38
NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. vi. JULY 13, 1912.
Speaking generally, the Hewers appear
to have belonged mostly to Norfolk, and
the Ewers to Hertfordshire. There are
many Ewer entries in Musgrave's ' Obituary'
and in the Wandsworth parish registers.
LEO C.
BISHOP R. FOXE, D.' 1528 (11 S. v. 447). Though his appointment to the Prebend of Grantham is not in the ' D.N.B.,' it will be found in Cooper's ' Athenae Canta- brigienses,' i. 35. G. J. GRAY.
Cambridge.
THE " ROVING ENGLISHMAN " (11 S. v. 469). The author of the ' Roving English- man ' (1854), the ' Roving Englishman in Turkey' (1855), &c., was Eustace Clare Grenville Murray. He was, says the ' D.N.B.,' the natural son of Richard Grenville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos; matri- culated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 1 March, 1848, and was entered a student of the Inner Temple in 1850. He was attache to the British Embassy at Vienna, and afterwards at Constantinople, where his relations with Sir Stratford Canning became so strained that he was removed, and ap- pointed Vice-Consul at Mitylene. He was transferred to Odessa in 1855, but returned to London in 1868, when he took up journal- ism as a profession. As the result of a quarrel he left the following year for Paris, where he became correspondent to The Daily News and Pall Mall Gazette. In 1874 he joined Edmund Yates, embarking 50(M. in the establishment of The World : a Journal for Men and Women, the fust number of which appeared on 8 July, 1874. His persistence in regarding the journal as a medium for his private quarrels caused Yates to buy him out in December, 1874, for 3,00(M. Besides the pseudonym " Roving Englishman," he published under the name "Trois Etoiles," whilst his posthumous ' Strange Tales from " Vanity Fair " ' (1882) was by " Silly Billy."
THOMAS WM. HTJCK.
Saffron Walden.
This was Eustace Clare Grenville Murray (1824-81), a journalist. Over thirty books and translations appear under his name in the British Museum Catalogue. In 1869 he founded The Queen's Messenger ; charged with perjury for denying the authorship of an article in this paper, and being remanded on bail, he escaped to Paris, where he acted as correspondent to several London papers. ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.R.S.L.
Reference Library, Bolton.
This was George Augustus Sala (1828-96) ;
see ' Edmund Yates, his Recollections and
Experiences,' vol. i. chap. viii.
L A. W.
Dublin.
on Hooks.
An American Glossary. By Richard H. Thornton.
2 vols. (Francis & Co.)
ON his title-page Mr. Thornton modestly states that this. ' American Glossary' is "an attempt to illustrate certain Americanisms upon historical principles." His two volumes contain no fewer than 14,000 illustrative citations, and of these only a few hundred are duplicates, in the admission of which the following rules have been observed : " When a brief citation includes two or more noted words, it is printed under each heading " ; and "When the citation, though somewhat long, is separable, it is given in full in one place, and in part in the other, with a cross-reference." As to the definition of an Americanism, the author says : " It would be difficult, and indeed impossible, to construct a definition which should be compre- hensive and concise " ; and he does not attempt the task, but has included forms of speech now obsolete or provincial - in England which survive in the United States, as well as words and phrases of distinctly American origin ; names which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, and articles of food that are distinctly American ; names of persons and classes of persons and of places ; and words which have assumed a new meaning, as well as words and phrases of which he has found earlier examples in American than in English writers. Curious instances are given of survivals which have not taken root ; of these forty-one examples are included in the author's address ' To the Reader,' as he thought it best not to include them in the body of the Glossary. Among them is "preacheress," and we are thankful that it is but a survival.
Mr. Thornton's volumes contain onlv Ameri- canisms of recognized standing or of special interest. " Accordingly it will be found that over 80 per cent of the illustrative quotations arehalfa century old. ;r The compiler has made no attempt " to register the voluminous outpourings of modern slang ; and the reader who wishes to investigate such phrases as ' Adam and Eve on a raft ' or to ' get a wiggle on ' will have to pursue his researches elsewhere. But some slang words and phrases are too character- istic to be left out, although modern ; while others belong to the period of the hunter and the back- woodsman." The plan of the work is admirable. The quotations illustrating each word or phrase are arranged chronologically, beginning with the earliest ; and to each quotation is allotted a separate paragraph, which is preceded by its date, so that the history of a word is seen at once.
In taking a rirst glance at these volumes one naturally turns to words frequently in use. Under Yankee there are no fewer than sixty references, dating from 1760 to 1889. It appears that the origin of the word cannot be ascertained with certainty. "Smollett writes of 'a Dutch yanky,' probably a sailing vessel, possibly a Dutch sailor ;
