till two centuries after the alleged occurrence. MR. MOUNT's inquiry elicited no answer, and the authority for Gifford's statement has still to be discovered. In addition to the dictionaries cited by MR. MOUNT, I have turned to the recentlypublished Stanford Dictionary of Anglicized Words and Phrases,' in the hope of gaining some further information. This dictionary merely reiterates the statement of its predecessors, and adds to the Jonson citation the following lines from 'Hudibras,' part iii. canto i. (1678):—

the rebellion can be derived; without them, very little. Of personal narratives by far the most interesting is that of Charles Jackson. Jackson got early into the rebels' power, and to save his life was made by them to execute some of their prisoners, his fellow townsmen, with his own hands. He appears to have been the last man, in the last batch, on the last day, brought down to the bridge at Wexford by Dixon's orders to be piked; and was kneeling there tremblingly expecting his turn when orders came that every able-bodied rebel was wanted at Vinegar Hill. So in a dazed sort of a condition he was taken back to gaol, the safest If y' were but at a Meeting House. place for him. From gaol the next day he some- An earlier quotation might have been given how or other managed to pass safely through the from Wycherley's comedy of 'Love in a Wood,' hands of the infuriated soldiers to his wife and Act I. sc. i., in which Lady Flippant tells her children and his burnt-out home, to pick up after-estimable friend Mrs. Joyner that she is "no wards what precarious living he could as a carver and gilder in impoverished Wexford, and to W. O. WOODALL.

write his narrative. Scarborough.

Youl 'd find yourself an arrant Chouse

better than a chouse, a cheat." This play was, in all probability, first produced on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre in the spring of 1671, but may have been written some years earlier.* The word was, therefore, in vogue soon after the Restoration; but is there any evidence that it was em

P.S.-If it should so happen that any one interested in this rebellion history should care about having photographs of the places I have men-ployed at an earlier date? The Turkish incident tioned, I may state that the negatives of the photographs taken for me are (I believe) still in the possession of the photographer who took them, Mr. Andrews, 13, High Street, Wexford.

"CHOUSE."-Mr. G. A. Sala, in his "Echoes of the Week," printed in the Sunday Times of May 14, refers to an article on Americanisms which recently appeared in the Daily News, in which the writer observed that many words ordinarily supposed to be of Transatlantic coinage are not American at all. One of these words is chouse, which, according to the Daily News writer, is "perfectly good English." On this Mr. Sala remarks:

"I should say that chouse can only be considered good English in the same sense that burke, macadamize, boycott, bowdlerize, and grangerize can be held to be English. Chouse has a very curious origin, of which the writer in the Daily News does not seem to be aware. It was formerly spelled chiaus, chiauz, and chaous; various corruptions of the Turkish word for a messenger, agent, and interpreter. It happened that a Turkish commercial in London, in the reign of James I., swindled some of the merchants trading with Turkey out of large sums of money; and from the notoriety of the circumstance the word came to mean a cheat, and so gave rise to the verb to chouse. Ben Jonson mentions a chiaus in the Alchemist."

I do not feel sure that the matter is so certain as Mr. Sala assumes it to be. Some years ago ('N. & Q.,' 7th S. vi. 387) MR. C. B. MOUNT dealt with the word in a very interesting note, In which he traced its dictionary pedigree, and wound up by asking for further information regarding the history of the swindling chiaus, which so far seemed to rest upon the authority of Gifford, whose notes to Jonson's plays were not written

must have occurred in 1609, and it seems extremely improbable that a word of the "boycott" class should have lain dormant for a period of fifty or sixty years from the date of the events out of which it originated, and should then have come into common use. If the theory of Mr. Sala and the dictionary-makers is to be substantiated, I submit that it is necessary for some evidence to be produced showing that the word was employed in its modern sense between the days of Ben Jonson and those of Wycherley and Butler. Otherwise, I think it would be safer to assume that chouse is a colloquialism of English, perhaps provincial, origin, to which the freedom of the Restoration drama gave some kind of literary currency.

29, Avenue Road, N.W.

W. F. PRIDEAUX.

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.-At the commencement of Balzac's historical novel entitled 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' occurs the following remarkable passage :

"Par suite d'un caprice de Shakspeare, et peut-être fut-ce une vengeance comme celle de Beaumarchais contre Bergasse [Bergearss], Falstaff est, en Angleterre, le type du ridicule; son nom provoque le rire. C'est le roi des clowns. Au lieu d'être énormément replet, sottement amoureux, vain, ivrogne, vieux, corrupteur, Falstaff était un des personnages les plus importants de son siècle, chevalier de supérieur. A l'avénement de Henri V. au trône, Sir Fall'ordre de la Jarretière, et revêtu d'un commandement staff avait au plus trente-quatre ans. Ce général qui se signala pendant la bataille d'Azincourt et y fit prison

* Wycherley uses the same expression in his 'Gentlechouse, a cheat" are put into the mouth of Mrs. Caution. man Dancing - Master,' III. i., where the words "a This play was first printed in 1673, but was probably produced a year or two earlier.

nier le Duc d'Alençon, prit en 1420 Montereau, qui fut vigoureusement défendu. Enfin, sous Henri VI., il battit dix mille Français avec quinze cents soldats fatigués et mourants de faim! Voilà pour la guerre."

