2»'« S. X<> 109., Jan. 30. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



87 



the said Mr. Foote commissioned him to communicate 

 these his iutetitions to her Grace the Duchess of Kingston. 



" ' John Fousticr. 

 " ' Sworn before me, this 18th 

 day of August, 1775, 



« ' J. FlKLDIXG.' " 



S. II. H. 



Minat §,ate!i. 



Parallel Passages between General Burgoyne 

 and Charles Dichens, — 



" ' Lady Emily. — I am preparing the cast of the lips for 

 the ensuing wnter — thus — it is to be called the Paphian 

 Mimp.' 



' Miss Alscrip {imitating). — I swear I think it pretty. 

 I must fry to get it.' 



♦ Lady Emily. — Nothing so easy. It is done by one 

 cabalistical word, like a metamorphosis in the fairy tales. 

 You have only, when before your glass, to keep pro- 

 nouncing to yourself nimini-pimini; the lips cannot fail 

 taking their plie." [Sic] — Heiress, by General Bur- 

 goyne, Act III. Sc. 2. 



According to Walpole this is the "genteelest 

 comedy" in the English language. — Now edition of 

 his Letters by Cunningham, vol. vi. 146. n. See 

 also (passim) " N. & Q." 2""^ S. iv. 105. 2.18. 231. 



" Papa — potatoes — poultry — prunes and prism are all 

 very good words for the lips; especially prunes and prism. 

 You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a de- 

 meanour, if 3'ou sometimes say to yourself in company — 

 on entering a room for instance — Papa, potatoes, poultry, 

 prunes and prism, prunes and prism." — Little Dorrit, p. 

 356. 



CHARIiES WtLIE. 



Cimex lectulurius (Punaise). — This insect, of 

 which one has naturally such abhorrence that one 

 is averse even to mention its English appellation, 

 but which now intrudes itself so generally into our 

 beds and furniture, appears three centuries and a 

 half ago to have been almost unknown, and to 

 have required the attendance of a scientific man 

 to designate what it really was, as is described in 

 the following ludicrous account of what occurred 

 at Mortlake, near London : — 



"Auno 1503, duni hasc Pennius* scriptitaret Mortla- 

 cum Tamesi adjacentem viculum, magntv festinatione ac- 

 cerscbatur ad duos nobiles, magno metu ex ciniicum ves- 

 tigiis percusses, et nescio quid contagionis valde veritos. 

 Tandem re cognita, ac bestiolis captis, risu timorem om- 

 nem cxcussit." 



(In Insectorum, sive minimorum Animalium, Theatrum, 

 of Thomas ilouffet, M. D., London, 1634, foL, p. 270.) 



/ Delta.. 



Misprints. — The other day I met in a country 

 bookseller's catalogue with a curious instance of 

 what the elision of a single letter will do. Mil- 

 ton's writings were spoken of as "the immoral 

 works of the Poet Milton ! " The printer meant 

 to say immoi-tal. 



* Who was this Dr. Penny? Was he physician to 

 Henry VII., who then resided at his palace of Kichmond, 

 a mile from Mortlake? 



Miss Yonge, in Dynevor Terrace (p. 33.), is 

 made to speak of a young lady running down 

 stairs " without stretched arms." 



Verdant Green was once represented by the 

 printer of The Sun to be " the adventures of an 

 Oxford Irishman.'^ 



CUTHBERT BeDE. 



Expeditions. — I met with a curious remark the 

 other day which it may be worth while publishing, 

 as it will show those who grumble at our failure 

 in the Crimea that failure in those expeditions is 

 generally our fate, and must, I suppose, be ac- 

 cepted as an offset against certain blessings we 

 enjoy. 



Mr. Molyneux, in a treatise published in the 

 middle of the last century, has calculated that, of 

 sixty- eight European and remote expeditions of 

 conjoint sea and land forces, attempted by Great 

 Britain since the era of Queen Elizabeth, prin- 

 cipally against France and Spain, thirty suc- 

 ceeded, the rest miscarried : that the larger 

 expeditions were comparatively worse conducted 

 and more unsuccessful than the former, and the 

 European than the Transatlantic; and out of these, 

 fifteen were against the coast of France, of which 

 but two succeeded where the land forces were 

 debarked. 



How many failures and successes might we add 

 since this was calculated ? E. F. D. C. 



Will Honeycomb : Col. Clelund. — Who can 

 throw any light upon the history of Colonel Cle- 

 land, said to be the original of Will Honeycomb 

 of llie Spectator; and, what one would hai'dly ex- 

 pect, the father of John Cleland, the author of 

 the infamous Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure f 

 Was he Pope's acquaintance, whose name he ven- 

 tui-ed to affix to the Letter which precedes The 

 Dunciad f Among the readers of " N. & Q." there 

 must be some able to clear up the mystery in 

 which this question seems to be involved. E. C. 



Afaison. — Maison, found frequently so com- 

 bined in hieroglyphical inscriptions, is literally one 

 who loves his brother. Does this support the 

 opinion held by many of the Egyptian origin of 

 Freemasonry ? J. P. 



Dominica. 



Meaning of Liane. — What Is the meaning of the 

 French word liane ? It does not occur in any dic- 

 tionary that I have seen. It must be some tree 

 or plantj as the passage where it occurs speaks of 

 a liane deracinee. F. C. H. 



" Mind you." — The late Professor J. J. Blunt 

 of Cambridge, in his lectures on " the Right Use 

 of the Early Fathers" (John Murray, 1857), uses 



