Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/558

460 NOTES AND QUERIES. again and again we have thought an article looked impossibly short, but on examining it have found it to contain all that for the purpose- he has set before him was necessary. It is true that such satisfaction was not quite un- failing ; sometimes that precise bit of information, which might be difficult to hunt up elsewhere, and would have given point to his own account, is wanting. Take the ace of the air-service, for example : it was used of an airman who had brought down a definite number of enemy machines. A statement of the number with a reference to an " ace of aces " would have been better worth while, we think, than a reference to trumpz. We found ourselves now and again in dis- agreement with our author. " Opponent of Oalvinist tyranny " would certainly not convey to a puzzled searcher the ordinary sense of Erastian. The following sentence under Latin seems a little unhappy : " the every-day speech of the Roman as different from Cicero as colloq. English from Burke." But it is precisely Cicero, in his letters, who is the main source and an abundant source of our not so incon- siderable knowledge of " everyday Latin." What is the authority for making va.pQr)% and ferula mean a kind of reed rather than an umbelliferous plant ? We have made notes of a few omissions which might possibly be supplied in a later edition, being, we think, as well worth recording as popsy- wopsy, and give the following as random ex- amples : benthos, correlative of plankton ; " Take cover " and "All clear " ; field in the heraldic use ; kontakion ; pardon, in the Breton sense ; patine, sense in the ' Merchant of Venice ' ; brass-rags ; Dame, as an independent title of women. We are sure that Professor Weekley will not miss the compliment wrapped up in the prickly cover of these small criticisms ; he will perceive that the dictionary has not only been read but read with appreciation and found stimulating. Indeed, we heartily recommend it to our readers, and especially to those whose interest in words is not so much antiquarian as centred in the perception of language as a living thing, the most perfect, sensitive, changeful and en- during instrument of the changeful yet enduring mind of man. English Prose. Chosen and arranged by W. Peacock. In Five volumes. Vol. i. : Wy- cliffe to Clarendon. Vol. ii. : Milton to Gray. (Oxford University Press, 2s. 6d. net each.) THE writer of this notice confesses to a slight prejudice against anthologies. The grounds therefor are 'only the obvious ones : that a good reader will make his own anthologies ; that writers should be read at large, and a literary work taken as a whole, else the reader is not only unfair, but also misses the gist of what is provided for him ; that a taste for anthologies argues a declining perception of, and taste for, the values and beauties of construction and other like considerations. This much has been said in order the better to emphasize our appreciation of the anthology now before us. which forms the latest addition to " The World's Classics " series. It is an excellent [piece of work. The selections made, with but one or two exceptions, are happy and, by marshalling in such fair array so fin e a body of representative English prose, the compiler has produced that effect of a living whole without which nothing between two covers is really worth wasting one's sight over. In the first volume the selections from Berners's ! ' Froissart,' from Thomas More, from Ascham, and from North are splendid reading. Shake- speare, it must be protested, has not come off well. Two passages each of Falstaff and Dog- berry, with the gravedigger scene from ' Hamlet,' afford but a one-sided idea of the range of his prose. The Bacon excerpts leave one thing to be wished for fuller illustration of Bacon's epigrammatic quality. We should have liked more from Walton's ' Lives ' than the death of Hooker ; and more, too, of Browne's ' Religio Medici.' But, no doubt, Mr. Peacock would have a good deal that is worth considering to say in defence, at any rate of these latter omissions. In the second volume the extracts from Pepys, Burnet and Swift are excellent. We are given from Richardson the deaths of Clarissa and Lovelace, which, again, is a reduplication to be regretted. The passages from Fielding and Sterne may be called, on the whole, a satisfactory choice. From Evelyn we are given the touch- ing account of the trial of Lord Stafford. This account, by the way, may be recalled to the mind of the querist* in . ' N. & Q.' who lately | nquired as to the arrangement of Westminster i Hall for a State trial. Charles II. was the sub- I ject of many good pages in his day : the principal j ones upon which historians rely for their pictures of him will be found here. The second volume ! not only illustrates admirably the development of English prose but also leaves the reader with I a quickened sense of the characteristic outlook and modes of thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jlottces to Correspondents. ALL communications intended for insertion in our columns should bear the name and address of the sender not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. EDITORIAL communications should be addressed to " The Editor of ' Notes and Queries ' " Adver- tisements and Business Letters to " The Pub- lishers " at the Office, Printing House Square, London, E.G. 4; corrected proofs to The Editor, ' N. & Q.,' Printing House Square, London, E.G. 4. WHEN sending a letter to be forwarded to another contributor correspondents are requested to put in the top left-hand corner of the envelope the number of the page of ' N. & Q.' to which the letter refers. 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