Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/338

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NOTES AND QUERIES. po s. x. OCT. 3, im


KINCSLEY'S ' LORRAINE, LORRAINE, LOR- REE ' (10 S. x. 210). The idea of this poem was probably Kingsley s own. His widow, in her biography of him, entitled ' Charles Kingsley : his Letters and Memories of his Life,' states that it was written in Colorado ; apparently this was during his convalescence after a severe illness. She gives no hint as to its origin. She, however, prints the lines on pp. 444-5 of the second volume of her work, and adds the subjoined foot-note concerning the refrain :

"The meaning of this strange refrain is not known. Some were doubtful whether, as no ex- planation was given by Mr. Kingsley, it would not be better to omit it ; out Mr. Froude who thought this poem one of the finest of his ballads, on being consulted, wrote : ' 1 am in favour of keeping the refrain. The music of the song will be incomplete without it ; and as the words went humming through his head, the refrain went along with them. It presses like an inexorable destiny, and makes you feel the iron force with which poor Lorraine was swept to her fate."

Despite the negative opinion thus expressed, one could almost fancy that the rush of a horse's gallop is imitated in the words.

The title is, of course, the heroine's name, twice repeated, " Lorree " being a variation upon the name for metrical effects.

W. B.

" Barum, Barum, Baree," has always been a difficulty ; but the most probable sugges- tion is that Kingsley meant it for the playing of the band of the circus to which poor Lor- raine belonged. SENEX.

CAMPBELL : PRONUNCIATION OF THE NAME (10 S. x. 228). It is likely that the poet and his educated friends would pronounce the name Cam-bell. Camel is the provincial variation in the Scottish Lowlands. Referring to C alburn's Magazine in the ' Noctes Ambrosianae ' of November, 1826, North delivers himself as follows :

"The very name of Campbell sheds a lambent lustre over its occasional dulness ; and a single scrap of one of his Lectures on Poetry such is my admiration of his delightful genius redeems the character of a whole Number. Campbell is a fine critic, at once poetical and philosophical, full of feeling as of thought. The Prefaces to his Speci- mensare they not exquisite? The Smiths are clever men but why is- not Hazlitt kicked out of the concern ? "

To the closing question the Ettrick Shepherd is made characteristically to reply, " 'Cause Cammel kens he 's hungry."

THOMAS BAYNE.

As a boy I knew the poet Campbell very well. I used to meet him at the home of my maternal aunts at Sydenham, in London,


and at St. Leonards. I cannot remember hearing him pronounce his name, but we- all spoke of or to him as Camel.

GEORGE H. COURTENAY. Southtown House, Kenton, near Exeter.

The contemporaries of the poet Campbell pronounced his name as we do ; and I suppose that he himself did the same : Sir Walter reigned before me ; Moore and Campbell

Before and after ; but now, grown more holy, The Muses upon Sion's hill must ramble

With poets almost clergymen or wholly.

Byron, ' Don Juan,' canto xi. stanza 57-

Dr. Johnson gives a different pronuncia tion of the name :


"I used to go pretty often to Campbell's on a Sunday evening, till I began to consider that the shoals of Scotchmen about him might probably say, when anything of mine was well done, ' Ay, ay, he has learnt this of Cawmell ! ' "

E. YARDLEY.


JMisrdlanmts.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Thomas Ken and Izaak Walton : a Sketch of their Lives and Family Connexion. By E. Marston. (Longmans & Co.)

THE venerable " Amateur Angler " still exercises- his pen on the subject wherein he has made a pleasant corner for himself arid his readers. That his sketches contain much of novelty cannot be said, but he has brought together a good many details of interest concerning Walton, whose life and works are alike attractive to a large circle, both of anglers and men of letters. Much has been discovered by patient research, but there are yet gaps to be filled in the life of Walton. A facsimile is given of Walton's original draft of his epitaph for his second wife in Worcester Cathedral. The curious " ex terris "^in the actual inscription has been recently the subject of a query in our columns, and there is- also "an illegible line" in Walton's draft which might, perhaps, be read after careful study of his difficult handwriting. The second "And "in the draft was not finally used, and seems to have been run through with a pen by Walton. He himself spells " remarkable " as we do nowadays, but the epitaph adds another " e " to the word. In "a woman of [the] primitive piety," the word in


apparently scratched by Walton at the age of sixty-five on the monument of Isaac Casaubon, is one of the oddest memorials of the " Complete Angler " that has been discovered. The authenticity of this memorial seems, however,. t9 have been taken for granted rather easily. For giddy youth such scratchings are natural, but would the reverent recorder of saintly lives indulge in such pastimes on the tomb of his 'father's friend after sixty? Until we have more evidence, we are inclined with regret to leave I. W. with the W. H. of the Sonnet in the limbo of doubtful identities. It is noted that " the hundredth edition of Walton's

  • Angler ' was written [edited ?] two hundred years