134 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. N« 85,, Auo. 15. '57. 



opinion between two competent judges. The 

 present writer cannot reach any other conclusion. 

 Every rightful claimant to be recorded, from an- 

 cient and modern times, might find himself within 

 Gorton's (the best book as a ground-work after 

 all objections) three volumes, expanded to some 

 little more than a thousand pages. Three volumes 

 are named as being the form of the edition of 

 1833, of about twenty-four hundred pages in the 

 aggregate. The present writer cannot bring him- 

 self to refer at all to the more recent issue of 1850, 

 where, the three volumes attenuated into four, 

 cannot disguise that the entire new matter is but 

 small, whether looked at in the quantity or qua- 

 lity. Had Arthur Hussey read, not a single 

 sentence, but the preceding portion of Harvar- 

 DiENSis's article, and noted its numerical items, it 

 might have prompted some doubt whether the 

 latter, in his talk upon this subject, had not chart 

 and compass for his guide. When he by and bye 

 sees, what has been seen among us for six weeks 

 or more, the "third" edition of the American 

 Biographical Dictionary (by Wm. Allen), which 

 began in 1809 with 900 names, re-appeared in 

 1832 with 1950, and now professes (aye, boasts) to 

 contain nearly 7000, he will then think, no doubt, 

 that his grand image of " bridging over the At- 

 lantic," was parted with too easily, and ought by 

 all means to have been kept in reserve till now. 

 It is the suggestion of some that this work, having 

 got forward so far, should have " gone on to per- 

 fection ; " which means, of course, universality. 

 But, as the captive Mustapha is made to say, in 

 the pleasant satirical papers of Salmagundi, just 

 half a century ago : " Upon what a prodigious 

 great scale is everything done in this country !" 



One parting word upon Rose's Dictionary, trust- 

 ing that it will not entice me into the semblance 

 of a review. Its radical misfortune seems to have 

 been, that its progress having been interrupted 

 midway by death, it fell into less earnest hands, 

 and was completed with an haste that was all un- 

 just to the latter half of the alphabet. Two pre- 

 ceding works of the kind, it is curious to observe, 

 have, in like manner, tapered away with ominous 

 swiftness as they tended to their end, — to wit, 

 that of Tooke & Co. (1798), of fifteen volumes 

 Bvo, ; and that, whose date must have been nearly 

 coincident with Gorton's (3 vols, 8vo.), passing 

 under the impenetrable cognomen of William k 

 Becket. This last collector, for example, affords 

 us but three Smiths, instead of fifteen times that 

 number. There is no other or equal resource 

 with those for the more modern names, except in- 

 deed Maunder ; though one is posed exceedingly 

 to discover how some special celebrities whose 

 death-date is found far behind the date of the 

 original work (1841), have been ingenious enough 

 to secure themselves places in it, as under 1842 

 and 1844, and, later than all (1845), Sydney 



Smith ; while many persons as notable within the 

 six or eight previous years are vainly sought for. 

 But without reference to period, the list of omis- 

 sions by Rose, and that too of names found almost 

 everywhere else, is certainly singular. The faulty 

 cause of much of this would seem to be the de- 

 pending for its supply so much upon the French 

 Dictionary ; a book praised without measure, and, 

 as must be feared, by very many through whose 

 mouths praise passes by rote. * Haevardiensis. 



UNDERGRADUATES, NOT ESQUIRES. 



(2°'^ S. iv. 69.) 



J. M. B. says : " There are, perhaps, few who 

 know that undergraduates at the Universities are 

 entitled to bear esquire affixed to their names," 



I hope there are very many who well know the 

 contrary. So far from its being the case that an 

 undergraduate (as such) is an esquire, I beg to 

 inform J. M. B. that it is not until a University 

 man has taken his M.A. degree that he becomes 

 entitled to the inferior rank of gentleman. The 

 only academic degree which corresponds with 

 esquireship in point of dignity is that of Doctor. 



Sir John Feme's Blazon of Gentry is my au- 

 thority for this assertion. The lowest and last in 

 the scale of gentlemen is, "he that hauing re- 

 ceaued any degree of Schooles, or borne any office 

 in a City : so that by statutes of the one, or the 

 custome in the other, he is saluted Master^'' 

 {Blazon of Gentrie, 1586, p. 90,) A pretty anti- 

 climax this : Undergraduate = Esquire, Master of 

 Arts = Gentleman ! 



Of course, the majority of undergraduates are 

 gentlemen, as the old heraldrists would term it, 

 "of blood and of coat-armour;" all should be 

 gentlemen in the modern conventional sense of 

 the word ; but no one not possessing the quali- 

 fication referred to can claim that honourable 

 distinction, according to the laws of heraldry, 

 until such time as he has proceeded M.A. 



Mark Antoni Lower. 

 Lewes. 



The remark of J. M. B., that undergraduates 

 are entitled to have esquire affixed to their names, 

 astonished me ; but, on looking to Custance on the 



* Whenever a true reform is made in Biographical 

 Dictionaries, one of the first steps towards it will be the 

 curtailment of royal articles, and articles upon those who 

 are of the blood-royal. Death, which has brought them 

 to the common level, would seem to leave to them in these 

 pages all their former ascendancy. There are few ex- 

 amples of this, where it is not to be resolved into the 

 compiler's making himself the historiographer of the reign, 

 instead of giving, with severe precision, the personal life. 

 Almost every article of the kind in Gorton, upon British 

 princes especially, will bear material reduction. 



