438 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 132. 



My friend and I did join for a cellar full of wine, 



We drank the vintner out of door, 

 We drank it ev'ry drop, one morning at the tap, 



And we greedily star'd about for more. 



My friend then to me made this motion, 



Don't let's part thus with dry lips ; 

 With that we sail'd upon the ocean, 



Where we met with a fleet of ships ; 

 All laden with wine whicli was superfine, 



The merchants they had ten thousand tun, 

 W^e drank it all at sea, before they reach'd the quay. 



And the merchants swore they were all undone. 

 My friend not having quench'd his thirst, 



Said, to the vineyard let us haste ; 

 There we seized the canary first. 



That yielded to us but a taste : 

 From thence unto the Rhine, where we drank up 

 all their wine ; 



Till Bacchus cried "Hold, hold! 'ere I die! " 

 He swore he never found, in the universe around, 



Two such thirsty souls as my friend and I. 



" Pooh ! " says one, " what a beast he makes himself. 



He can neither stand nor go ! " 

 •' Sir," said I, " that's a grand mistake of yours, 



For when did you ever know a beast drink so ? 

 'Tis when we drink the least, we drink the most 

 like beasts ; 



'Tis when we carouse with six in hand ; 

 'Tis then and only then, we drink about like men, 



When we drink 'till we neither can go nor stand." 



J. R. R. 



Boston and Bunkers Hill. — In the plan of Bos- 

 ton, among the maps of the Useful Knowledge 

 Society, is to be found, near Charleston, and 

 on Breed's Hill (the real site of the battle usually 

 misnamed as of Bunker's Hill), the following 

 notice, " Defeat of tiie British, 1775." My first 

 idea was, that. Liberal though the Society rai<Tht 

 be, it was being rather too liberal to give away in 

 this manner a victory which, however bloody and 

 fruitless, was indubitably ours : but, on second 

 thoughts, it seemed that the whole fault arose from 

 copying too implicitly an American map. Now I 

 am well aware that a very large part of the Ameri- 

 cans, from continually vaunting (and with good 

 reason) the valour they displayed, and the honour 

 they acquired, on that occasion, have gradually 

 worked themselves into the belief that they were 

 the victors, even though their own historians tell a 

 different tale ; and they have even placed inscrip- 

 tions on the monuments standing on the site of the 

 intrenchments from which they were forced by the 

 British; which inscriptions also assert a similar 

 clairn. This would be of no great consequence 

 had it been confined to themselves ; but its beinw 

 transferred to an English publication not only 



tends to mislead many persons on this side, but 

 enables the Americans to refer with confidence to 

 it, as an admission of their victory on the part of 

 the British ; and no one who remembers the use 

 they made, on the Oregon Question, of a similarly 

 occasioned error in one of the Society's globes, can 

 doubt that our Transatlantic friends would make 

 the most of this trifling afl'air in confirmation of 

 their claims to the victory. J, S. Warden. 



Snooks. — This name, so generally associated 

 with vulgarity, is only a corruption, or rather a 

 contraction, of the more dignified name of Seven- 

 oaks. This town is generally called Se'noaks in 

 Kent ; and the further contraction, coupled with 

 the phonetic spelling of former days, easily passed 

 into S'nooks. This is no imaginary conclusion, for- 

 I am told by a trustworthy friend that Messrs- 

 Sharp and Harrison, solicitors, Southampton, 

 have recently had in their possession a series of 

 deeds in which all the modes of spelling occur 

 from Sevenokes down to STnokes, in connexion with 

 a family now known as Snooks. G. W. J. 



Last Slave sold in England. — Can any of your 

 correspondents tell me the date of the last public 

 slave sale in England ? Till the establishment of" 

 Granville Sharpe's great principle, in 1772, an- 

 nouncements of these are by no means uncommon. 

 The following, from the Public Ledger of Dec. 31^ 

 1761, grates harshly upon the feelings of the pre- 

 sent generation : — 



" FOR SALE : 



« A healthy nogro girl, aged about fifteen years ; speaks 

 good English, works at her needle, washes well, does 

 household work, and has had the small-pox." 



Saxonicus. 



Hoax on Sir Walter Scott. — The following pas- 

 sage occurs in one of Sir W. Scott's letters to 

 Southey, written in September, 1810 : 



" A witty rogue, the other day, who sent me a letter 

 subscribed ' Detector,' proved me guilty of stealing a 

 passage from one of Vida's Latin poems, which I had 

 never seen or heard of; yet there was so strong a 

 general resemblance as fairly to authorise ' Detector's' 

 suspicion." 



Lockhart remarks thereupon : 

 " The lines of Vida which ' Detector ' had enclosed 

 to Scott, as the obvious original of the address to- 

 ' Woman ' in Marmion, closing with — 



' When pain and anguish wring the brow, 

 A ministering angel thou ! ' 

 end as follows : and it must be owned that If Vida had 

 really written them, a more extraordinary example o€ 

 casual coincidence could never have been pointed out.. 

 ' Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, 

 Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.' 



" ' Detector's ' reference is Vida ad Eranen, El. ii. 

 V, 21.; but it is almost needless to add there are no 

 such lines, and no piece bearing such a title m Vida's 



