Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853

Ellis Walker (Vol. vii., p. 382.).—

"Ellis Walker, D.D.," according to Ware, "was born in the city of York; but came young into Ireland, and was educated in the college of Dublin, where he passed through all his degrees. He fled from thence in the troublesome reign of King James II., and lived with an uncle at York, where he translated Epictetus into verse. After the settlement of Ireland he returned, and for seven years employed himself with great reputation in teaching a public school at Drogheda, where he died on the 17th April, 1701, in the fortieth year of his age; and was buried there in St. Peter's Church, and twenty years after had a monument erected to his memory by one of his scholars."

    Tyro.

Dublin.

Blackguard (Vol. vii., pp. 77. 273.).—I am not aware that the following extract from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy has ever yet been quoted under this heading. Would it not be worth the while to add it to the extract from Hobbes's Microcosmos, quoted by Jarltzberg, Vol. ii., p. 134. and again, by Sir J. Emerson Tennent at Vol. vii., p. 78.:

"The same author, Cardan, in his Hyperchen, out of the doctrine of the Stoicks, will have some of these genii (for so he calls them) to be desirous of men's company, very affable and familiar with them, as dogs are; others again, to abhor as serpents, and care not for them. The same, belike, Trithemius calls igneos et sublunares, qui numquam demergunt ad inferiora, aut vix ullum habent in terris commercium: generally they far excel men in worth, as a man the meanest worm; though some there are inferiour to those of their own rank in worth, as the black guard in a princes court, and to men again, as some degenerate, base, rational creatures are excelled of brute beasts."—Anat. of Mel., Part I. sec. 2. Mem. 1. subs. 2. [Blake, 1836, p. 118.]

    C. Forbes.

Temple.

In looking over the second volume of "N. & Q.," I find the use of the word blackguard is referred to, and passages illustrative of its meaning are given from the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Hobbes, Butler, &c. To these may be added the following fanciful use of the word, which occurs in the poems of Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset; the author of the well-known naval song "To all you Ladies now at Land:"

"Love is all gentleness, all joy,
Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace.
Her [Belinda's] Cupid is a blackguard boy,
That rubs his link full in your face."

    Cuthbert Bede, B.A.
Talleyrand (Vol. vi., p. 575.).—Talleyrand's maxim is in Young. I regret that I cannot give the reference.

    Z. E. R.

Lord King and Sclater (Vol. v., pp. 456. 518.).—By Sclater's answer, "as I am informed, the Lord Chancellor King was himself fully convinced."—Zach. Grey's Review of Neal, p. 67., edit. 1744.

"Beware the Cat" (Vol. v., p. 319.).-The "dignitary of Cambridge" was probably Dr. Thackeray, provost of King's, who bequeathed all his black-letter books to the college. Perhaps Beware the Cat may be among them.

    Z. E. R.

"Bis dat qui cito dat" (Vol. vi., p. 376.).—The following Greek is either in the Anthologia, or in Joshua Barnes:

"ὠκεῖαι χάριτος γλυκερώτεραι, ἢν δὲ βραδυνῇ πᾶσα χάρις φθινύθει, μηδὲ λέγοιτο χαρις."

"Gratia ab officio quod mora tardat, abest."

    Z. E. R.

High Spirits a Presage of Evil.—The Note of your correspondent Cuthbert Bede (Vol. vii., p. 339.) upon this very interesting point recalls to my recollection a line or two in Gilfillan's First Gallery of Literary Portraits, p. 71., which bears directly upon it. Speaking of the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the author says, "During all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant spirits, to him a sure prognostic of coming evil." I may add, that I have been on terms of intimacy with various persons who entertained a dread of finding themselves in good spirits, from a strong conviction that some calamity would be sure to befall them. This is a curious psychological question, worthy of attention.

    W. Sawyer.

Brighton.

Colonel Thomas Walcot (Vol. vii., p. 382.) married Jane, the second daughter of James Purcel of Craugh, co. Limerick, and had by her six sons and two daughters: John, the eldest, who married Sarah Wright of Holt, in Denbighshire; Thomas, Ludlow, and Joseph, which last three died unmarried; Edward (who died an infant); William (of whom I have no present trace); Catherine and Bridget. The latter married, first, Mr. Cox of Waterford, and second, Robert Allen of Garranmore, co. Tipperary. John, the eldest son, administered to his father, and possessed himself of his estates and effects. I think his son was a John Minchin Walcot, who represented Askeaton in Parliament in 1751, died in London in 1753, and was buried in St. Margaret's churchyard. Two years after his death his eldest daughter married William Cecil Pery, of the line of Viscount Pery, and had by him Edmund Henry Pery, member of parliament for Limerick in 1786. A William Walcot was on the Irish establishment appointed a major in the 5th Regiment of Foot in 1769, but I cannot just now say whether, or how, he was related to Colonel Thomas Walcot.

