Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853

Query: In making preparations for the catalogue, I have been informed by a gentleman that he remembers two or more cart loads of books from this library being sold by the churchwardens, and, as he believes, by the then archdeacon's orders, at waste paper price; that the bulk of them was purchased by a bookseller then resident in Boston, and re-sold by him to a clergyman in the neighbourhood of Silsby.

1. What was the date of the sale?

2. The name of the Venerable Archdeacon who perpetrated this robbery?

3. Whether there are any legal means for recovering the missing works?

My extracts are from Thompson's History of Boston, a correspondent of yours, a new edition of whose laborious work is about to appear.

    Thomas Collis.

Boston.

Painter—Derrick (Vol. vii., pp. 178. 391.).—I cannot agree with J. S. C. that painter is a corruption of punter, from the Saxon punt, a boat. According to the construction and analogy of our language, a punter or boater would be the person who worked or managed the boat. I consider that painter—like halter and tether, derived from Gothic words signifying to hold and to tie—is a corruption of bynder, from the Saxon bynd, to bind. If the Anglo-Norman word panter, a snare for catching and holding birds, be a corruption of bynder, we are brought to the word at once. Or, indeed, we may go no farther back than panter.

J. C. G. says that derrick is an ancient British word: perhaps he will be kind enough to let us know its signification. I always understood that a derrick took its name from Derrick, the notorious executioner at Tyburn, in the early part of the seventeenth century, whose name was long a general term for hangman. In merchant ships, the derrick, for hoisting up goods, is always placed at the hatchway, close by the gallows. The derrick, however, is not a nautical appliance alone; it has been long used to raise stones at buildings; but the crane, and that excellent invention the handy-paddy, has now almost put it out of employment. What will philologists, two or three centuries hence, make out of the word handy-paddy, which is universally used by workmen to designate the powerful winch, traversing on temporary rails, employed to raise heavy weights at large buildings. For the benefit of posterity, I may say that it is very handy for the masons, and almost invariably worked by Irishmen.

As a collateral evidence to my opinion, that painter is derived from the Saxon bynder, through the Anglo-Norman panter, and that derrick is from Derrick the hangman, I may add that these words are unknown in the nautical technology of any other language.

    W. Pinkerton.

Ham.

Pepys's "Morena" (Vol. vii., p. 118.).—Mr. Warden may like to be informed that his conjecture about the meaning of this word is fully confirmed by the following passage in the Diary, 6th October, 1661, which has hitherto unaccountably escaped observation:

"There was also my pretty black girl, Mrs. Dekins and Mrs. Margaret Pen this day come to church."

    Braybrooke.

Pylades and Corinna (Vol. vii., p. 305.).—If your correspondent's question have reference to the two volumes in octavo published under this title in 1731, assuredly Defoe had nothing to do with them, as must be evident to any one on the most cursory glance. The volumes contain memoirs of Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, on whom Dryden conferred the poetical title of Corinna, and the letters which passed between her and Richard Gwinnett, her intended husband. A biography of this lady, neither whose life nor poetry were of the best, may be found in Chalmers's Biog. Dict., vol. xxix. p. 281., and a farther one in Cibber's Lives, vol. iv. The Dunciad, and her part in the publication of Pope's early correspondence, have given her an unhappy notoriety. I must say, however, that, notwithstanding his provocation, I cannot but think that he treated this poor woman ungenerously.

    James Crossley.

Judge Smith (Vol. vii., p. 463.).—I must confess my ignorance of any Judge Smith flourishing in the reign of Elizabeth. I know of only three judges of that name.

1. John Smith, a Baron of the Exchequer during the last seven years of the reign of Henry VIII. From him descended the Lords Carrington of Wotton Waven, in Warwickshire, a title which became extinct in 1705.

2. John Smith, who was also a Baron of the Exchequer in the reign of Anne. He became Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Scotland in 1708, and died in 1726. He endowed a hospital for poor widows at Frolesworth in Leicestershire.

3. Sidney Stafford Smythe, likewise a Baron of the Exchequer under George II. and III., and Chief Baron in the latter reign. He was of the same family as that of the present Viscount Strangford.

If Z. E. R. would be good enough to send a copy of the inscription on the monument in Chesterfield Church, and give some particulars of the family seated at Winston Hall, the difficulty will probably be removed.

    Edward Foss.

Grindle (Vol. vii., pp. 107. 307. 384.).—As one at least of the readers of "N. & Q." living near Grindle (Greendale is modern), allow me to say that from the little I know of the places, they appear to me "to possess no traces of those natural features which would justify the demoniacal derivation proposed by I. E." However, as my judgment may be of little worth, if "I. E. of Oxford" should ever migrate into these parts, and will favour me with a call, with credentials of being the veritable I. E. of "N. & Q.," I shall have much pleasure in assisting him to examine for himself all the local knowledge which a short walk to the spots may enable him to acquire.

