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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. in. JUNE 3, m
in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1843, it is
stated that in 1808 he published an edition
of Plutarch's 'Lives' in six octavo volumes.
The earliest edition in the British Museum is
the fourth, published in 1826. There is no
copy of this 1808 edition in the Bodleian
Catalogue, nor is it mentioned by Watt ; and
the only confirmation of the statement made
in the memoir is that in the ' London Cata-
logue,' which covers from 1700 to 1811, an
edition is mentioned, but without any clue
to the date of publication. Curiously enough,
the Archdeacon had no copy of this 1808
edition in his library, the one he mentions
being that of 1813. Is any copy known of
this 1808 edition, and if so, where 1
There is also another curious point about the memoir published in the Gentleman! s Magazine. It was copied almost verbatim from an earlier memoir published about 1827, in a work of which there is only a part in the British Museum. This part has no title-page, but has the running title "National Portraits." What was the proper title of the work, and when was it published 1
In my opinion it is better to have a series of authentic and reliable bibliographies of individual periods than an imperfect general catalogue. HENRY R. PLOMER.
A WITTY BOY. In Novella Ixii. of Francesco Sacchetti (c. 1335-1410) a Messer Valore, after being astonished by a boy about fourteen years old, whose smart words defeat him repeatedly, remarks to his com- pany that there is no boy of precocious wit who does not become a fool in later life. "You," replied the boy, "must have been a person of great wisdom in your boyhood." Poggio (A.D. 1380-1459) gives a similar story in his * Facetiae,' which tells of a cardinal and child who delivered a harangue in presence of the Pope. It will be interesting to note that in the invention of such stories the Chinese preceded the Europeans. Liu I-King (A.D. 403-444), in his 'Shih-Shwoh' (Japanese re- print, 1779, torn. xii. fol. 18 a), speaks thus :
"Kun Wan-Kii (killed A.D. 208), when only ten years of age, went to Lo-Yang [then the capital] with his father. There Li Yuen-Li (killed A.D. 169) had a great fame in learning, and only his relations or savants were allowed to see him . The boy called on him, spoke to his porter, ' I am Mr. Li's relative,' and was given a seat in his presence. The master asked him, ' What relation do you have to myself ? ' to which the boy's prompt answer was, 'My an- cestor Confucius [whose family name was Kun] was a familiar disciple of yours, Lao-Tsze [whose family name was Li] (Confucius put many questions to Lao-Tsze, about 517 B.C., according to the 'Encyc. Brit.,' vol. xiv. p. 295), so that we both belong to families mutually known since long past genera-
tions.' None was there in the meeting who did
not call the boy a wonder. An officer named
Chin Wei came in later, and, being told the news,
remarked thereon : ' Cleverness in a man's infancy
does not guarantee his wisdom in adult age.' The
boy answered then: ' So I must judge you in your
infancy to have been particularly clever.' "
KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. 7, Effie Road, Walham Green, S.W.
OBLIVION. "My son, with how little wisdom " history is retailed ! The following strange remark occurs in Miss Ty tier's ' Six Royal Ladies of the House of Hanover ' (p. 170) with reference to George III. :
"There was many a noble English maiden who had aspirations to the crown matrimonial, and there was the fair Quaker Hannah Lightfoot, to whom, wild rumour would have it, the royal lad had made honourable proposals of marriage nay , would have married, had not George II. 's death intervened in time. Yet it was long centuries since a King of England had wedded with a subject not since Edward IV. had married Elizabeth Woodville."
A curious mistake to be made by the author of ' The Tudor Queens ' if that work take cognizance of queens consort.
ST. SWITHIN.
"GONOPH" AND " GONIVAH." The first Of
these two Yiddish words, since its use by Dickens (1857), may be said to have become English. It occurs in all the standard dic- tionaries (Ogilvie, * The Encyclopaedic,' ' The Century,' &c.), and presumably will find a place in the 'H.E.D.' The second of the two (perhaps because it did not become naturalized until a later date) has not yet found its way into any dictionary, not even into the slang dictionaries, and my principal object in writ- ing these lines is to plead for its inclusion in the * H.E.D.,' firstly, because it is derived from, and complementary to, the already well- established gonoph; secondly, because it is a technicality for which we have no synonym. Gonoph, as every one knows, means a thief; gonivah must have originally been applied to any object stolen, but at the present dayat any rate in English, as opposed to Yiddish it exclusively denotes a stolen diamond. I remember that the first time I came across it in print was in a South African novel called ' I.D.B. ; or, the Adventures of Solomon Davis,' and as it was misprinted throughout as gouiva (for goniva), I assume that it was then new to the printing-office. Since then I have met with it repeatedly in works re- lating to South Africa. The latest is ' Knaves of Diamonds,' by George Griffith (1899). In the preface to this the term is employed, as if well known, to define the mysterious abbre- viation I.D.B. (illicit diamond buyer), "one who buys gonivahs" JAMES PLATT, Jun.
