278
NOTES AND QUERIES. [iis.x. OCT. 3,191*.
powerful political organization to obtain
concessions from England. It was volun-
tarily dissolved in 1782. See ' The Cambridge
Modern Hist.,' vi. 496-500; also The
Political History of England,' x. 200-203,
232-3. A. GWYTHER.
" SPARROWGRASS " (11 S. x. 227). Whether asparagus be the right or wrong form, sparagrass seems to have been the common spelling of the word. See ' Verses made for Fruitwomen ' in my edition of the ' Poems
of Jonathan Swift,' i. 286 : Ripe 'sparagrass Fit for lad or lass,
O, 'tis pretty picking With a tender chicken !
WM. E. BROWNING.
an
Some Old-Time Clubs and Societies. By Bro.
W. B. Hextall. A Paper read before Quatuor
Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, London, March,
1914. (Privately printed.)
THIS pleasant paper upon which our corre- spondent Mr. Hextall has evidently expended a good deal of research is as instructive as it is entertaining. Nearly 140 Clubs make their appearance within its pages in a somewhat indiscriminate order, and many no more than just mentioned, but composing altogether an "impression" of bygone 'hilarity here refined and there boisterous which, on its boisterous side, is further borne out by several interesting illustrations. The Clubs might be taken as a standing refutation of that audacious insinuation " What 's in a name ? " One gathers that with regard to about 75 per cent of them everything that is, everything of force as a distinction was in the name. Thus, we do not fancy that there was much in their manners and customs, as clubmen, to differentiate the " Salamanders || from the " Ubiquarians," or the " Outinians " from the " Godheads " or the " Elizabeths," or " Hiccubites " from the " Lumber Troopers," who boasted Hogarth as a member. Still, for some of these jovial societies a special raisonf cCSlre might be claimed : as for those who united themselves together under the name of the " Surly Club," in order to practise swearing and other truculencies of speech where- with being by vocation cabmen they might fortify themselves against an overbearing public ; and for the " Split Farthings," who were banded together in order to increase their possessions by means of the utmost stinting ; and, again, for the " Everlasting Club." which kept up a perpetual session night and day, so long as it lasted, with a membership of one hundred, and in the space of fifty years consumed 50 tons of tobacco, 30,000 butts of ale, and 200 barrels of brandy.
The one Club for which Mr. Hextall has been able to establish " direct and avowed connexion with the Craft " is the " Je Ne Scai Quoi Club,"
of which the Prince of Wales was perpetual
chairman, and which required of its members no
special qualification beyond acceptability to the
Prince, who proposed whom he thought proper.
We are glad to see that our own columns have proved useful to Mr. Hextall, who expresses his particular indebtedness to our correspondent Mr. J. Holden MacMichael.
A Theory of Cirilination. By Sholto O. G.
Douglas. (Fisher Unwin, 5s.) THIS book clever, vivaciously written, and bearing some note of originality may be reckoned upon to stimulate thought in the reader. Its "theory" will have it that civilizations rise and fall with the rise and fall of " psychic illu- sions " i.e., of religions. " Psychic illusion " alone avails to excite peoples to, and sustain them in, such irrational, altruistic conduct as raises the life of a community to a degree of effective power and to high material prosperity. These desiderata having been attained, and a considerable propor- tion of the population being settled down in comfort, the intellect comes into play, embarks upon rational reflection and analysis, and pre- sently destroys the " psychic illusion." With this breaks down in time the irrational impulse towards altruistic conduct, and with this, acrain, the prosperity of the state. The community, plunged in material adversity, and disillusioned, not only tends to material ruin through the selfishness of individuals, but loses also its intel- lectual capacity. When the intellect at last lies dormant, a new " psychic illusion " has a chance to come in, and, as it. seizes on the population, possesses itself of the whole range of human faculties, and exacts anew the irrational, altru- istic conduct which no other force can ensure on any large scale, civilization begins again.
The author works all this out very plausibly in a survey of the progress of the West irora the Olympian to the Catholic, and from the Catholic to the Protestant mode of civilization. To call religion tout court "psychic illusion" is to make an obvious petifio principii. We noted, too, with some amusement phrases such as these: "The spirit of evolution had only to choose the best of these multitudinous superstitions and to educate it to play its part in the upward develop- ment. Evolution was capable of making the choice." They abound throughout the book, and attest surely the presence in the author's mind of a " psychic illusion " which he ought to consider a somewhat curious phenomenon, seeing it is the product, not of intellectual disability, but directly of intellectual activity.
Mr. Douglas says a good deal that is suggestive and sound upon the religion of ancient Rome and the mode in which the " psychic illusion " of the Greeks affected it, and also upon the relation from his point of view between the Olympians and the mystery-religions in Greece itself. I-'ven here, however, he appears to be insufficiently equipped with first-hand knowledge, and ihis defect becomes still more marked when we come to his remarks on Christianity. He arrives there at his conclusions by the simple method of eliminating from consideration the details for which he has no use.
We should not advise any one to take these speculations " an pied do la lettre " ; indeed, we have many times suspected them of being an
