Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/75

This page needs to be proofread.

12 s. vm. JAN. is, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. THE BRITISH IN CORSICA (12 S. viii. 10, 35). I cannot find that there was any British occupation of Corsica in 1745 or in 1814. In 1794 it was captured. General Sir David Dundas was in command of the British Force. A full account of the opera- tions is given in Sir John Moore's ' Diary,' vol. i., published in 1904, by Edward Arnold. J. H. LESLIE. GASPAR BARLAEUS (12 S. vii. 431, 513). It may be of interest that the original manu- script of his ' Poemata ' was sold in 1859 by Messrs. Puttick & Simpson when the manu- script library of Dawson Turner, Esq., of Great Yarmouth was dispersed. Its official description is thus given : " No. 34. Barlaeus (Caspar) Poemata et Epistolae Latinae ; half morocco, folio, pp. 40, 1636, &c." It was bought by one Boone, and fetched 14s. Sd. WILFRED J. CHAMBERS. Clancarty, Regent Road, Lowestoft. (12 S. vii. 311). This must be the game of shovelboard which is fully described at 10 S. vii. 403. At 9 S. ii. 187 it is stated that to huddle means to make a winning cast at shovelboard. F. JESSEL. WARWICKSHIRE SAYINGS (12 S. vii. 67, 156, 198). The Somerset version of N. 2 at the first reference is : Friday cut hair and Sunday cut horn, Better a man had never been born. M. N. O. GOLD BOWL GIFT OF GEORGE I. (12 S. vii. 450, 514). Many thanks to MR. PRES- COTT Row for his answer re Bowl. It is really a bowl not cup ; it' measures in dia- meter 10 in., height 6 in. The inscription on it is : " The gift of his Majesty King George to hia Godson, George Lamb. Anno Domini, 1723. On the reverse side are the Royal arms. E. C. WIENHOLT. EDWARD DIXON (12 S. vii. 349) was born at Halton, near Leeds (s. of Joseph and Mary D.), Mar. 25, 1778. He must have lived at Halton for some years as his son George Dixon was also born there circa 1807. This George had a son Edward, b. Apr. 21, 1828, at Chapeltown Road, Leeds, and dying Aug. 26, 1900, at Scarborough, buried iii S. Cemetery. A. D. C. 131 Victoria Street, S.W. 0n Studies in Statecraft : being Chapters, BiographicdT and Bibliographical, mainly on the Sixteenth. Century. By Sir Geoffrey Butler. (Cambridge University Press, 10s. net.) WE would advise students of International Law, and those general readers who are watching with interest the rise and progress of the League of Nations to read this book. It is no ponderous tome contributory to their severer studies ; but a set of five pleasant essays reminding us that our problems concerning international relations have presented themselves, from the time when- the Europe of the Middle Ages was broken up by the Renaissance, not only to practical statesmen but also to abstract thinkers. The first essay is on Bishop Rodericus Sancius's dialogue ' De pace et bello.' The writer puts before us with admirable skill an outline of the political situation which called it forth, a situa- tion chiefly determined from the standpoint of Rodericus himself by the cautious policy of consolidation and preparation pursued by Pope Paul II. Rodericus was a propagandist of the finest order and there is reason to take this dialogue as propaganda, intended to rebut the pacificism of the day at a time when pressure from the Turks and the unruliness of heresy made it desirable for the Church to show herself steady and militant. The pacificist speaker in the Dialogue is Platina whom, in all probability, Rodericus, as Castellan of St. Angelo, had, while he was writing, under his charge. The arguments on both sides have much in them common with ours of to-day, but they are drawn also from the astronomy then current, are illustrated copiously from the classics, and are set out in the flowery style of the. Renaissance. Our author finds the value of the dialogue in Rodericus's power of getting behind, phrases, of bringing his argument back to con- crete fact urging, for example, that it is idle to consider war apart from the reasons which set men to wage it. This line is what we might expect from. Sancius's character and career a man who deserves to be more widely known, and whom Sir Geoffrey Butler assists the student to discover by printing a list of his works (forty- five in number) taken from Antonio's ' Biblioteca Hispana Vetus,' with some additions of his own. The next essay deals briefly with French commentators on Roman Law the French " civilians " of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their minds ran on the nature of sovereignty and the relation impersonally con- sidered of the princeps to the law ; from their study of Roman Law was evolved the theory underlying the new monarchy. The chapter on William Postel brings before us one of the most curious figures of a time when it was still possible for an erudite person more or less to take the whole of knowledge for his province. How Postel acquired his erudition is but obscurely indicated except that it is clear that indomitable industry and tenacity Elayed a great part therein. An obscure orphan, e had from his childhood to earn his own liveli- hood. At 26 he was so well known as an Oriental scholar that he was sent with Peter Giles to the