MEGGOTT FAMILY (6th S. vi. 288, 455).-The information about this family is very scanty. Did it originally come from Scotland, where the name Meggat or Megget is not uncommon? The Gentleman's Magazine (vol. xxxviii. p. 398-not 389, as indexed) mentions the marriage, on August 18, 1768, of John Smith Meggot to a daughter of Charles Dingley, of Lothbury. STRIX, in the quotation from Burke's Landed Gentry, has fallen into a slight error. It was not Lieut.-Col. Richard Timms who took the name of D'Aeth, but George William Hughes, nephew of his (Col. Timms's) wife. The following marriage is also recorded in the Gentleman's Magazine (vol. xix. p. 524), "Mr. Megate to a daughter of Mr. Read, accountant to the South Sea Company " (Oct. 28, 1749). SIGMA.

Matthew Paris has 'lapides quos and the Crusaders introduced it into all European lancameos vulgariter appellamus,' which marks its foreign guages in this sense. origin." 1872, See also his Antique Gems and Rings, Lond., vol. ii. pp. 284-7.

66

see

This etymology, if received, as it seems entitled to be, will add another Persian word to the list given by Archbishop Trench in his English Past and azure [on which Persian words being Present, lect. i. p. 13, second edit., 1855, the few "N. & Q.," 5th S. xi., xii.], bazaar, caravan, caravanserai, chess, dervish. lilac, orange, saraband, taffeta, tambour, turban "; or, if we are indebted to the Arabs for it, to the still longer list of Arabic words enumerated by the archbishop on the preW. E. BUCKLEY. ceding page.

STRIX, in condensing the account of the above family from Burke's History of the Commoners, vol. ii. p. 466, makes a mistake in saying that Lieut.-Col Richard Timms, Royal Horse Guards," took the surname of D'Aeth. What Burke says is, 'Lieut.-Col. Richard Timms, of the Royal Horse Guards, who married Mary, daughter of Thomas Hughes, M.D. of Oxford, and aunt of Capt. Hughes, who took the surname of D'Aeth. By her he had a son, John Timms," &c., so that it was Capt. Hughes, and not Lieut.-Col. Timms, who D. G. C. E. took the surname of D'Aeth.

THOMAS CHURCHYARD (5th S. viii. 10, 237, 331). Possibly AUDITT and others may not have lost interest in this subject. I have in my possession The Worthiness of Wales, a Poem. A true note of the auncient Castles, famous Monuments, goodly Rivers, faire Bridges, fine Townes, and courteous People, that I have seen in the noble Countrie of Wales, and now set forth, by Thomas Churchyard," London, reprinted from the edition of 1587 for Thomas Evans in the Strand, This book contains a dedicatory MDCCLXXVI. epistle "To the Queen's most excellent Majestie, Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queene of England, Fraunce, and Ireland, &c. Thomas Churchyard wisheth always Blessednes, Good Fortune, Victorie, and worldly Honour, with the Encrease of quiet Raigne, vertuous Lyfe, and most princely Government." I may just mention that for some short time I have been largely quoting (in some rough notes contributed to a local paper) from the book referred to. If any extracts would be of interest for readers of "N. & Q" I shall, of course, be glad to give them. I should mention the author seems to have been taken ill towards the completion of the small volume, which is called at the end, "My first Booke of the Worthines of Wales," and Churchyard says, if the volume is ALFRED CHAS. JONAS. "Wel taken, wil encourage me to set foorth another."

"2 CAMEO THE DERIVATION OF (5th S. ii. 268, 453; iii. 31).-At the last of these references the writer, DR. CHANCE, concludes by saying that the word is one which " no fellow can make out." This was in 1875. Prof. Skeat, though giving the received etymologies, and referring, like DR. CHANCE, to the learned works of Mahn and This was Diez, says, "B. Etymology unknown." in 1879. Yet some years before, viz. in 1864, a derivation of the word had been printed in The Gnostics and their Remains, Ancient and Medieval, by C. W. King, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, author of Antique Gems, which seems likely to be, as that author states, the true one. In the section on the "Material and Style" of the Gnostic intagli, "the material of a talisman being quite as essential to its virtue as the sigil to be engraved upon it," he says, "The jasper and the TENNIS (6th S. iii. 495; iv. 90, 214; v. 56, 73; vi. loadstone, the special minerals at the fountains of the magic art, Egypt and Assyria, had been 373,410,430,470,519,543).-For the sake of brevity from time immemorial adjudged the peculiar I did not enter into any discussion upon the game vehicles for the exhibition of talismans." To this he appends the following note (p. 112):"The true etymology of the much disputed word Cameo, in Henry III.'s time written Camahut, is to be sought in the Persian word Camahen, loadstone or fibrous bæmatite, the usual material for Babylonian cylinders, and in use there down to the times of the Cufie signets. The Arabs, knowing no other motive for the engraving of stones than their conversion into talismans, gave the name of the one most frequently used to the whole class;

