144
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. AUG. 22, igos.
MODERN BELL INSCRIPTIONS. (See 9 th S. x.
303.) I trust I may be pardoned by bT.
SWITHIN for making reference to his interest-
ing note on the Ash by Folville bells under a
new heading. I do this for the purpose of
drawing attention to two other specimens of
these " new fangled " inscriptions.
Some few months ago the bells in Prittle- well Church, Essex, were rehung after being recast. Two new bells were added, making a peal of ten. The first of these bears the following words :
A royal peal are we ; We ring o'er land and sea From Prittlewell belfry.
Vide Southend-on-Sea Observer, 10 April, 1902. " One of the bells in the renovated belfry of the parish church of Wooburn, near Maidenhead, was badly cracked and had to be recast. The vicar, the'Rey. J. B. Kirby, has had inscribed upon it the following verse, composed by himself : The King was ill, And I was still
The day his crowning fell ; My wound was healed, And I was pealed
To tell the King was well."
Daily Mail, 18 October, 1902.
JOHN T. PAGE. GRATIS LITERATURE.
" We may note that this strenuous opponent of
- the horrible Athanasian Creed ' [ Whiston] was one
of the earliest men of learning who sought to in- culcate their ideas by means of leaflets distributed gratis in large numbers. Is there an earlier instance outside politics of this up-to-date method of per- suading the multitude?' Athenamm, 25 July, p, 114, col. 3.
I should say several. The following is from D'lsraeli's ' Curiosities of Literature,' but I think I have read of it or something similar in Bayle's historical dictionary. Can any reader give the reference ?
" One Catherinot all his life was printing a count- less number of feuilles volantes in history and on antiquities, each consisting of about three or four leaves in quarto: Lenglet du Fresnoy calls him 'grand auteur des petits liyres.' This gentleman liked to live among antiquaries and historians ; but with a crooked headpiece, stuck with whims, and hard with knotty combinations, all overloaded with prodigious erudition, he could not ease it at a less rate tnan by an occasional dissertation of three or four quarto pages. He appears to have published about two hundred pieces of this sort, much sought after by the curious for their rarity: Brunet com- plains he could never discover a complete collection. But Catheriuot may escape ' the pains and penalties ' of our voluminous writers, for De Bure thinks he generously printed them to distribute among his friends. Such endless writers, provided they do riot print themselves into an alms-house, may be allowed to print themselves out ; and we would accept the apology which Monsieur Catherinot has framed for himself, which I find preserved in 'Beyeri Memorize Librorum Rariorum.' 'I must
be allowed my freedom in my studies, for I substi-
tute my writings for a game at the tennis-court, or
a club at the tavern ; I never counted among my
honours these opuwula of mine, but merely as harm-
less amusements. It is my partridge, as with
St. John the Evangelist ; my cat, as with Pope
St. Gregory ; my little dog, as with St. Dommick ;
my lamb, as with St. Francis ; my great black
mastiff, as with Cornelius Agrippa ; and my tame
hare, as with Justus Lipsius.' I have since dis-
covered in Niceron that this Catherinot could never
get a printer, and was rather compelled to study
economy in his two hundred quartos of four or eight
pages : his paper was of inferior quality ; and whjen
he could not get his dissertations into his prescribed
number of pages, he used to promise the end at
another time, which did not always happen. But
his greatest anxiety was to publish and spread his
works [There was no *N. & Q.' in those days!
A. W.] ; in despair he adopted an odd expedient.
Whenever Monsieur Catherinot came to Paris he
used to haunt the qitais where books are sold, and
while he appeared to be looking over them he
adroitly slided one of his own dissertations among
these old books. He began this mode of publica-
tion early, and continued it to his last days. He
died with a perfect conviction that he had secured
his immortality ; and in this manner had disposed
of more than one edition of his unsaleable works.
Niceron has given the titles of 118 of his things
which he had looked over." 'Curiosities,' new edi-
tion by the Earl of Beaconsfield (1881), ii. 544.
ADRIAN WHEELER.
"ALL OVER." I do not mean the " all over " which is the English of "actum est" a phrase which we rolled off our tongues in the salad days of our boyhood. The "all over " I mean is a phrase which, I fear, has since gone out of fashion, to the complete loss of a form of speech combining the humor- ous with the censuresome. In such expressions the language is not over rich. When I was a lad 1 betrayed strong instincts towards individualism and character I was wilful, I was odd ; I am sorry to say to-day I am more wilful and odder. My head master used to say when things were reported to him of the writer, "That's just like Breslar all over." That phrase I came across recently, after a quarter of a century of reading arid mixing in the broad world, for the first time in Prof. Wilson's 'Noctes Ambrosianse,' vol. i. p. 313. Christopher tells a story of an artist, one Havel, and winds up, "Havel all over ! Havel all over ! " If the phrase is one of the currente calamo kind, then I am an ignoramus.
M. L. R. BRESLAR. [We have occasionally heard it in London.]
DOCTOR'S RECOMMENDATION. The recom- mendations of medical men are frequently amusing, but it is seldom we hear of an injunction of such a startling character as that given in the British Medical Journal of 27 June (the same number containing
