86 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"0 S. VI. 135., July 31. '58. 



And soe fayre youe well. Fronie Haniptoiie Court tin; 

 eight of Novembre 1560. Youre loviuge frieiuls, 

 " K. Bacon. C. 

 E. Bedford. 

 Thomas Parry. 

 Ambrose Cave. 

 Willm Cecill." 



Ina. 

 Wells, Somerset. 



WALTER SCOTT AND THE TWO PJ-INYS. 



Can you, or any of your numerous readers, ac- 

 count for the error, not to say blunder, committed 

 by Sir Walter Scott in Waverley, the first of his 

 series of great national tales of wonder and de- 

 li<;bt? It has passed through not only all the 

 editions, but is continued in the people's edition, 

 revised and corrected by himself, with explanatory 

 notes and comments, and published by Robert 

 Cadell, Edinburgh, 1841. 



In the 12th chapter (p. 110.) of this latter edi- 

 tion, he makes the learned pedant, the grandilo- 

 quent Baron of Bradwardine, a classical scholar, 

 a law student, and a continental traveller, of 

 whose reputation as a man of books, be is as chary 

 as over the character of his "prodigious" Abel 

 Sampson, commit a gross error in the fathership 

 of one of the best known of Roman classics. 



In the Baron's Palinodia, as to "the blessed 

 Bear of Bradwardine," and its prenocturnal effects, 

 the bookful Latinist, the victim of veneration for 

 Titus Livius, confesses to his guest, Captain Wa- 

 verley, who is represented as no mean scholar, 

 that he would not "utterly accede to the objur- 

 gation of the younger Plinius, in the fourteenth 

 book of his Historia Nataralis .'" 



Every reader of biography knows that the elder 

 Pliny was the great Roman naturalist, whose 

 thirty-seven books on natural history, which, 

 amidst some superstition and much credulity, is 

 one of the most precious monuments of literary an- 

 tiquity which has reached our times. 



TheyouugerVWny, on the contrary, was a rhetori- 

 cian, an advocate of great distinction in the Roman 

 forum, the governor of a large province, of con- 

 sular dignity ; whose only known writings are his 

 admired, though somewhat artificial, "Letters" to 

 his friends ; and his panegyric on the Emperor 

 Trajan, the greatest and the best of the Casars. 



It is the less excusable, because this most cap- 

 tivating of tale-tellers admits in his sreneral pre- 

 face (p. 9.), that before he began Waverley, he 

 had qualified himself by study for his profession 

 of a pleader. And again, p. 15., of the same pre- 

 face, he states, among other reasons for his silence 

 as to the authorship of the Waverley Novels : 

 "My friendships were formed — my place in so- 

 ciety fixed — my life had attained its middle 

 course." Therefore, youthful carelessness cannot 

 be imputed to the learned advocate, the accom- 



plished cyclopasdist, the rounded, polished, uni- 

 versal ffenius, — such as he describes his own 

 parallel, the all-to-all, the grave, tlie gay, the in- 

 quiring, searching Counsellor Pleydell. 



It may, probably, have arisen, by a kind of ag- 

 nomination, from seeing the name of the great 

 Roman naturalist called Plinius Secundus, — a sur- 

 name, in all probability, bestowed upon him by 

 the Empei'or Vespasian for his military services, 

 as being second or next to him. Cuius Plinius Se- 

 cundus, Veroiiensis. The younger Pliny, when 

 adopted by his illustrious uncle, received from 

 him, as the family name, in addition to his own of 

 Cuius Plinius, Novocomensis, the surname of Se- 

 cundus, for the Plinian family. 



I know of no better solution to this surprising 

 mistake ; but probably you, or some of your clas- 

 sical readers, may help me to a better. 



James Elmes. 



MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS : PARISH BOOKS. 



The subject of parish documents of different 

 kinds has several times received from "N. & Q." 

 the attention it deserves, and there seems to be a 

 wish in other quarters to do it ample justice. In 

 the matter of copying sepulchral inscriptions, it 

 will never answer to portion out the work by dis- 

 tricts to persons ignorant of the nauies formerly 

 general in that assigned to them, or who have not 

 the knack of decyphering. Most ludicrous mis- 

 takes will otherwise arise ; so that when owe 

 thoroughly competent person cannot be found, it 

 is better for two to make independent copies for 

 collation ; after which, if sent to press, each should 

 look over the proofs. A person who has not seen 

 the original inscriptions, and is bothered by writ- 

 ing done in an awkward position or bad light, will 

 allow suicidal blunders to pass, — a-ede experto. As 

 regards light, an otherwise illegible incised in- 

 scription can often be made out in the evening, or 

 by a lamp placed at the side ; when the shadow 

 will be deepened, precisely in the same way as we 

 can distinguish valleys in the moon. In all cases 

 the dates of beginning and ending the MS. should 

 be attached, with signature. 



It would be well if an impression could be made 

 upon sextons, and clerks in orders or not, that 

 slabs, plates, &c., ought not to be buried, used up, 

 or otherwise made away with. In one church 

 known to me it is said that the vicar, during the 

 restoration, had most of the monuments — good, 

 bad, and indifferent — buried under the flooring ; 

 he was an Evangelical clergyman, and of course 

 opposed to display. Another, holding the other 

 extreme, had an objection to high-backed tomb- 

 stones, and stated in my hearing that he had 

 persuaded his people, some of whom were not very 

 willing, to have these memorials of their families 

 cut somewhat diagonally, so that two nice trefoil 



