192
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. MARCH s, 1902.
enjoyed his friendship a friendship not unmixed
with rivalry at the Bar and in the local legislature
to bear somewhat fuller testimony to his signal
worth and achievement.
" It is not correct to describe him as a ' negro' in the sense in which that word is used in the West Indies. He was a dark man of colour that is to say, of mixed European and African blood. He was born in Barbados some eighty years ago in very humble circumstances. He began life, with little or no advantages of education, as a printer's devil. By-and-by he rose to be a reporter. His ability and industry in that capacity were so marked that his friends made shift to send him to England to read for the Bar. After he had been 'called' by the Middle Temple, he returned to his native island, and soon acquired a considerable practice as an able and eloquent advocate. For some years he abstained from politics, but in 1873 he was elected to the House of Assembly, where he rapidly came to the front. In 1876, at the instance of Mr. Pope Hennessy, then Governor of the island, he was appointed Solicitor-General. This office, however, he held but for a few months, resigning it in order to take the leading part in the bitter contest between Mr. Hennessy and the local legislature. His conduct in that crisis secured for him in a high degree the respect and regard of his countrymen. Nor, in the result, did it permanently alienate him from her Majesty's Government, for in 1881 he was appointed to the higher office of Attorney-General of the island. After good service in this post, he was advanced in 18S6 to the dignity of the Chief Justiceship, and not long afterwards received the honour of knighthood. In that office he administered the law so fairly, so firmly, so courteously, and so efficiently as to win in an extraordinary measure the esteem, the confidence, and the affection of all classes of the community. When he died on the 8th inst., the Governor, with the consent of the members of the local legislature, accorded him the honour of a public funeral, and the sorrow of the people of the island was testified by the immense number of persons who attended at and witnessed the ceremony. In the history of Barbados his will always be clarum ti venerabile nomen.
"But there is even a wider point of view from which his character and career are interesting. So far as my knowledge goes, he is the most dis- tinguished man of colour ever born in the British dominions, and it is not too much to describe him as the fine flower of that liberal and enlightened policy which the mother country practises towards the weaker races under her sway. J>
This is a generous and valuable testimony.
WILLIAM E. A. AXON. Manchester.
TOWER : ST. PETER IN TJIE CHAINS (9 th S. ix. 146'.- For the ceremony on placing a brass tablet in the crypt, having reference to human remains there deposited several years ago see Illustrated London J\ T eu>s, 22 February
R.u.s.i.
BEN JONSON'S REPETITIONS (9 th 8 ix 145) -It was pointed out at this reference
f rff , Jonson uses the same phrase ol different persons on different occa-
sions in other instances besides that on
which stress is laid by believers in Bacon's
authorship of the Shakespearian plays
as showing that, after becoming one of
Bacon's secretaries, he transferred to Bacon
the striking expression employed of Shake-
speare in the lines prefixed to the First Folio.
It has not to my knowledge been observed
that this particular expression is not original
in Jonson. John of Salisbury, in his ' Poli-
craticus ' (ii. 22), a book familiar to scholars of
Jonson's time, thus speaks of Cicero : " Ille
in quo Latinitas nostra solo invenit quic-
quid insolenti Grsecise eleganter opponit aut
prsefert." I should not be surprised to find
that John himself had taken this from some
older author ; but I have not discovered
it elsewhere. It is scarcely possible to sup-
pose that Jonson's passages are independent
of that in John of Salisbury : speaking
of an English writer, he had to couple
Rome with Greece, and to find an appro-
priate epithet for Rome to balance " insolent "
applied to Greece ; and there is nothing
wonderful in the same epithet, which had
satisfied his ear once in this connexion,
recurring to him in the same connexion on a
like occasion. It is worth pointing out also
that there is nothing remarkable in the
omission of Shakespeare from the ' Catalogus
Scriptorum' in the 'Discoveries,' since that
is a list of orators only, and does not include
poets at all. C. C. J. W.
OXFORD DIOCESAN ARMS (9 th S. ix. 68). The arms of the diocese are the ancient arms of the priory of St. Frideswide, the church of which is now the cathedral of Oxford, as well as the college chapel of the house. Antony Wood ('City of Oxford,' ed. Clark, ii. 159) testifies that these arms were "not- long since extant in several places of this monastery," and are over the monument of Dr. King, the first bishop of Oxford. He also shows that the three " virgins' heads " were probably originally King Didanus, Queen Saf rida, and their daughter St. Frides- wide, the last of whom founded the nunnery (as it then was) in the eighth century.
LOCRINIDES.
" GUN " (9 th S. ix. 106). Surely philologists should welcome with rapture BRUTUS'S ex- ceedingly ingenious etymology of the word gun, which is so beautifully convincing, even to the simplest beginner. They might save themselves much trouble and useless search- ing if they applied this method to other words. I venture to offer one or two similar self-evident elucidations. The word dun is evidently "done," done brown, old pronuncia-