    John D'Alton.

Dublin.

Wood of the Cross: Mistletoe (Vol. vii., p. 437.).—Was S. S. S.'s farmer a native of an eastern county? If he came from any part where Scandinavian traditions may be supposed to have prevailed, there may be some connexion between the myth, that the mistletoe furnished the wood for the cross, and that which represents it as forming the arrow with which Hödur, at the instigation of Lok, the spirit of evil, killed Baldyr. I have met with a tradition in German, that the aspen tree supplied the wood for the cross, and hence shuddered ever after at the recollection of its guilt.

    T. H. L.

The tradition to which I have been always accustomed is, that the aspen was the tree of which the cross was formed, and that its tremulous and quivering motion proceeded from its consciousness of the awful use to which it had once been put.

    W. Fraser.

Tor-Mohun.

Irish Office for Prisoners (Vol. vii, p 410.).—The best reference for English readers is to Bishop Mant's edition of the Prayer-Book, in which this office is included.

    J. C. R.

Andries de Græff: Portraits at Brickwall House (Vol. vii, p. 406.).—"Andries de Græff. Obiit lxxiii., MDCLXXIV." Was this gentleman related to, or the father of, Regulus de Græf, a celebrated physician and anatomist, born in July, 1641, at Scomharen, a town in Holland, where his father was the first architect? Regulus de Græf married in 1672, and died in 1673, at the early age of thirty-two. He published several works, chiefly De Organis Generationis, &c. (See Hutchinson's Biographia Medica; and, for a complete list of his works, Lindonius Renovatus, p. 933.: Nuremberg, 1686, 4to.)

    S. S. S.

Bath.

"Qui facit per alium, facit per se" (Vol. vii., p. 382.).—This is one of the most ordinary maxims or "brocards" of the common law of Scotland, and implies that the employer is responsible for the acts of his servant or agent, done on his employment. Beyond doubt it is borrowed from the civil law, and though I cannot find it in the title of the digest, De Diversis Regulis Juris Antiqui (lib. 1. tit. 17.), I am sure it will be traced either to the "Corpus Juris," or to one of the commentators thereupon.

    W. H. M.

Christian Names (Vol. vii., p. 406.).—When Lord Coke says "a man cannot have two names of baptism, as he may have divers surnames," he does not mean that a man may not have two or more Christian names given to him at the font, but that, while he may have "divers surnames at divers times," he may not have divers Christian names at divers times.

When a man changes his Christian name, he alters his legal identity. The surname, however, is assumable at pleasure. The use of surnames came into England, according to Camden, about the time of the Conquest, but they were not in general use till long after that. Many branches of families used to substitute the names of their estate or residence for their patronymic, which often makes the tracing of genealogies a difficult matter. It was not till the middle of the fourteenth century that surnames began to descend from father to son, and a reference to any old document of the time will show how arbitrarily such names were assumed.

A surname, in short, may be called a matter of convenience; a Christian name, a matter of necessity. The giving two Christian names at baptism did not come generally into use till, owing to the multiplication of the patronymic, a single Christian name became insufficient to identify the individual. Consequently an instance of a double Christian name, previous to the commencement of the eighteenth century, is a rarity. The fifth and sixth earls of Northumberland bore the names of Henry-Algernon Percy. The latter died in 1537.

As to the period at which Christian names were assumed as surnames, your correspondent Ericas is referred to Lower's English Surnames.

    H. C. K.

—– Rectory, Hereford.

Your correspondent Erica will not, I think, find an instance in this country of a person having more than one Christian name before the last century. Charles James Fox and William Wyndham Grenville are the two earliest instances I can find. It is trivial but curious to observe, that in the lists given at the beginning of the Oxford Calendar of the heads of colleges and halls from their several foundations, the first who appears with two Christian names is the venerable president of Magdalene College. Antony Ashley Cooper is only a seeming exception; his surname was Ashley-Cooper, as is proved by his contributing the letter a to the word cabal, the nickname of the ministry of which he formed a part. We find the custom common enough in Germany at the time of the Reformation, and still earlier in Italy. I apprehend that its origin is really in the tria nomina of Roman freemen. It was introduced into this country through our royal family, but I am not aware of any prince who had the benefit of it before Charles James.

I apprehend the passage which Erica quotes from Lord Coke has not the significance which he attributes to it. A man can have but one Christian or baptismal name, of however many single names or words that baptismal name may be composed. I have spoken in this letter of two Christian names, in order to be more intelligible at the expense of correctness.

    J. J. H.

Temple.

Lamech's War-song (Vol. vii., p. 432.).—There have been many speculations about the origin and meaning of these lines. I agree with Ewald in Die Poetischen Bücher des Alten Bundes, vol. i., who calls it a "sword-song;" and I imagine it might have been preserved by tradition among the Canaanitish nations, and so quoted by Moses as familiar to the Israelites. I should translate it—