392 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 130. 



spelling : lohn, lames, lane, &c. ! Besides, if it be 

 correct to put / for J in John, it must, of course, 

 be equally correct to put J for I in Isaac, and to 

 turn it into Jsaac. Indeed, if you happen in a 

 subscription list, or a letter, or anything else in- 

 tended for the press, to write in the MS. the letter 

 / (which rightly stands as the initial in that case), 

 as the initial of some person named Isaac, it is ten 

 to one but the compositor substitutes Jm its place 

 in print. I have found Sir I. Newton in my MS. 

 thus metamorphosed into Sir J. Newton in print. 

 I see in " Tlie Clergy List" more than one name 

 which ought to be /, turned into a J. Now, Sir, it 

 is folly to pretend that / and J are synonymous 

 letters, or that they express the same meaning, 

 unless we are prepared to allow Isaac to be spelt 

 with a J^ or /, according to the writer's pleasure 

 or caprice. May I, then, be permitted to ask 

 whether it is not high time for every one to write 

 I when he means I, and to write J when he means 

 Jf If compositors would always print MSS. as 

 they are written in this particular, the palpable ab- 

 surdity of putting / for J would, I am sure, soon 

 be evident to all, and soon shame people out of the 

 fashion. AVhat if U and V were treated with as 

 little ceremony as / and J? So it once was. Thus 

 T. Rogers, in his work on the Thirty-nine Articles, 

 A.D. 1586, will furnish an example. In it we read : 

 "Such is the estate principally of infants elected 

 rnto life, and salwation, and increasing in yeers." 

 But this old-fashioned mode of spelling has long 

 become obsolete: may the substitution of I for J 

 soon become the same. C. D. 



Daniel de Foe. — A son of Daniel shines in 

 Pope's Dunciad. Does the following notice refer 

 to a son of that son ? It is extracted from an 

 old Wiltshire paper : 



" On the 2 Jan. 1771, two young men, John Clark 

 and John Joseph De Foe, said to be a grandson to the 

 celebrated author of the True Born Englishman, §-c. , 



were executed at Tyburn for robbing Mr. F , the 



banker, of a watch and a trifling sum of money on the 

 highway." 



And the writer then proceeds to moralise on the 

 inequality of that code of laws, which could visit 

 with death the author of a burglary committed 

 on another man, who, by the failure of his bank, 

 had recently produced an unexampled scene of 

 distress, in the ruin of many families, and was yet 

 suffered to go scatheless. 



My next notice, which is also extracted from a 

 Wiltshire paper, is dated 1836. 



" In a street adjoining Hungerford Market, there is 

 now living, ' to fortune and to fame unknown,' the 

 great-grandson of the author of Robinson Crusoe. His 

 trade is that of a carpenter, and he is much respfcted 

 in the neighbourhood. His father, a namesake of this 

 great progenitor, was for many years a creditable 

 tradesman in the old Hungerford Market." 



Has it ever been noticed by bibliographers that 

 the History of Bohert Drury, which came out the 

 year before Robinson Crusoe, may have had an 

 equal share with Alexander Selkirk's story in 

 forming the basis of De Foe's narrative ? 



WiLTONIENSlS. 



English Surnames: BoUngbroke (Vol.v., p. 326.). 

 — During a visit to Bolingbroke, a village in 

 Lincolnshire, the birth-place of Henry IV., the 

 rapidity of the little stream, so unusual in a 

 county remarkable for the sluggishness of its 

 waters, suggested to me the probable origin of the 

 name, bowling brook ; " bowhng along," and " run- 

 ning at a bowling pace," being not uncommon 

 expressions. Here then, if we cannot meet with 

 " sermons in stones" amongst the few vestiges of 

 the castle, and in the church with its beautiful 

 decorated windows, the heads of which are so dis- 

 gracefully blocked up with plaster, we may " find 

 books in the running brooks," and learn that 

 " proud Bolingbroke" owed his appellation to this 

 insignificant babbling rivulet. C. T. 



Waistcoats worn by Women. — Now that we hear 

 no more of Bloomerism, a feeble attempt has been 

 made to introduce a spurious scion of the defunct 

 nuisance, almost as masculine, and to the full as 

 ugly. I have but little fear of its gaining ground, 

 having full confidence in the good taste of our 

 countrywomen : but it will be curious to see what 

 our ancestors of the seventeenth century thought 

 of the wearers of the aforesaid garment. Vide the 

 Glossary to Beaumont and Fletcher's Works : 



" Waistcoateers. Strumpets; a kind of waistcoat 

 was peculiar to that class of females." 



Verbum non amplius addam. 



W. J. Bernhard Smith. 



Temple. 



" Thirty Days hath September" Sfc. (Antiquity 

 of). — Professor De Morgan, in his useful List of 

 Works on Arithmetic, published in 1847, enters 

 one, under the date 1596, with the following title : 

 " The Pathway to Knoioledge, written in Dutch, 

 and translated into English by W. P., 4to." To 

 this he notes : 



" The translator gives the following verses, which 

 are now well known. 1 suspect he is the author of 

 them, having never seen them at an earlier date. Mr. 

 Halliwell, who is more likely than myself to have 

 found them if they existed very early, names no version 

 of them earlier than 1635 : — 



" ' Thirtie daies hath September, Aprill, June and 

 November, 



Febuarie eight and twentie alone, all the rest thirtie 

 and one.' " 



Now it seems to me noteworthy to be recorded 

 In your pages, that these lines, so familiar to us all 

 from childhood, appear in a more complete shape 

 in Harinson's Description of Britaine prefixed to 