    H. T. Ellacombe.

Rectory, Clyst St. George.

Simile of the Soul and the Magnetic Needle (Vol. vi., pp. 127. 207. 280. 368. 566.).—Dr. Arnold, with more religion than science, thus employs this simile:

"Men get embarrassed by the common cases of misguided conscience; but a compass may be out of order as well as a conscience, and the needle may point due south if you hold a powerful magnet in that direction. Still the compass, generally speaking, is a true and sure guide, and so is the conscience; and you can trace the deranging influence on the latter quite as surely as on the former."—Life and Correspondence, 2nd ed. p. 390.

    C. Mansfield Ingleby.

Birmingham.

English Bishops deprived by Queen Elizabeth, 1559 (Vol. vii., p. 260.).—I have endeavoured to procure some information for A. S. A. on those points which Mr. Dredge left unnoticed, but find that, after his diligent search, very little indeed is to be gleaned. Bishop Payne died in January, 1559/60 (Strype's Annals, anno 1559). Dod, in vol. i. p. 507. of his Church History, mentions a letter of Bishop Goldwell's, or, as he calls him, Godwell's, to Dr. Allen, dated anno 1581:

"This letter," he says, "seems to be written not long before Bishop Godwell's death, for I meet with no farther mention of him. Here the reader may take notice of a mistake in Dr. Heylin, who tells us he died prisoner in Wisbich Castle, which is to be understood of Bishop Watson."

Of Bishop Pate he says:

"He was alive in 1562, but how long after I do not find."—Vol. i. p. 488.

Bishop Pole, according to the same authority, died a prisoner at large about the latter end of May, 1568. Bishop Frampton died May 25, 1708 (Calamy's Own Times, vol. ii. p. 119.). I cannot ascertain the day of Bishop White's death, but he was buried, according to Evelyn (vol. iii. p. 364.), June 5, 1698.

    Tyro.

Dublin.

Borrowed Thoughts (Vol. vii., p. 203.).—The thought which Erica shows has been used by Butler and Macaulay is a grain from an often-pillaged granary; a tag of yarn from a piece of cloth used ever since its make for darning and patching; a drop of honey from a hive round which robber-bees and predatory wasps have never ceased to wander,—the Anatomy of Melancholy:

"Though there were giants of old in physic and philosophy, yet I say with Didacus Stella[3 - In Luc. 10. tom. ii.: "Pigmi gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident."—Preface, p. 8.], 'a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.' I may likely add, alter, and see farther than my predecessors; and it is no greater prejudice for me to indite after others, than for Ælianus Montaltus, that famous physician, to write De Morbis Capitis, after Jason Pratensis," &c.

The pagination (that of Tegg's edition, 1849) will not guide those who with Elia sicken at the profanity of "unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man," and know not a "sight more heartless" than the reprint of his Opus.

    Sigma.

Sunderland.

Dr. South v. Goldsmith, Talleyrand, &c. (Vol. vi., p. 575. Vol. vii., p. 311.).—One authority has been overlooked by Mr. Breen, which seems as likely as any to have given currency to the saying, viz. Dean Swift. In Gulliver's Travels (1727), Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, the hero gives the king some information respecting British ministers of state, which I apprehend in Swift's day was no exaggeration. The minister, Gulliver says, "applies his words to all uses except to the indication of his mind." It must be confessed, however, that this authority is some seven years after Dr. South.

    C. Mansfield Ingleby.

Birmingham.

Foucault's Experiment (Vol. vii., p. 330.).—The reality of the rotation, and the cause assigned to it by Foucault in his experiment, is now admitted without question by scientific men. But in measuring the amount of the motion of the pendulum, so many disturbing causes were found to be at work, that the numerical results have not been obtained as yet with exactness. The best account is, perhaps, the original one in the Comptes Rendus. Mr. Foucault has lately invented an instrument founded on a similar principle, to find the latitude of a place.

    Elsno.

Passage in "Locksley Hall" (Vol. vi., p. 272.; Vol. vii., pp. 25. 146.).—Of these three commentators neither appears to me to have hit Tennyson's meaning, though Corylus has made the nearest shot. I ought to set out by confessing that it was not originally clear to myself, but that I could not for a monument doubt, when the following explanation was suggested to me by a friend. The "curlews" themselves are the "dreary gleams:" the words are what the Latin Grammar calls "duo substantiva ejusdem rei." I take the meaning, in plain prose to be this: "The curlews are uttering their peculiar cry, as they fly over Locksley Hall, looking like (to me, the spectator) dreary gleams crossing the moorland."

I could supply A. A. D. with several examples in English, from my commonplace-book, of the "bold figure of speech not uncommon in the vivid language of Greece;" and among the rest, one from Tennyson himself, to wit:

"Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound,