70 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 91. 



great printer has been preserved. The expense 

 necessarily attendant upon Mr. Coeney's Literary 

 Memorial appeai-s to me to be fatal to its success ; 

 for, however dear to the bibliographer, I fear but 

 little public interest is now felt in the writings of 

 Caxton. The Typographical Antiquities contain 

 copious extracts from his works ; and the biogra- 

 phies of Lewis and Knight appear to have satisfied 

 public curiosity as to his life. Beside?, a memorial 

 of this nature would be hidden in a bookcase, not 

 seen in a highway. I may add that the present 

 state of the Caxton Memorial is this : the vener- 

 able Dean of St. Paul's is anxious to be relieved 

 from the charge of the funds already subscribed, 

 and to place them in the hands of the Society of 

 Arts, if that body will receive them, and undertake 

 to promote the object of the original subscribers 

 by all the means at its command. 



Beriah Botfielk. 



MEANING OF "NERVOUS. 



(Vol. iv., p. 7.) 



Medically, the word nervous has the following 

 meanings : — 



1. Of or belonofinji to the anatomical substance 

 called nerve, e.g. the " nervous system, "nervous 

 sheaths," " nervous particles," &c. 



2. A predomination of the nervous system, when 

 it is unusually active or highly developed, which 

 is what we mean in speaking of a " nervous tem- 

 perament," " a nervous person," &c. 



3. Certain functional disorders of the nervous 

 system are so termed, and in this sense we speak 

 of "nervous people," "nervous complaints," and 

 so forth. 



4. Nervous is also used, more poetically than 

 correctly, to signify muscular, and as synonymous 

 with brawny, sinewy, &c., thus conveying an idea 

 of strength and vigour. But nerve is not muscle, 

 therefore this inaccurate use of the word, though 

 sanctioned by some good old writers, must cease. 



5. Nervous, in speaking of a part of the body, 

 signifies a part in which there are many nerves, or 

 much nervous matter, or which is endowed with 

 extra sensibility. 



These are the various ideas commonly attached 

 to the word nervous. They are too many for the 

 word to be a closely accurate one, but we must 

 take them, not make them. We can, however, 

 avoid the future inaccurate use of the term al- 

 luded to in explanation 4., and all the meta- 

 phorical derivations thereof, such as a " nervous 

 style of writing," &c., and adhere to those two 

 significations which are physiologically and pa- 

 thologically correct, and which are obviously de- 

 rivable from the several meanings and explanations 

 above enumerated, viz. — 



1. Of or belonging to the natural structure or 

 functions of nerve ; and 



2. The quality of functional disorder or weak- 

 ness of the nervous system in certain respects. 



William E. C. Nourse. 



Every one knows that Instances of catachresis 

 occur in all languages ; but I think this case may 

 be more satisfactorily explained by considering 

 that the nerves consist of two very distinct and in- 

 dependent classes of organs — nerves of sensation, 

 which conduct impressions to the sensorium ; and 

 nerves of volition, which convey the mental im- 

 pulse to the muscles. From this it necessarily 

 follows that when the former class are over-active 

 (and redundancy is decidedly the adjectival idea 

 in the word nervous), a morbid excitability of 

 temper, with a perturbable anxious state of mind, 

 are produced (making the " bad " sense of the 

 word) ; while from a similar state of the nerves of 

 volition results a powerful and vigorous system of 

 muscular action and mental energy (making the 

 " good" sense of the word). Edwin J. Jones. 



THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH S POCKET-BOOKS. 



(Vol. i., p. 198.; Vol. iv., p. 1.) 



I am anxious to acknowledge that Sir F. 

 Madden has established, beyond all doubt, the 

 facts that several manuscript books were found on 

 the Duke of Monmouth when he was captured, 

 and that the volume rescued from oblivion by 

 Dr. Anster, and now placed in the British Museum, 

 is one of these, and also in Monmouth's hand- 

 writing. I take this opportunity of saying, that I, 

 unfortunately, have not seen Dr. Anster's reply 

 to my communication ; and it is to be regretted 

 that it was not cojiied from the Diiblin University 

 Magazine into "Notes and Queries," so that 

 we (the readers of " Notes and Queries ") might 

 have had the whole subject before us. This is a 

 course which I think our kind Editor may usefully 

 adopt on similar occasions. 



Referring unsuccessfully to Lowndes' Manual 

 for an answer to Sir F. Madden's question as to 

 the date of the first edition of Welwood's Memoirs, 

 I was pleased, however, to find that my edition 

 (the sixth, published in 1718) possesses a value 

 which does not attach to previous editions, inas- 

 much as it contains " A short introduction, giving 

 an account how these memoirs came at first to be 

 writ." From this it appears that there are spu- 

 rious editions of the work, for Welwood writes : 



" I have given my bookseller leave to make a sixth 

 impression of the following memoirs ; and the rather 

 that some time ago one Baker printed more than one 

 edition of them without my knowledge, very incorrect, 

 and on bad paper." 



We may fairly assume, that the first edition 

 was published at the beginning of 1G99, for the 

 "epistle dedicatory" to King William is dated 



