Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/31

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9* s. in. JAN. 14,


NOTES AND QUERIES.


chapel on the north side of the cathedral at Albi. Archceologia, 1896, Iv. 107.

206. In the choir of Bourges Cathedral. Thirteenth century. ' Diet. Arch.'

207. On the tympanum of the doorway of the church of St. Ursin. In Jauffroy, 'Siecles de la Monarchic Frangaise,' 1823, pi. 38;

  • Diet. Arch.'

208. On the cathedral at Senlis. Twelfth century. * Diet. Arch.' A. B. G.

( To be continued. )

G. H. LEWES AND LOCKE. G. H. Lewes, on p. 450 of the 'Biographical History of Philosophy ' (Routledge's edition), writes : '" In 1670 Locke planned his ' Essay concern- ing Human Understanding.' This he did not complete till 1687." Again, on p. 456: "The time came when for the purpose of this history we had to read the 'Essay 'once more. We read it through carefully, admiringly." Carefully forsooth ! This is what he did not apparently do. For on p. 250, book iv. (Bohn's edition), Locke writes : " Remembering that I saw it [water] yesterday, it will also be always true, and as long as my memory retains it, always an undoubted proposition to me, that water did exist the 10th day of July, 1688." He had then close upon a hundred more pages to write ere he com- pleted his monumental work. The book was published in 1690 ; perhaps 1687 is a printer's error, and ought to be 1689.

At what date were pineapples introduced into England? Locke writes on p. 245, book iv. : " We see nobody gets the relish of a pineapple till he goes to the Indies, where it is, and tastes it." What is " Kin Kina," men- tioned by him on p. 260 in the same volume ?

I would draw Messrs. Bell & Sons' atten- tion to a typographical error on p. 71, book iii. HKJp should read ntp, pronounced "Kinnah," not "Kinneah," as printed on p. 70.

On p. 76, book iii. occurs a very remark- able statement for so ideal a man as Locke : " In the Hebrew tongue there is a particle consisting of but one single letter, or which there are reckoned up, as I remember, seventy, I am sure above fifty, several significations." Where did Locke derive his information from? M. L. BRESLAR.

Percy House, South Hackney.

PEAS, PEASE, AND PEASEN. In spite of lexicographers and grammarians there is commonly great diversity in writing the plural of pea. Bailey under both pea and pease has " a well-known pulse "; later lexico- graphers distinguish between a definite


number, as nine peas in a pod, and a col- lective sense, as a bushel of pease ; but most modern writers seem to use either form indiscriminately. Mr. Leo H. Grindon, in his 'Fruits and Fruit Trees' (1885, p. 77), says :

"In cerasus we have the parent, first, of the French cerisier and cerise, and eventually of the English cherry, which, by the way, ought by rights to be spelt cherris or cheris. The established spelling came of our forefathers confounding the s with the sign usually employed in English to mark plurals. The very same mistake was made over the name of the vegetable in Latin called pisum, French poits, properly in English a ' peas,' plural ' peasen ' : He talked of turnips and of peasen, And set good seed in proper season."

In Gosson's 'Schoole of Abuse,' 1579, we have " the quantitie of a beane, or the weight of a pease (Shakespeare Society ed., 1841, p. 24).

The plural " pease " seems to have been almost universal in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; thus Bishop Corbet, circa 1615, wrote (ed. 1807, p. 128) :

Oh ! thou deform'd unwomanlike disease, That plowst up flesh and blood, and there sows't pease.*

Massinger refers to a man in "a barn, wrapp'd up in pease-straw," 'New Way to pay Old Debts,' II. ii. (1633). Butler in ' Hudibras ' has "pease" more than once; and Wilson, a translator of Petronius Arbiter in 1708 describes " pease in a silver charger."

Of modern writers who use the plural "peas," I may instance Dean Stanley, Mr. Blackmore in 'Lorna Doone,' and Miss Broughton ; but Miss Braddon and Borrow have " pease." JAMES HOOPER.

Norwich.

KING CHARLES L As the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the beheading of King Charles I. is to be observed this year, the following notes may be read with interest.

John Audley, in ' Englands Common- wealth,' 1652, writes : " When (in the face of death) he used a forme of prayer taken out of Sir Philip Sidny's 'Arcadia,' he proved himselfe neither vertuous, nor divine " (p. 34). On this see ' D.N.B.,' Iii. 231 b.

Barnabas Oley, in the preface to George Herbert's ' Country Parson,' 1671, writes : " The king, St. Charles of blessed memory, and the good archbishop of Canterbury, with


[* In the third edition, 1672, the distich in ques- tion runs :

O thou deform'd unwoman-like disgrace, Thou Plow'st up Flesh and Blood, and there Sow'st Peace.]