222 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 282. 



authors should have been so far chary of their 

 words as to abstain from confiding to the pub- 

 lic so very uninteresting a portion of their history 

 as the fact that they were sea-sick, is no great 

 matter of surprise. We should not, for example, 

 expect to find such a record in Ccesars Com- 

 mentaries ; and much less in any of the historians 

 who wrote the annals of nations, and not of them- 

 selves. But I confess the above statement startled 

 me ; for, unless I am mistaken, there is just about 

 as much allusion, if not more, to this malady in 

 the standard authors of ancient as of modern 

 times. 



The very derivation of the words nausea, and 

 nauseo, proves at any rate the existence of the evil ; 

 for surely the etymologists do not err in tracing it 

 to vavs, a ship ; just as our own sickly and sicken 

 probably come to us (though I admit this conjec- 

 ture to be somewhat more hazardous) through 

 the Anglo-Saxon verb ScBclian, from Sa, the sea. 

 But a glance at the first dictionary that comes 

 to hand at once demonstrates the error of the above 

 assertion. Thus, Cicero, Ep. Fam., Ep. xvi. 11., 

 " Festinare te nolo, ne nauseae molestiam suscipias 

 seger, et periculose hieme naviges :" and Celsus, 

 lib. i. c. 3. : " qui navigavit, et nausea pressus est :" 

 and Horace, Epist. i. i. 93. : 



" conducto navigio seque 

 Nauseat ac locuples, quem ducit priva triremis." 



I forbear from multiplying quotations, as I 

 might ad nauseam. Perhaps some of your readers 

 may be able to demolish as thoroughly the state- 

 ment with reference to the mediEeval writers. 



C. W. Bingham. 



Pope's Works : " Three Hours after Marriage." 

 — In the forthcoming and much-looked-for edi- 

 tion of Pope, it is to be hoped that the question 

 of the authorshif) of this farce will be satisfactorily 

 disposed of. Mr. Hazlitt {Lectures on Comic 

 Writers of the Last Century, No. VII.) says Pope 

 was one of its authors. Mr. Roscoe, in his edition 

 of Pope (London, 8vo., 1847), vol. i. p. 104., and 

 vol. viii. p. 43., n. 5., is clear that he had no hand 

 in it. The point should now be settled in one way 

 or the other. Sekviens. 



Extracts from an old American Paper. — One 

 hundred and eight years ago there were only 

 three papers published on the North American 

 continent ; and from one of these, the Maryland 

 Gazette, the following reminiscences have been 

 recently taken : 



" In the number of May 20, 1746, we are informed that 

 on Friday last, Hector Grant, James Homey, and Esther 

 Anderson, white servants, were executed at Chester, in 

 Kent county, pursuant to their sentence for the murder of 

 their late master. The men were hanged, and the woman 

 hu7-ried." 



" On Saturday, May 26, 1746, two men of repute fish- 

 ing off Kent Island, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the 



weather clear and calm, they saw to their great surprise, 

 at a small distance, a man about five feet high walking 

 by them on the water, as if on dry ground. He crossed 

 over from Kent Island to Talbot county, about the dis- 

 tance of four miles." 



" On Friday, June 13, 1744, at a court holden for the 

 county of Anne Arundel, three persons were arraigned 

 for drinking the Pretender's health ; and being found 

 guilty, after a fair trial, they were fined twenty pounds 

 each, and obliged to give security for their good be- 

 haviour." 



" On Tuesday, July 30, 1745, at Upper Marlborough, 

 in Prince George's county, were great rejoicings on ac- 

 count of the reduction of Gape Breton ; a handsome sub- 

 icription being raised by the gentlemen of the said county 

 for the purpose of furnishing the soldiers with provisions, 

 clothing, and other necessaries." 



w.w. 



Malta. 



Tailors more than the ^^ Ninth Parts of Men." 

 — In 1760 a journeyman tailor writes to the 

 Chester Courant in the following strain : — In the 

 reign of Queen Elizabeth the tailors petitioned 

 her Majesty that a regiment might be raised, com- 

 posed entirely of their craft, to go abroad into 

 Flanders, which petition her Majesty was gra- 

 ciously pleased to grant ; and on account of their 

 readiness in supporting her Majesty against her 

 enemies, she ordered that (as there never was 

 known to be a regiment of tailors before), they 

 should all be mounted upon mares. In a short 

 time the regiment was completed, and they were 

 surprisingly expeditious in perfecting themselves 

 in their exercises, and were reviewed by her 

 Majesty just before their embarkation, who ex- 

 pressed great satisfaction at the handsome ap- 

 pearance they made, and how expert they were 

 in the performance of their exercise. On their 

 arrival abroad, it was not long before they bad an 

 opportunity of greatly distinguishing themselves.- 

 They rushed on in the front of the battle, and 

 every man performed wonders ; but at last being 

 overpowered by the numbers of the enemy, they 

 were, to a man, entirely cut off. When the 

 melancholy account came to the Queen, of the 

 entire loss of her regiment of tailors, she seemed 

 greatly afflicted ; but suddenly recollecting her- 

 self, she broke out in the following ejaculation : 

 " Thank God," says she, " I have neither lost man 

 nor horse, for they were all tailors and ma7-es ! " 



T. Hughes. 



Chester. 



An Introductory Letter. — I do not recollect see- 

 ing, among the literary curiosities preserved in 

 " N. & Q.," a specimen of " a serpentine or 

 double-faced letter;" and as one such lies before 

 me in a work entitled A short Account of Scotland, 

 London, 1702, I send you a copy for insertion, if 

 not already sufficiently known. The author of 

 the book cited (said to be the Rev. Thos. Morer), 

 when visiting the college of Edinburgh, was shown 