Swansea.

called tennis, nor did I attempt to show how the
name was applied to the game in this country and
not in France. The word, in one form or other,
was used here before the game was invented.
Kelham, in his Norman-French Dict., has "Tencon,
The word was, how-
dispute, quarrel," answering to the OF. tence
(tenis), "combat, querelle.'
"And those four garrisons
ever, understood in its old sense of beating to and
fro. Spenser writes,

accent which Schiller had laid on the word "Hay-
market," utterly destructive of the scansion of the
line. What the peculiarities of the London Hay-
market may be, which are "known now to every
German schoolboy," I cannot tell. Hay, as I re-
member, used to be sold there, but not horses, and
the accent in the word was always laid, as it still
is laid, on the first syllable.
J. DIXON.

issuing forth......will so drive him from one side to another and tennis him amongst them that he shall find no where safe to keep his creet [earthen vessel] in, nor hide himself" (State of Ireland, ed. 1850, p. 509). With this meaning the word was applied to the game here, but only when played with rackets. Mr. Wedgwood is therefore correct in his definition: "Tennis, a game in which a ball is driven to and fro with rackets." In an English version of the Janua Linguarum of WAGONETTE (6th S. vi. 207, 233, 377).-More Comenius, by Hoole (1658), there is a representa- tolerant than S. S. Y. Y. of waggon is Prof. Skeat. tion of a tennis court divided by a line or cord in He says that the two g's serve to show that the the middle, and the players stand on each side of vowel a is short, and reminds us that in 1623 it with rackets in their hands ready for the game. waggon and waggoner figured (as they do still A ball game played with the hand was called hand-figure) in Romeo and Juliet, I. iv. Alas for the ball or hand-tennis. We are told that when Queen "illiterate " spelling of that benighted age! Elizabeth was a guest of the Earl of Hertford, at Wagging and waggon are more akin than Elvetham (1591), "after dinner, ten of his lord- S. S. Y. Y. suspects. ST. SWITHIN. ship's servants did hang up lines, squaring out the forme of a tennis court, and making a cross line in the middle; in this square they played five to five with hand-ball at bord and cord as they tearme it, to the great liking of her highness" (Nichols, Prog. ii. 19, Strutt, p. 95). Strutt calls the game of fives "hand-tennis" (Sports, ed. 1833, p. 95). In France, however, the game was always at first played by hand, and hence its name, jeu de paulme. St. Foix says that "it consisted originally in receiving the ball and driving it back again with the palm of the hand. In former times they played with the naked hand, then with a glove, which in some instances was lined." He mentions a young woman named Margot who excelled in the game, and played either with the palm or the back of her hand (Essais Historiques sur Paris, i. 160, Strutt, p. 94). Though the word racket has come to us through France, yet the custom of playing with some kind of instrument, bat or racket, seems to have sprung up in this country, for Chaucer, in his Troylus and Cryseyde, writes:

iv. 461.

"But kanstow pleyen racket to and fro." PROF. SKEAT'S derivation of the word tennis (or tenis, as it was formerly written) cannot be accepted, but MR. JULIAN MARSHALL is not correct in saying that only a stout cord was used to divide the players. It is generally spoken of as a line, without reference to thickness, and no doubt often varied in size. The common proverbial saying, "Thou hast stricken the ball under the line" is found in Heywood, meaning that a wrong stroke has been made, or, in other words, that a person has failed in his purpose. J. D.

Belsize Square.