I have searched all the books within my reach that seemed likely to throw any light upon this subject, but to very little effect. I may, however, mention that in Chambers's 'Book of Days' (vol. ii. p. 551) the following name is included in the obituary for November 6: "Died, Sir John Falstaff, English knight, 1460, Norwich "; and on referring to the 'Imperial Gazetteer,' under the heading of "Norwich," I find the following notice: "Two curious old mansions are Fastolf's Place, or Falstaff's Palace, built before 1459 by Fastolf of Caistor." Probably some of the learned correspondents of N. & Q.' may be able to throw some additional light upon this subject, and even to disprove the assertions of Balzac, which, as they stand in the above extract, would appear to charge Shakespeare as having been guilty, not only of bad taste, but also of spiteful and long-continued defamation of character. G. MARSON.

Southport.

CORNISH OR CHINESE?-In a recent issue of the Launceston Weekly News is an account of the success of one of its townsmen who has settled in Queensland, which contains the following curious passage:

"Mr. Ching is never tired of declaring his birthplace, and in all his advertisements, &c., he puts after his name, From Launceston, Cornwall, England.' This is, no doubt, in order to prevent his suffering from the antiMongolian prejudices which exist in Australia. name has rather a Chinese ring, and he asks his agents to take notice and to make the fact known that he hails not from the Flowery Land, but from the 'good old town of Launceston, Cornwall.'

His

the gentleman in question, is the son of a former It may be noted that Mr. John Lionel Ching, Mayor of Launceston, the grandson of another of of John Ching, of Launceston and Cheapside, the borough's chief magistrates, and great-grandson whose worm lozenges were famous among our forefathers. On these lozenges "Peter Pindar" wrote a squib, called The First Book of Ch―gs,' wherein were described the wonderful effects of the medicine on the king and on his courtiers, on his captains over fifties and on his captains over hundreds." DUNHEVED.

66

TENNYSONIANA: THE MANUSCRIPT OF 'POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS,' 1827.-A record of the sale of this precious little work should be given in N. & Q.' It was sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge on Friday, Dec. 23, 1892, and was bought by Mr. R. Bowes for Messrs. Macmillan & Bowes, of Cambridge, for the sum of 4807. This included the receipt given to Messrs. Jackson for 20%., the amount agreed upon for the copyright of the volume and a copy of the printed book. In offering this manuscript for sale, Messrs. Macmillan & Bowes described it as follows:

"The original autograph manuscript, consisting of (1) A volume of 76 leaves, originally bound in brown sheepof the boards of the volume covered with writing. (3) skin but taken to pieces to print from. (2) The inside Five poems in continuation of the volume with a leaf of corrections: in all 12 leaves. (With rough pen sketches Tis sweet to lead from stage to stage 1' 2 leaves. (5) at the back of 3 of these.) (4) Introductory Poem, A letter, without date, 4 closely written pages, containing a list of 100 poems in the MS. volume that are to form the printed volume, and some remarks on the amount to be paid for the copyright. (6) The introduction, dated March, 1827, 1 leaf. (7) A letter, without date, objecting to the initials C. & A. T. being put at the end of the introduction, with list of errata on the (4) and concluding on p. 2: The C. & A. T. did not reverse, 1 leaf. (8) A letter, without date, attached to form part of our agreement. You, of course, added it inadvertently!""

The whole as described, 420l. The receipt for the copyright and the printed volume were not offered for sale. A short description gave the result of a minute examination of the MS., and the authorship of most of the poems identified. The result is given in the new edition of the work just issued:

volume and find that there is hardly a poem that has not "We have also compared the MS. with the printed been altered, while in the case of some of the poems the variations between the MS. and the printed volnme are

numerous.

Endeavours were made to keep the manuscript in England, but without success, and it has gone to America. Publisher's Weekly it is in the possession of Dodd, According to a late number of the Meath & Co., of Boston. It would be well to know from an American correspondent where the manuscript is finally deposited. G. J. GRAY. Cambridge.

