510
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL JUNK 26, im
WALT WHITMAN ON ALAMO, TEXAS. In
- Leaves of Grass,' Whitman tells a grue-
some story of the massacre in cold blood of 412 young men at the fall of Alamo in Texas. As there are no notes to assist the English students of the American poet, one is driven to inquire through ' N. & Q.' to what Whitman was referring. Are we ever to have a commentary on Whitman ? One is sorely needed.
M. L. B. BRESLAB.
MILES CORBET, the regicide, was one of Charles I.'s judges who were hanged at Tyburn. Can any one tell us whom he married ? N. M. & A.
" AT THE BACK OF BEYOND." I shall be
glad to learn the origin and meaning of this expression. V. H. C.
Tu BROOK, LIVERPOOL. What is the meaning of " Tu " in the above local name ?
TOM JONES.
GAOL LITEBATUBE.
(10 S. xi. 428.)
HERE are a few prison books :
George Buchanan (1506-82) composed his ' Paraphrases of the Psalms of David ' during his confinement in the dungeon of a monas- tery in Portugal.
Jerome Maggi, or Magius, a Venetian engineer, taken prisoner when Famagusta was captured by the Turks, was carried away in chains and became a slave. He wrote in prison a treatise upon bells ' De Tintinnabulis,' and another upon the wooden horse, ' De Equuleo.'
Samuel Speed, " Prisoner in Ludgate," published in 1677 his 'Prison Pietie ; or, Meditations Divine and Moral.'
James Howell (1594-1666) wrote the principal part of ' Epistolse Howellianse ' during his long confinement in the Fleet Prison.
John Selden (1584-1654) committed to the Tower for his attacks on the divine right of tithes, and the king's preroga- tive, prepared during his confinement his
Spicilegium in Eadmeri Sex Libros His- toriarum,' folio, enriched with learned notes. Selden also published an erudite
Dissertation annexed to (a book called .bleta, which he discovered in the Cot- tonian Library. This well-known law book
was written by a person confined in the
?leet Prison for debt. The name of the
olace, though not that of the author, has
hus been preserved.
Bichard Gardiner (1723-81), being in 1754 a prisoner for debt in the Fleet, wrote ' The History of Pudica .... with an Account of her Five Lovers ' (1754), in which " Dick Merry fellow " is himself. As the book exposed and ridiculed many private transactions in Norfolk, it gave preat offence. C. ELKIN MATHEWS.
Vigo Street.
A volume of considerable interest, entitled ' Prison Books and their Authors,' by John Alfred Langford, was published in 1861 by William Tegg. In addition to the names given at the above reference, it includes those of Boethius, the Earl of Surrey, Cervantes, Bobert Southwell, George Wither, Lovelace, James Montgomery, Leigh Hunt, and Thomas Cooper. " There are many more," the author writes,
who deserve to be included in such a work ; and [ have already made considerable progress with a second series, the completion of which. I trust, the success of the present volume will accelerate."
This sentence illustrates, from a work of 1861, the use of the long s, regarding which there was recently an interesting discussion in these pages. The rule observed throughout Mr. Langford's book is to employ the archaic form of the letter, except when it is needed as a capital or concludes a word. Whether or not he issued a second volume on his subject it is impossible at present to say.
THOMAS BAYNE.
Mr. John Alfred Langford's ' Prison Books and their Authors,' 1861, is the principal authority, but the book is without an index. Brewer's 'Historic Note-Book,' 1891, under the heading ' Prison Authors and Literature,' p. 715, gives an excellent alphabetical list of prison writers which overlaps Langford's, but not entirely. W. A. Jones, ' Essays on Authors and Books,' New York, 1849, also deals with the subject ; and reference should be made to the ' Bibliography of Prisons,' by W. C. Hazlitt, to be found in The Bibliographer, vol. vi. (Elliot Stock). A. L. HUMPHREYS.
187, Piccadilly, W.
A list " of books, pamphlets, or any kind of literary work produced in prison in this or any other country " would be a work of great magnitude, and the BEV. J. B. McGovERN will fail, I think, to obtain any one competent and ready to undertake the
