Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/578

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478


NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. JUNK n, MM.


attack the tower from the bay, the Fortitude and Juno were ordered against it, without making the least impression, by a cannonade continued for two hours and a half ; and the former ship being very much damaged by red-hot shot, both hauled off. The walls of the tower were of a prodigious thick- ness, and the parapet, where there were two eighteen-pounders, was lined with bass junk, five feet from the walls, and filled up with sand ; and although it was cannonaded from the height for two days, within 150 yards, and appeared in a very shattered state, the enemy still held out ; but a few hot shot setting fire to the bass, made them call for quarter. The number of men in the tower was 33 : only two were wounded, and those mortally."

W. S.

"THE RUN OF HIS TEETH" (10 th S. i. 388, 436). "A New Song, celebrating Lord Milton's Sheffield Electioneering Committee and Agents. Dedicated, Without permission, to His Lordship and His Lordship's Motley Party ; By their disobedient Servant, Satirical Satire, Esquire. May, 1807," p. 8, verse xvi.

has :

And it suits to a T, To receive as your fee, The run of your teeth And five guineas a day.

Does the phrase "It suits to a T " appear in any glossary ? HENRY JOHN BEARDSHAW. 27, Northumberland Road, Sheffield.

"BARRAR" (10 th S. i. 349, 434). Surely it ought to be distinctly stated that this word, better spelt barrow, is given not only in the 'E.D.D.,'but in the 'New English Dic- tionary' also. The etymology there sug- gested, from A.S. beorgan, to protect, defend, is surely right. We have the same word over again in the prov. E. JBarg-kam, " protection of the hame," given in both the above dic- tionaries, and in Ham-bargh( l 'N.l&.D.'), Ham- burgh (' E.D.D.'), i.e., " hame-protection." WALTER W. SKEAT.

SHAKESPEARE'S GRAVE (10 th S. i. 288, 331, 352, 416). The discussion on the above sub- ject would be materially assisted by the com- Earison of the seven illustrations to a paper y C. C. Stopes entitled ' The True Story of the Stratford Bust,' which appeared in Murray's Monthly Revieiv for April. They show a complete change in the design of the tomb. E. K.

" GRINGO "= FOREIGNER : " GRIENGRO " (10 th S. i. 369). MR. W. L. PoOLEis unquestionably right in saying that the word "Griengro" occurs frequently in 'Aylwin,' which has been pronounced the most authoritative picture existing of the horse-dealing gypsies of Great Britain. But neither in that book nor in Mr. Watts-Dun ton's gypsy poem 'The


Coming of Love,' nor in Sorrow's ' Lavengro,' nor its sequel 'The Romany Eye,' nor in F. H. Groome's gypsy pictures, is the word Griengro used as being synonymous with the word Gringo (foreigner), as used by natives of the river Plate. I am not a gypsologist myself, but it has been my privilege to be brought much into touch with all the above-mentioned writers, and I am familiar with their work ; but I am persuaded that the word Griengro ha nothing to do with the idea of foreigner, or " outsider," as expressed by the gypsy word Gorgio. Mr. Watts-Dunton has himself fully explained the word Gri-engro, " horse- master," in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' in Chambers's ' Cyclopaedia of English Litera- ture,' and in the introductions to ' Aylwin r and 'The Coming of Love.' I may add, however, that certain very competent writers (such, for instance, as Groome) appear to- see Romany origins for a much larger number of European words than the general reader can understand.

THOMAS ST. E. HAKE. Hounslow, W.


NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher.

Variorum Edition. Vol. I. (Bell & Sons and

A. H. Bullen.)

MB. BULLEN'S labours in the fields of Tudor drama find their crown in the edition of Beaumont and Fletcher of which the first volume now appears. Amidst the pressure of various avocations Mr. Bullen has been unable to undertake alone a. task of enormous labour and responsibility. He has associated with himself, accordingly, in the pro- duction of the opening volume a Shakespearian scholar so ripe and trustworthy as Mr. P. A. Daniel and the editor of Lyly, Mr. R. Warwick Bond, one- of the latest and most active recruits to the army of editors. He will himself supervise and direct the entire work, and will furnish to it, in a twelfth and concluding volume, the memoirs of the two dramatists and various excursuses, critical and expository, of a kind the value of which we have learnt to estimate. That Mr. Bullen has long been- engaged on a task for which he has special and indis- putable qualifications had been known, and the fact that he was so employed was calculated to discourage all thought of opposition and rivalry. His first ambi- tion extended no further than reprinting that text of the Rev. Alexander Dyce Avhich has won the- approval of all scholars, and been depreciated by no one except a rival editor, not to be mentioned in the same century. The expediency of further collation and of the addition of various readings suggested itself, however, during the progress, and the work in its new shape is an advance upon its predecessor.

Not quite easy is it to define the exact position of the two dramatists in the Elizabethan firmament.