MAY-DAY.-It may interest some readers of is a woman, with right arm completely bare and 'N. & Q.' to know that it is still common in parts hanging down. In the hand is an instrument, the of Shropshire-notably in the neighbourhood of top portion only seen, having the appearance of the Shrewsbury, Wellington, and the Weald Moors- top part of a poker. The one white garment, for the children to honour May-day by coming partially covering the upper portion of the perround to the houses with posies of the glittering son, hangs supported by the left shoulder. The flowers of cattha-marsh-marygold, as it is wrongly named-and which just now in marish places is burning on the moors "like a thing dipped in sunshine." Shropshire boys and girls call them May-flowers," and great bunches of them may be seen suspended on cottage doors on the morning of May-day.

Query, Are not these flowers Shakespeare's "Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue"? Elsewhere he speaks of the "crow-foot," the old name of buttercup, and still used by botanists as the tribal name of the Ranunculaceae. His song is of the cuckoo, with whose coming the cattha has always been associated. Linneus tells us that in Sweden the wood-anemone blows on the arrival of the swallow, and the marsh-marygold, cattha, when the cuckoo sings, and the same coincidence has been observed in England.

C. A. WHITE.

FALSE DICE.-The following passage explains the various methods of cheating at dice in the Elizabethan era so well, that I transcribe it in full, for the benefit of commentators on old plays, &c.: "What false dise use they? as dise stopped up with quicksilver and heares, dise of a vauntage, flattes, gourdes to chop and chaunge whan they lyste, to lette the trew dise fall under the table, and so take up the false, and if they be true dise, what shyfte wil they make to set ye one of them with slyding, with cogging, with foysting, with coytinge as they call it."-Ascham's Toxophilus,' 1545, fol. 20.

New York.

Queries.

J. E. SPINGARN.

We must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the

answers may be addressed to them direct.

lower garments are dark, and fastened tightly round the waist. The face, like those of the others, is turned towards the right, but looking round on the beholder with a leering smile, awaking the thought that she is the cause of the old man's pain and is enjoying the contemplation of it. The books and the woman's arm are beautifully painted. The canvas measures forty-nine by thirty-seven inches. Can any one say what is the subject? Jacques, or Jacob, Jordeans (1594–1678), born'in Antwerp, was son-in-law to Adam van Oort, under whom he studied; he also received instruction from Rubens. D. MACPHAIL.

Johnstone.

"FIMBLE."-I find this word in dictionaries as

designating a kind of hemp, But in the accountbooks preserved at Althorp the word occurs in a totally different sense. In the year 1597 there is a payment of eightpence "to Lammey for a hoke and fimble for Great Norrells gate, the other being stolen." Is fimble still in use in Northamptonshire; and is it noticed in any dialect glossary? Many interesting extracts from the Althorp household books are to be found in the Appendix to Mr. Simpkinson's tale 'The Washingtons,' published in 1860. JAYDEE.

SIR THOMAS ROBINSON, BART., and his sister are described by Dr. Busby, the famous head master of Westminster School, in a codicil to his will, as his "only near relations now living."__ According to Burke's 'Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies,' Sir Thomas Robinson succeeded as third baronet on June 6, 1684, and died without issue on April 21, 1743. His sister appears to have married further particulars of them, and to know in what Sir Comport Fitch. I shall be glad to have relationship they stood to Dr. Busby, and whether there are any descendants of Lady Fitch in existG. F. R. B. ence.

Any

R. H. S.

PICTURE BY JACQUES JORDAENS.-There is a painting by Jacques Jordaens, the title of which I should be pleased to know. Three figures are AUSTRIAN FLAG AT ACRE.-Can any reader of depicted, one that of an old man seated at a 'N. & Q.'inform me where I can find an authentic table on which are open books which he has been copy of the Austrian flag which Richard I. is said reading, and a few closed, having clasps. His left to have thrown into the ditch at Acre ? hand supports his head, which is turned up, show-reference will be acceptable. ing the face marked with an expression of deep sorrow or great pain. His right hand clutches the lapel of his purple robe. The second figure is also that of an old man, but younger than the other. His right hand is laid on the right arm of the other, and his face, very pale, is bent towards him with a look of deep compassion, as, standing behind him, he seeks to administer consolation. Both of these wear full beards. The third figure

BRIGADIER-GENERAL W. PHILIPPS.-I write tc ask whether you can throw any light on a distinguished officer of the Royal Artillery, who fought at the celebrated siege of Boston, and died a very few years afterwards of fever in Virginia in 1776. I refer to Brigadier-General William Philipps. I want to know-1. What family of English Philippses he belonged to. 2. Whether it is true that his

wife Mary and daughter Louisa, aged about ten J. H. MORTIMER: SHAKSPEARE CHARACTERS. years, were with him at the siege of Boston. 3.-How many of these did he design and engrave? Whether his greatest friend was not Major Small, I know of twelve, and what appears to be a titlewho distinguished himself greatly at the Battle of page (undated) with lettering "Nature and Bunker's Hill. Genius," introducing Garrick to the Temple of Shakespear; the other twelve are dated May 20, 1775. The size is 16 in. by 13 in. GEO. CLULOW.