a little palisade ; If you would know the mind of little Jowett This little garden don't a little show it.
This caustic epigram certainly never was written upon, and never could have been applied to, the late Master of Balliol College, one of the most distinguished men in Oxford, but was written in 1793 on Dr. Joseph Jowett, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, by Francis Wrangham, afterwards Arch- deacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire. Gunning in his ' Reminiscences of Cambridge ' (vol. ii. pp. 29, 30) has the following account of its origin :
"There is a large re-entering angle on the south side of the principal front of Trinity Hall, which had long been the receptacle of street sweepings and other nuisances. To prevent these unsightly accumulations, Dr. Jowett ordered the angle to be fenced off by a wooden paling, within which were planted (as may be seen to this day) [i.e., 1855] a number of garden flowers. The formation of this little triangular garden was immediately commemo- rated by Wrangham in an epigram, of which the following is a copy [quoted by me above]. We can easily understand why a quiet and timid person like Dr. Jowett (especially during the political terror and excitement of 1793) should have been very reluctant to admit a staunch and lively Whig like Wrangham to a Fellowship and Tutorship in his small college."
Archdeacon Wrangham, who was a clever
and accomplished scholar, died in 1842. Syd-
ney Smith gave him the title of " Ornament
Wrangham." JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.
Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.
[Stories go from Oxford to Cambridge, told one
Siar of one man, the next of another. The late aster of Balliol has thus gathered several good things, non suapoma.']
On the "Jowett" epigram see 'D.N.B.,' xxx. 215, where it is attributed to Wrang- ham ; and Prof. Pryme's ' Autobiography,' pp. 246-8. The order of the lines is wrong in 'D.N.B.' W. C. B.
" SNICKET" (9 th S. vii. 348). I have known this word from boyhood sixty years. It was generally understood to mean a narrow passage more particularly, though short cut in certain cases may have been implied. It was near Bradford in the West Riding where I always heard it.
On seeing the query at the above reference I immediately consulted J. C. Robinson's 'Dialect of Leeds,' 1862, and was much surprised not to find it. I then tried several E.D.S. publications, but without success. I had better fortune with Morris's 'Yorkshire Folk-Talk,' s.v. " Snig cut, n. F. A short cut. The primary meaning of this expression is a secret way, that by which one can get away unobserved ; hence, a short cut generally."
"Snig cut" is, apparently in meaning, at all events very nearly allied to "snicket."
F. W. J.
CANADIAN BOAT SONG (6 th S. xii. 310, 378 ; 9 th S. vii. 368). Since I sent the query ante, p. 368, my attention has been called to
1. The appearance of the earlier form of the song in Blackwood for September, 1829, p. 400, twenty years before it was printed in Tait. It is introduced into No. 46 of the 'Noctes Ambrosianse' as a translation of a Gaelic oar-song received by North in a letter from a friend now in Upper Canada. This, however, does not in any way affect the attribution of the translation to the twelfth Earl of Eglinton. The assertion in Tait is
very explicit: "The late Earl of Eglinton
left the following translation among his
papers, set to music by his own hand." The earl, who died in 1819, had entered the army in 1755, and served for several years in Canada.
2. The introduction by Sir John Skelton of the altered (" Heart is true," <fec.) version in an article in Blackwood for June, 1889, p. 747.
"It was a song," he says, "in Gaelic, set to a Gaelic air The chief gave me the words after-