SCHILLER'S " PEGASUS IM JOCHE" (6th S. vi. 469, 542).-MR. NORRIS misunderstands my query. I have been familiar with German from my boyhood, and can quite comprehend the drift of Schiller's poem. What I drew attention to was the false

THE LUMBER TROOP (6th S. vi. 448, 490).— "The Book of Rules on vellum," folio, is now in my possession. The illuminated title reads, "New Laws, Regulations, and Procedure of Business of the Antient and Honorable Lumber Troop, as agreed to by the Troop in pursuance of a Report from the Committee appointed to revise the Old Laws, February 8, 1832." The officers were seventeen in number, headed by "Colonel " Charles, the tailor, of 171, Fleet Street. The rules, the order of the elections, the fines, the procedure of business, "the form of making" a trooper, the charge, and the wind-up song, commencing, "We are full ten thousand brave boys," are extremely curious; and it is my intention one of these days to give a history of the society, and incorporate the contents of my volume and a quantity of hitherto unknown facts in connexion with its political importance at elections in the City of London in the days when bribery with corruption was thought to be a less horrible crime than it is in this enlightened latter half of the nineteenth century.

The Vagaries of the Lumber Troopers, with an account of the ball given by Sir John Key, Bart. (the Lord Mayor), at the Mansion House, Oct. 4, 1831, was printed in 8vo. form that year at the price of sixpence, and it is now very rare.

The headquarters of the troop were in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street, changing (more frequently in later days) from one tavern to another. The place of meeting in Bolt Court is recorded in my Memorials of Temple Bar, with some Account of Fleet Street, published in 1869, p. 121-for which latter work I am now collecting materials for a second and enlarged edition. T. C. NOBLE.

110, Greenwood Road, Dalston.

The writer of an article in Chambers's Journal, Nov. 4, 1882, p. 703 (“ Obituary Curiosities") mentions this club as if he and his readers knew all about it. No doubt he could supply MR. HODGKIN

with the information for which he asks. I may quote his words :

"He did not trouble to insure a libation to his memory, like the ancient lumber-trooper, who served forty years in that distinguished corps, and bequeathed the troopers a crooked guinea to be spent in punch and tobacco on the day he was laid under the turf." W. D. PARISH.

HAIR GROWING AFTER DEATH (6th S. vi. 344, 405).-The following extract from the "Acts of Leipsic," may possibly be of interest :

"In the year 1719 a woman was interred at Nurem. berg, in a wooden coffin painted black, according to the custom of the country. The earth, wherein her body was deposited, was dry and yellow, as it is for the most part in the environs of that city. Of three bodies, buried in the same grave, this woman's was laid deepest in the ground. In 1761, there being occasion to make room for à fourth body, the grave was dug up anew. To the surprise of the digger, when he had removed the two uppermost coffins, he perceived a considerable quantity of hair that had made its way through the crevices of the coffin. The lid being removed, there appeared a perfect resemblance of a human figure, the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and all other parts, being very distinct; but from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet it was covered with very long, thick, and frizzled hair. The grave-digger, after examining it for some time, happened to touch the upper part of the head. To his surprise the entire body began at once to shrink, and at last nothing remained in his hand but a mass of rough hair, which insensibly assumed a brownish red colour.'

the Crimean war an officer well known for his fine beard died or was killed in action (I forget which); he was buried wrapt in his blanket; a little time afterwards his body was exhumed for some reason, and it was said that his beard had grown through his blanket. I heard this myself, either when I was in the Crimea or shortly after the war.

C. B. T.

There is no need to go so far as the Vatican Library to see a head of hair of the Roman period; as in the fine museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society at York there is the hair of a young lady coiled in the modern fashion, into which are stuck jet pins, found in a sarcophagus during the erection of the new railway station at York. R. B.

South Shields.

