lines which will bear repeating here, for their application, it is hoped, is as well founded now as in 1862 :—
- What fables have you vexed, what truth redeemed,
- Antiquities searched, opinions disesteemed,
- Impostures branded, and authorities urged!
- What blots and errors have you watched and purged,
- Records and authors of, how rectified,
- Times, manners, customs, innovations spied!
- Sought out the fountains' sources, creeks, paths, ways
- And noted the biginnings and decays!
- What is that nominal mark, or real rite,
- Form, act, or ensign that hath escaped your sight?
- How are traditions there examined! how
- Conjectures retrieved! and a story, now
- And then, of times (besides the bare conduct
- Of what it tells us) weaved in to instruct!"
Dr. Doran mentions as a matter for congratulation that
" 'N. & Q.' has lost no valuable contributor (except by death or infirmity) since Mr. Thoms retired, and that new and well-endowed correspondents have supplied the places of the departed. To all these the tribute of thanks and good wishes is heartily rendered."
Thoms's preface to Fourth General IndexMr. Thoms, in his preface to the Fourth General Index, written by him at the request of Dr. Doran, points to the success of Notes and Queries as furnishing an unanswerable proof
"that the literary jealousy of each other, so persistently charged against literary men, is without real foundation; and that the noble eulogy in which Chaucer summed up his character, on the Clerk of Oxford,
- And gladly wolde he learne and gladly teche,
is as justly applicable to all real lovers of literature at the present day as it was when the great Father of English poetry sketched, with his matchless pencil, the motley group which started from the Tabard on their never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimage."
Death of James Yeowell.Mr. James Yeowell, who had been the active sub-editor for more than twenty years, died on Friday, the 10th of December, 1875, and the number for the 18th opens with a beautiful tribute to his memory by Mr. Thoms, who said of him that he was "one who had many friends, but never an enemy." The Athenæum, in its obituary notice of the same date, states of this "simple-minded worshipper of strict accuracy" that "no man was ever more fortunate in finding in his daily occupation the labour in which he delighted," and suggests that his large collection of cuttings, jottings, and notes illustrative of the biography of the "illustrious obscure" of our literature should be secured by the British Museum.
The Athenæum of the following week mentions that
"amongst other minor matters involving research to which Mr. James Yeowell devoted much attention may be named his efforts to prove the authorship of the well-known lines
- He that fights and runs away
- May live to fight another day.
