220 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 255.. 



voted himself to his people as a father for the life 

 and happiness of his children." 



Above the superscription is this second post- 

 script : 



"I consider the Bourbons, who have endea- 

 voured to overwhelm France with foreigners, as of 

 all beings the most umvorthy to reign there." 



Over the address outside the letter is the fol- 

 lowing third addition : 



*' The papers cannot tell greater lies than they 

 did about the whole progress of the Emperor Na- 

 poleon from the Gulph of St. Juan to Paris and 

 the throne." 



I have no doubt that the letter which called 

 forth this fervid reply contained some exultations 

 upon the fall of Napoleon, as it is addressed to a 

 member of a high Tory family ; principles which 

 it is well known Capel Lofft uniformly and ar- 

 dently opposed. NoKBis Deck. 



Cambridge. 



THE BRAKE AND THE DOGGER. 



Looking over Sir Thomas Smith's treatise De 

 Republicd Anglicand lately, I came upon a pas- 

 sage of which I thought it worth while to " make a 

 note " as offering a derivation for the names of a 

 celebrated Admiral, and a species of Ship, which 

 I had not before seen, and on which I should be 

 glad to have the opinion of some competent cor- 

 respondent of " N. & Q." 



Sir Francis Drake, the celebrated admiral of 

 Queen Elizabeth's time, is set down in ordinary 

 biographies as of Devonshire by birth. Sir 

 Thomas Smith, his cotemporary, however, afBrms 

 him to have been a fisherman's son of the Isle of 

 Wight, so obscure as to have to make a name as 

 well as a reputation for himself. The passage 

 proceeds thus : 



"Braconis nomea ipse sibi sumpsit quod est serpentuni 

 qnoddam genus, unde Dunkercani insignem navem in- 

 struxerunt, Doggam (id est Canem) a se appellatam, innu- 

 entes ea se Draconem hunc venaturos et forte captures." 



From this passage it appears that Sir Francis 

 Drake claimed more affinity with the kraken than 

 with the aquatic fowl to which his name at first 

 sight would indicate relationship, and that the first 

 invention of the Dogger vessel was owing to the 

 desire of the Dunkirkers to capture this Sea Ser- 

 pent. On looking into Johnson I find that he de- 

 rives "Dogger" from "Dog," as a diminutive, 

 contemptible kind of vessel, referring to Skinner as 

 his authority. Turning to Skinner, however, I 

 find that he assigns among the reasons for the 

 name one more in accordance with Smith's account, 

 for he says this kind of vessel " instar canis vena- 

 tici valde celer est" To me the chief difficulty is 

 why the Dunkirkers should call this vessel by a 



name derived from the Anglo-Saxon — as Dogger 

 would seem to be. Perhaps some reader of 

 "N. & Q." would oblige with his views on the 

 point. 



The Dogger has long been considered a Dutch 

 appellation for a ship; and until I met the passage 

 in Smith, I had always taken the name for a Dutch 

 word. A. B. R. 



Belmont. 



BIOGRAPHIES OF LIVING AUTHORS. 



It would be well if lists of these dictionaries 

 were preserved. I only possess two : Literary 

 Memoirs of Living Authors of Great Britain, 

 London, 1798, 2 vols. 8vo. (Faulder) ; and A Bio- 

 graphical Dictionary of the Living Authors of 

 Oreat Britain and Ireland, London, 1816, 8vo, 

 (H. Colburn). I find in both these works truths 

 and falsehoods which I do not find elsewhere. The 

 first contains some fine writing : thus it is said of 

 a heterodox medical practitioner that his " ma- 

 chinations are gulphs to the current of life." 

 D'Israeli (now a classic in his way) is a " mighty 

 authorling:" and of Samuel Johnson there is a 

 dictum which is worth quoting at length : 



"More injury, we will venture to affirm, has been done 

 to the fame of Johnson by this lady [Thrale] and her 

 late biographical helpmate [Boswell], than his most 

 avowed enemies have ever been able to effect ; and if his 

 character becomes unpopular with some of his successors, 

 it is to these gossiping friends he is indebted for the 

 favour." 



The second work is much more extensive and 

 accurate. But some of its notes are now queries. 

 Did Brinkley (late Bishop of Cloyne), when a 

 young man, assist Puley in his Natural Theology f 

 Did the Dean of Peterborough (Kipling) publicly 

 threaten Dr. Lingard with prosecution, for affirm- 

 ing that the Church of England is a new church ? 

 Did Napoleon I. forbid the translation of every 

 literary work in which his name was not men- 

 tioned ? Was a chaplain of the Lock Hospital 

 removed for public advocacy of polygamy ? Did 

 the lady, who afterwards insisted on being a mem- 

 ber of the royal family (and whom the newspapers 

 used to call the Princess Olive of Cumberland), 

 begin her career by trying to prove that her 

 uncle, a quiet country clergyman, was Junius ? 

 The editor of this book is of opinion that a public 

 man is not the author of the book in which his 

 speeches are collected, if those speeches were 

 extempore : whence arises the query. Who is ? 



M. 



ORKNEY CHARMS. 



Toothache is by the country people called " The 

 worm," from a notion they have that this painful 

 affection is caused by a worm in the tooth or jaw- 