PORTRAIT OF DANTE (6th S. vi. 167, 297, 458). There is not only the terra-cotta copy of the after-death cast at Florence, but there is the cast itself, now removed thither, though when Florence sought to possess herself of it in 1676 Ravenna refused to part with it, and a monk hid it away (a copy of the cast and the empty box in which it was concealed are all that now remain to Ravenna). Like all casts taken from a corpse, it lacks sharpness and expression. There is the fine, though MefisThe learned Honoratus Fabri (Lib. 3, De Plantis), tofelian-only too sharp-bronze bust in the Museo and several other authors, are of opinion that hair, Borbonico at Naples. In the Palazzo Pubblico, wool, feathers, nails, horns, teeth, &c., are nothing either at Siena or San Gemignano, is an early but vegetables. If that be so we need not be but not contemporary painting of Dante being surprised to find them growing on the bodies of sent to San Gemignano as ambassador May 8th, animals after death, a circumstance that has 1299, into which he is introduced as one of the occasionally been observed. Petrus Borellus pre- characters. And then there is the portrait ascribed tends that these productions may be transplanted to Raffaele in possession of Mr. Morris Moore, in as vegetables, and may grow in a different place Rome, which that veteran collector considers the from that where they first germinated. He cites, only one worth the name of a portrait. But these in some observations on this subject, among other do not touch the original very puzzling question, examples, that of a tooth drawn out and trans-how Carlyle came to speak of Giotto's portrait as planted. In the Philosophical Collections of Mr. Hooke it is, I believe, stated, on the authority of a gentleman named Arnold, that a man hanged at Tyburn for theft was found, shortly after his removal from the gallows, to be "covered over in a very extraordinary manner with hair.”

In a letter addressed by a Dr. Bartholine to Monsieur Sachs, which is inserted in the "Acts of Copenhagen," occur the following words :—

"I do not know whether you ever observed that the hair which in people when living was black or grey, often after their death, in digging up their graves, or opening the vaults where they lie, is found changed into a fair or flaxen colour; so that their relations can scarce know them again by such a mark. This change is produced undoubtedly by the hot and concentred vapours which are exhaled from the dead bodies."

RICHARD EDgCumbe.

"well known" in 1841, when it was only uncovered that year, and could not have been "well known" to those he was addressing. Of course, it was well known and prized in Italy before the whitewash age covered it up. Is it not possible that he used "well known" in this sense? R. H. BUSK.

P.S.-Since I sent you the above, Mr. Hartwell Grissell has given me the following additional items. The painting in the chapel was unwhitewashed up to the time of Vasari, and he as well as Villani, and also Manetti in his Specimen Historiæ, alludes to it. Carlyle may have gained information on the subject through his brother, who was a commentator on Dante. There was another portrait of Dante by Giotto in the church at Assisi. There is a portrait of him in Sta. Maria del Fiore by Dom. Michelmo, 1465, supposed to have been painted with the assistance of

33, Tedworth Square, Chelsea.
I remember hearing the following story. During the one in the Bargello.

last reference, may like to be reminded of a reply sent seventeen years ago, and printed in 3rd S. vii. J. WOODWARD. 483, by

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Salon of Madame Necker. By the Vicomte d'Haussonville. Translated by H. M. Trollope. 2 vols. (Chapman & Hall.)

though the ladies-Mesdames du Deffand, de Marchais, and Geoffrin, the Maréchale de Luxembourg, the Duchesse de Lauzun-are almost more fascinating, and the politicians who gathered round her in the deepening shadows of the French Revolution form an equally interesting topic. We envy the Vicomte d'Haussonville the first discovery of this mine of wealth in the archives of Coppet; but we also congratulate ourselves that the treasure has fallen into such competent hands. The book is in all respects a most attractive one, written with the ease THE celebrity of her husband and still more famous and sprightliness and power of hitting off characters by daughter has obscured the name of Suzanne Curchod, after happy phrases which are so conspicuous in our neighwards Madame Necker. Yet she was evidently a woman bours. Book-making tendencies are sternly repressed. of no ordinary talents or attractions. Though only the Countless names occur in these volumes which are disdaughter of the pastor of Crassier, the charm of her missed in brief notes at the bottom of the page, and thus, beauty, her learning, her conversation, made her the while the attention of the reader is concentrated on the star of society at Lausanne, and gathered to the simple most important persons, the book forms an encyclopædia parsonage the most distinguished men of cultured Geneva. of French society in the twenty years before the RevoGibbon, who had freed himself from his imprisonment lution. The translator has done his work well throughin his pension by abjuring Popery, was ready to sur-out, and has succeeded in rendering impassioned French render his new-found freedom to Mdlle. Curchod. He into English without making it ridiculous. In conhad also won her heart, for the girl's letters show how clusion, we may remind Mr. Trollope that "pennance deeply she felt the breach of her engagement with one does not spell penance, and the Vicomte d'Haussonville of whose personal appearance she has left a far more that Mr. Pitt was not Chancellor of the Exchequer in pleasing portrait than would have been composed from Lord Rockingham's, but in Lord Shelburne's adminis

