30
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. vm. JULY 12, 1913.
The Wednesday Club. (See 11 S. vii. 391.)—Mr. Humphreys mentions that the Grillion Club was for a brief period called "The Wednesday Club." Was it at all common to name a club after the day of meeting? There was a Wednesday Club in existence in the early years of the eighteenth century, the members of which thought their deliberations of sufficient importance to place before the public in print. A small volume entitled:
"An Enquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain and the past and present state of the Trade and Publick Revenues thereof. By the Wednesday Club in Friday Street, London, 1717,"
is sometimes met with in booksellers' catalogues. This purports to give a detailed account of the Proceedings of the Club during the latter half of 1716. The public finance of the time is dealt with unsparingly, and suggestions made and schemes brought forward for the improvement of matters. The Puritan element was not absent; several members quoted (apparently with approval) Old Testament maxims to give point to their argument. Is anything now known as to the constitution and membership of this earlier Wednesday Club? D. A. Burl.
HEBREW OR ARABIC PROVERB ? Mr. P. G. Hamerton in his ' Intellectual Life ' quotes a saying about " the foolish camel that lost its ears as the result of seeking for a set of horns " which is quite unknown to me. It has a Semitic ring. I believe it is Arabian. Can any reader give us the original and its source ?
M. L. R. BRESLAR.
South Hackney.
J. DE FLEURY. Information is wanted respecting this artist, who seems to have painted in the fifties, and was a follower of Turner. He was not Franois Fleury the French painter. C. H.
THE MILLER OF HUNTINGDON. In a letter which he wrote to his friend Toby Matthew, on 10 Oct., 1609, accompanying his ' Refutation of the Philosophies ' (' Re- dargutio Philosophiarum '), Bacon says :
" Myself am like the miller of Huntingdon, that was wont to pray for peace amongst the willows ; for while the winds blew, the wind- mills wrought, and the water-mill was less cus- tomed." E. A. Abbott, ' Francis Bacon,' 1885. p. 160.
Can any one tell me whether the miller was an actual person or merely legendary ? Is the saying proverbial, or does it contain a literary reminiscence ? I am told that Spedding has a note on the passage, but
in the form in which it was quoted to me
(" Grancester in Res ") I do not under-
stand it. L. R. M. STRACHAN.
Heidelberg.
"THE FAITHFUL DURHAMS." What is the origin of this nickname as applied to the 68th Durham L.I. ?
Though the subject of Regimental Nick- names has been dealt with several times in ' N. & Q.,' I have never seen an explanation of this. BRADSTOW.
DR. GARRET POWER of Clonmel married Emily, daughter of Capt. Farmer, R.N., who was blown up in the frigate Quebec in an engagement with the French, 1779.
Can any one supply details as to Dr. Garret Power's birthplace, place of marriage, and death, and the place of burial of his two sons Hugh and Pierce ? J. J. PIPER.
PERCY SOCIETY. Were the two sup- pressed parts ever issued by the Society itself to the members, or were they originally issued privately ? ALFRED BULL.
35, Hart Street, Bloomsbury, W.C.
HISTORY OF THE " PECCAVI " PUN.
(11 S. vii. 226,290.)
IN my reply at the latter reference I en- deavoured to justify the statement made by Marshman, Davenport Adams, and myself that Sir Charles Napier was the author of the well-known pun, to which a mere reference was made in Punch more than a year afterwards on 18 May, 1844. I showed that " Peccavi " lay on the tip of Napier's tongue in 1843, that he was given to making puns, and that tradition, maintained for so many years, was a safer guide than the doubts of recent questioners who refused to believe without seeing the very dispatch. I explained that the annexation of Sind was a burning question in Parliament and the Press ; that the dispatches given to Parliament, as well as Napier's letters published by his biographers, were fissured with omissions, being labelled " extracts " ; and that the disappearance of the imprudent punning dispatch was the most natural thing. I promised to give your readers the result of further inquiry.
I wrote to the Commissioner in Sind, and have received in reply the statement that " none of the originals of the dispatches of Sir Charles Napier or of Lord Ellenborough's replies
