2» d S. IX. Feb. 11. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



95 



LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11. 18G0. 



No. 215. — CONTENTS. 



NOTES: — Dr. John Wallis, 95 — Sir Peter Paul Rubens: 

 " Spiriting away," 96 — The Nine Men's Morris, 97 — Prin- 

 ters' Marks, Emblems, and Mottoes, 98 — Gunpowder-plot 

 Papers, 99. 



Minor Notes:'— How a Toad undresses — Biographical 

 Notes from the Admission Register of Merchant Taylors' 

 School — Richard Porsou, 100. 



QUERIES : — Hornbooks — Age of the Horse — The Land of 

 Byheest — Water Flannel — Stuart's "History of Ar- 

 magh " — Hymn-book — Dr. Johnson : Delany — Monsieur 

 Tassies — Songs and Poems, &c. — Ussher's " Version of the 

 Bible " — Glasgow Hood — Symbol of the Sow — Fane's 

 Psalms — Soiled-Books — Jethro Tull — Sir Samuel More- 

 land— Anglo-Saxon Poems, 101. 



Queries with Answers : — The Sinews of War— "Del- 



Shin Editions" — Barley Suear — "Essaies Politicke and 

 [orall " — Longevity — White Elephant, 103. 



REPLIES: — Dr. Hickes's Manuscripts, 105 — Burghead : 

 Singular Custom : Clavie : Durie, 106 — Malsh, lb. — Brass 

 at West Herling: " et pro quibus tenentur," 107 — Sundry 

 Replies, 108 — Rev. John Genest — Firelock and Bayonet 

 Exercise — Destruction of MSS. — Dicky Dickinson — Sea- 

 breaches — Heraldic Drawings and Engravings — Crowe 

 Family — King Bladud and his Pigs — Robert Keith — The 

 Tea-and-Nay Academy of Compliments — Bavin — Tay- 

 lor the Platonist — Notes on Regiments — Hymns — 

 Thomas Maud — Marriage Law — Lloyd, or Floyd, the Je- 

 suit — Sir Henry Rowswell— Names of Numbers and the 

 Hand — Chalking Lodgings — Flower deLuce aud Toads 

 — Radicals in European Languages — Greek Word, 108. 



Notes on Books. 



Sate*. 

 DR. JOHN WALLIS. 



Among the founders of the Royal Society, dis- 

 tinguished as many of them were by breadth and 

 liberality of pursuits, perhaps none displayed a 

 greater versatility than Dr. Wallis. As a mathe- 

 matician he corresponded on equal terms with 

 Flamstead, Leibnitz, and Newton, and solved the 

 puzzles proposed to scientific Europe by Fermat 

 and Pascal. 



His scholarship, an acquisition then perhaps 

 more usual and more esteemed among mathe- 

 maticians than now, was shown in the publication 

 of valuable editions of several Greek mathe- 

 matical and musical writers, and in his English 

 Grammar, a work which was the basis of many 

 succeeding grammars, was often reprinted (e. g. 

 with the tract De Loquela, Hamburg, 1688, 8vo. 

 and by Bowyer in 1765), and, in spite of some 

 absurd etymologies, may still be perused with 



Eleasure and profit. His theological writings 

 ave been commended by Archbishop Whately ; a 

 volume of his sermons* was thought worthy of 

 publication towards the close of last century, and 

 his Letters on the Trinity have been reprinted in 



" Sermon* ; now first printed from the original manu- 

 scripts of John Wallis, D.D., sometime Savilian Pro- 

 fessor of Geometry To which are prefixed Memoirs 



<-f the Author London. 1771." 8vo. 



our own day. By his skill in the art of deciphering 

 he more than once did good service to the govern- 

 ment in its struggles with France ; while he ap- 

 plied his observations on the formation of sounds 

 to the discovery of a method of " teaching dumb 

 persons to speak." It is greatly to be desired 

 that some one capable of doing him justice would 

 draw up a fuller memoir of Wallis than has yet 

 appeared. The following references will show 

 that materials abound : — Wood's Fasti and Athena, 

 Siographia Britannica, General Dictionary, and 

 Chalmers, under " John Wallis ; " his own auto- 

 biography published after the preface to Hearne's 

 Langtoft; Saxii Onomasticon, iv. 553.; indexes 

 to the Lansdowne MSS. and to the diaries of 

 Evelyn, Pepys, Thoresby, Hearne, andWorthing- 

 ton. Le Neve, Monum. Anglic. (1700 — 1715), 

 p. 58. ; John Dunton's Life (ed. Nichols), pp. 658 

 — 661.; Baxter's Life (see Index); Monthly 

 Mag. for 1802, vol. ii. p. 521. ; Aubrey's Lives; 

 Calamy's Own Times, i. 272 — 275. ; Life of Isaac 

 Milles, 138, 139. ; Philos. Trans. No. xvi. p. 264. ; 

 letters in Sir L. Jenkins' Works, ii. 654.; vaEurop. 

 Mag. vol. xlix. pp. 345, 427. (against adopting 

 the Gregorian year) ; in Neal's Puritans (ed. 

 Toulmin), iv. 390., and in R. Boyle's Works (to 

 Boyle) ; in Edleston's Newton Correspondence, p. 

 300. (to Newton) ; many letters and notices in 

 Rigaud's Correspondence of Scientific Men of the 

 Seventeenth Century' (Oxf. 1841, 2 vols.); a letter 

 to Bp. Lloyd in Bp. Nicolson's Correspondence, 

 i. 121. seq. ; letters from Fermat in F.'s Varia 

 Opera Mathematica (1679) ; one from Olave Rud- 

 beck (4to., Upsala, 1703; in the Bodleian); 

 verses on Eliz. Wilkinson (Sam. Clarke's Lives, 

 1677, pp. 428, 429.) 



He was a friend of Kennett's (Kennett's Life, 

 p. 3.) ; of Dr. Thomas Smith's (Smith's Vita, 

 &c, Prsef. p. x.); of Cosimo Brunetti's (Tira- 

 boschi, ed. Firenze, 1812, vol. viii. p. 98.) 



He was engaged to decipher letters * proving 

 the Prince of Wales (" James III.") to be a sup- 

 posititious child ; on which Kneller, who took 

 his portrait for Pepys, told the doctor in broken 

 English, that an expert might be mistaken in 

 characters, but a painter could not be mistaken in 

 his lines. (See the racy anecdote in Europ. 

 Mag. Feb. 1797, pp. 87, 88.) On his Algebra, 

 see Edleston's Newton Correspondence, p. 191.; 

 cf. ibid. 276, 277., and Whiston's Life, p. 269. 

 His " Remarks " were printed* with Thos. Sal- 

 mon's Proposal to perform Music in Perfect and 

 Mathematical Proportions, Lond. 1688, 4to. On 

 his answer to Hobbe<*, see Europ. Mag. Aug. 1799, 

 pp. 91, 92. (Ibid. Nov. 1798, p. 308. is an abusive- 

 notice of him by Aubrey.) 



He was a witness against Laud (Prynne's Can- 



* The author of Barwick's Life (see Index) wrongly 

 states that Willis deciphered intercepted letters of 

 Charles I. 