the famous silhouette or the well-known anecdote of Madame du Deffand. Her father's death reduced her to such poverty that she gladly accepted the invitation of Madame de Vermenoux to Paris. There M. Necker was then paying his court to her protectress, and, refused by the widow, his heart was caught at the rebound by the companion. Thus began her brilliant life in Paris. In the Rue Michel le Comte Madame Necker began to gather round her that circle of distinguished men which Inade her Fridays famous at the Hôtel Le Blanc or St. Quen. There were to be seen the gallant Bernard ("gentil Bernard," as Voltaire christened him); the contradictory Suard, translator of Robertson's Charles V. and censor of the French Academy; the sportive Marmontel, the impassioned adorer of Madame Necker, the importunate suitor of her husband, whom Madame du Deffand styled the beggar clothed in rags; the testy Morellet, who wore under the philosopher's cloak the livery of a financier, and who used the former to hide the castigation he had received from M. Necker in his efforts to win the reputation of the latter. There too were Grimm-who, though never happy except "in a room with, near to, or close by the side of, before or behind, some German Royal Highness," disproved the empress's sarcasm by his frequent visits to the Hôtel Le Blanc-and Diderot, the author of La Religieuse, the lover of Sophie Voland and Madame de Prisieux, subdued and fascinated by the purity of Madame Necker, on whom no shadow of ill report has ever fallen. No purer monument was ever raised to the fair fame of woman than was erected to Madame Necker by Diderot's avowal that for her sake he regretted the impurities of his writings. To her D'Alembert came for comfort in the only sorrow which ever touched his cold and poor nature, the death of Mdlle. de Lespinasse. In her ear the Abbé Galiani, wittiest and most brilliant of talkers, poured forth his sorrows at returning to Naples. At her door knocked needy men of letters, like Bernardin de St. Pierre before his fame was established by Paul and Virginia. At her feet Buffon offered his aged affections, and with her hand in his avowed himself a Christian and died. In her pure friendship Thomas (Voltaire's "galithomas") found the one bright spot in a disappointed life, more fitted for the earnest truth-seekers of the nineteenth century than for the light-hearted sceptics of the eighteenth. Space only allows us to dwell on the literary celebrities of Madame Necker's salon,

tration.

English Men of Letters. Edited by John Morley.Swift. By Leslie Stephen.-Sterne. By H. D. Traill. (Macmillan & Co.)

THESE volumes illustrate some of the difficulties of this very popular and interesting series. The Swift literature, as collectors like Col. Grant could inform us, is immense; the Sterne literature, on the contrary, is of the most meagre description, and can be hardly said to begin until that writer was forty-six, and within eight years of his death. But Mr. Leslie Stephen has, nevertheless, had to compress in two hundred odd pages what the late Mr. Forster proposed to say in three bulky octavos; while Mr. Traill, on the contrary, has been obliged to expand his material by concluding chapters, not by any means the least valuable of his book, on Sterne's style, humour, sentiment, and so forth. And yet in neither case can the conditions of the series be said to have greatly affected the literary value of the work. So much has been said about Swift that we are less curious for facts than to ascertain how he presents himself to a writer who knows so much of his time and contemporaries as Mr. Stephen; nor have we been so surfeited with Sterne as to resent a fresh study of him by a fresh pen. Both books are, in truth, admirably done. Mr. Stephen's essay is full of all those fine and rapid touches which distinguish him among critics. No one can hit off a judgment in a passing epigram with so much felicity, as, for example, when he speaks of Swift's friendship (we regret that we cannot retrace the passage so as to quote precisely), as "an annexation rather than an alliance." With regard to Stella's marriage to Swift Mr. Stephen will not speak decisively, but we gather that he inclines to believe that it took place. His conjecture that the cryptic "Figgarkick sollah" of the "little language" means "Pilgarlick sirrah is ingenious, and may serve to exercise those who delight in infinitesimal problems. Mr. Traill's volume is in a different, though in its way equally suggestive style. One detects here and there the humourist of the Recaptured Rhymes; but we are not sure that the desire to be ultra-Shandian in writing of Sterne has not sometimes betrayed him into what is a little like bad taste. Mrs. Storne's "fatal fecundity" seems scarcely to deserve or to require the attention which Mr. Traill devotes to it. His view of Sterne, however, is a sane and reasonable one, and nicely hung between partisanship and dislike, or (shall we say ?) between Fitz