8. XL MAT 9, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
361
LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 9, 190S.
CONTENTS. No. 280
NOTES : Chancellor Silvan Evans, 3H1 Billion : Trillion, 362 Merry Tales, 363 Milton's 'Minor Poems,' 3155 Bonnet =Toque " Pip" Dr. Halley Music to Mrs. Hemans's Songs, 3iS Westminster City Arms Thacke- ray's Carefulness as to Details, 367.
QUERIES :" Cahoot" Long Melford Church, 3*7-Pike Family Roman Numerals Oliver of Ley tonstone Good Friday in 1602 ' Celebrities and I 'Henry II. and Lin- coln ValleVs ' Bibliographic des Bibliographies' Dyng- ley " And the villain still pursued her " Jelf Kelynack : the Place and Family, 368-" Folks"" Welter "Maori Legend J D P^pys Kimberleys of Bromsgrove
Delivered from the galling \oke of time" Herbert
iid Leather " Paraboue "
A Voice from the Danube ' " Oh, true brave heart," &c.,
REPLIES : -'The Good Devil of Woodstock,' 370 Ancient
Demesne, 371 Races of Mankind Keats's 'Ode to a
Nightingale 'Watson of Barrasb-ilge, 372 Definition
of Genius, 373 Last of the Pre-Victorian M.Ps, 374
Vicar of Wakefield ' Footprints of Gods Stevenson :
Corinthian : Put " Hagioscope" or Oriel? 375 Rings in
1487 Road Waggons from Liverpool, 376 Notes on
Skeat's 'Concise Dictionary 'San Diego " Surizian,"
377 Chaucerian Quotation Longevity Gods and Men-
Hock- : Ocker-, 378.
NOTES ON BOOKS :-FitzGerald's 'Calderon.' edited hy Oelsner 'Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist' Reviews and Magazines Booksellers' Catalogues.
Notices to Correspondents.
CHANCELLOR SILVAN EVANS.
IN the Cardiff Weekly Mail of 18 April
there are two obituary notices of this excellent
Welsh scholar : one in English, reprinted, I
believe, from the daily issue of the Mail ; the
other in Welsh by "Idriswyn." I do not
know who the latter writer is, but am under
the impression that he is a Dissenting minister.
The English notice bears internal evidence
of being the work of Mr. Eilir Evans, a zealous
Churchman and Conservative, and a well-
known Cardiff journalist. Mr. Evans, an
old Lampeterian, who had been personally
interviewing Silvan Evans about a year ago,
writes thus respecting the distinguished
lexicographer's connexion with Lampeter :
" The Rev. Chancellor Evans was an old Lam- peter man, where he graduated B.D. in 1868 and
acted in the capacity of examiner at St. David's College. Lampeter, from 1875 to 1890. He was made Canon of Bangor in 1888, and subsequently was appointed to the chancellorship of the cathe- dral, which he held for eight years. For an equal period he had been previously Professor of Welsh at the University College of Wales."
This notice runs to a column and a half (full newspaper size) ; and that is all a leading Church pressman and Lampeterian has to say about Silvan Evans's connexion with his old college. I may observe that the dates of Evans's Lampeter examinership given in the
above quotation do not tally with the dates
in the current edition of the college calendar,
which on p. 60 gives 1874-81, but on the
very next page has 1875-79. It will be
noticed that the eight years of his professor-
ship at Aberystwith (1875-83)are not specified,
nor placed in their natural position. On
looking at the curious discrepancies of dates,
one is half inclined to suspect that some of
them are intentional, made with the view of
parrying the awkward accusation that Lara-
peter was shamed into paying its old alumnus
the compliment of appointing him Welsh
examiner by the action of its vigorous young
rival at Aberystwith. I am not at present
able either to confirm or dissipate this sus-
picion, but I know that the Lampeter
authorities have always been somewhat
prone to mystification. Turning now to
"Idriswyn's" account, we find indeed more
information, but even less accuracy. The
writer is very well informed on Welsh
matters, and an enthusiastic advocate for
the preservation and extension of the Welsh
language. This, then, is what " Idriswyn"
says :
"From his leaving [the Dissenting academy of] Neuaddlwyd to his entrance at Lampeter Silvan Evans's biographers are wholly silent, but, if I am not mistaken, he began preaching with the Inde- pendents, if indeed he did not take charge of one or more [Dissenting] churches. At any rate, this is certain, in 1846, when he was twenty-eight years old, we find Evans a student at Lampeter with the object of taking Church orders. He was one of the earliest students (myfyrwyr cyntaf) of that col- lege, and one of the most promising that ever were under instruction. In the last year of his course he was Welsh lecturer to the college, completing
his other studies at the same time He won a
high position at Lampeter, passed in the first division, and won a scholarship [in another obituary the scholarship is said to be the " senior" one]. He took his B.D. in 1868, and served as Welsh examiner to his old college from 1874 to 1880. Silvan Evans's career and his subsequent scholarly works were the means of bringing Lampeter College to the nation's notice, and he set a permanent mark of renown on the institution he was a living witness to the nature and effectiveness of the education imparted there."
Such is "Idriswyn's" glowing picture of Silvan Evans's Lampeter career, due partly, no doubt, to the kindly Welsh fashion of covering lack of exact information with a profusion of pleasant adjectives, but mainly to that Lampeterian mystification to which I have already referred. I do not yield to either Mr. Eilir Evans or "Idriswyn" in sincere respect for, and admiration of, the deceased scholar, but I do not believe that fiction can furnish a satisfactory wreath for his grave.
As the college was opened in March,
