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Published by JOHN FRANCIS, 20, Wellington Street, Strand, London, W.C. LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1877. CONTENTS.- N° 184. NOTES:-Byron and Shelley in the Environs of Geneva during the Summer of 1816, 1-Whitsunday: Whitsuntide, 2-Shak speariana, 4-Pedigrees and Pedigree Makers: The St. Johns QUERIES:-Lord Beaconsfield's Crest and Motto-Bennet REPLIES:-William, First Duke of Queensberry, 10- Dr. Dodd's Marriage, 12-The Halsham Family-Bibliography of Utopias, 13- Incidit in Scyllam," &c.-Axtell Family"Things in General," &c.-"The Crisis," 14-Scotch Hereditary Offices-"The Churchyards of Roxburghshire "-De la Maine Family-Briggs Family-Curious Use of Words"Baron of the Court of Exchequer "-Farewell Family, 15Carausius-" Outile "-" Patina "-Shakspeare-High Borlase". The Long Eleventh of June"-J. Witherspoon and Descendants-A Commonplace Book," &c., 16- Ev'n in our ashes," &c.-Strasbourg Cathedral-J. Rivett-Philothea and Pamela - Bonvyle Family-" Temorn "-"To-year ". Lady Hamilton - Centenarianism - "Next the heart' Musical Revenge: "Hudibras," 18-Fen: Fend- Philip Stubbs-Descendants of the Regicides-Authors Wanted, 19. Notes on Books, &c. Notes. and in a note to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iii., Byron accordingly says, "This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3, 1816), which even at this distance dazzles mine."§ The Shelleys and Miss Clairmont had clearly reached the hotel by the 17th of May. This is the date of Mrs. Shelley's first letter thence, given in the Six Weeks' Tour. It is the letter of a person who has arrived a day or two, not of a person arrived on that same day, inasmuch as she writes, "We have hired a boat, and every evening at about six o'clock we sail on the lake." And again, further on, "We do not enter into society here, yet our time passes swiftly and delightfully." I should fix their arrival at Sécheron late on the 15th of May, on these grounds:- The same letter commences, "We arrived at Paris on the 8th of this month, and we were detained two days for the purpose of obtaining the various signatures necessary to our passports." That is to say, the Shelleys left Paris on May 10. We are then told that Dijon was reached on the third evening after their departure from Paris (May 13); Champagnolles was reached at midnight on the fourth evening (May 14). They leave Les Rousses at 6 P.M. next day (May 15), and no doubt reached Geneva before midnight on that same evening. Byron and Dr. Polidori arrived there on May 25, and acquaintance was made with the Shelleys and Miss Clairmont within two days.|| Their subsequent movements are thus told by Moore : "After passing a fortnight under the same roof with Lord Byron at Sécheron, Mr. and Mrs. Shelley removed to a small house on the Mont Blanc side of the Lake, within about ten minutes' walk of the villa which their noble friend had taken, upon the high banks, called § Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iii., p. 73. London, 1816. BYRON AND SHELLEY IN THE ENVIRONS OF GENEVA DURING THE SUMMER OF 1816. The first meeting of these illustrious poets was at the Hôtel de Sécheron. This was more correctly the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Sécheron, a small suburb of Geneva, situated about an English mile and a quarter on the road to Lausanne, that is, north-east of Geneva, and on the north shore of the lake. It was kept at that time by one Dejean, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, &c., and in both the Letters and Journals* and in the and a Memoir, by William Michael Rossetti. London, Six Weeks' Tourt it is merely called Hôtel de Moxon, 1870, 2 vols. 8vo. (See Memoir, vol. i. lxxxvii.) Sécheron. It must be remembered, in order to copy the dates of the arrival and of the acquaintanceunderstand the topography of many allusions in dori's diary. Subsequently, in narrating that curious but ship from Mr. W. Rossetti. They are taken from Polithe two above works, that the city of Geneva often-repeated incident of Shelley's hallucination of the occupies the extreme south-west angle of Lake breast-eyed woman, Mr. Rossetti informs us that the verLeman, and that both the north and south shoression of this story, which he then proceeds to quote, "is of the lake diverge respectively from left and right of that city. On the north shore stood the Hotel de Sécheron, which would thus face Mont Blanc, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life, by Thomas Moore, in two volumes. London, J. Murray, 1830, 4to. History of a Six Weeks' Tour, &c. London, Hookham, Jun., &c., 1817, 12mo. "Secheron's (sic) Hotel," at p. 71 of the Shelley Memorials, &c., London, 1859, 2nd edition, 8vo., is, of course, incorrect. Medwin says, "At Dejean's, Sécheron." This is right as far as it goes. See The Life of Perey Bysshe Shelley, by Thomas Medwin, in two volumes, vol. i. p. 236. London, Newby, 1847, 8vo. thus authentically jotted down in the physician's diary," dori's was never published. Polidori has also told the inand the occurrence is dated June 18. This diary of Policident in his prefatory letter to the Vampyre (London, 1819, 8vo., published anonymously), and this account is quoted by Moore (vol. ii. p. 208); but, though the two versions tally, their wording is different. In a letter at the page last cited Byron, who had received the Vampyre, comments very amusingly on the various perversions of its preface. He then continues, "What do you mean about Polidori's Diary? Why, I defy him to say anything about me, but he is welcome,"-which sentence thus ends brokenly, but its general sense is easy to gather, and the passage shows that the physician had at that time (1819) thoughts of publishing his journal. This was never done. The next paragraph relates a quarrel between Byron and his physician; after which Polidori meditated suicide, but was ultimately reconciled to his patron. Moore then continues, "Soon after this the noble poet removed to Diodati." Let us compare these accounts with yet another furnished by Moore somewhat earlier in the same biography "Arriving at Geneva (Byron) took up his abode at the well-known hotel, Sécheron. After a stay of a few weeks at this place, he removed to a villa in the neighbourhood, called Diodati, very beautifully situated on the high banks of the Lake, where he established his residence for the remainder of the summer."t pendent evidence that this date cannot be very WHITSUNDAY: WHITSUNTIDE. A great deal has been written, both in "N. & Q.” and elsewhere, on the derivation of our English name for the feast of Pentecost, and it might be considered that the subject had been pretty well threshed out. This is, however, by no means the case. It cannot be said that any definite conclusion was reached by the former discussions, and there is still virgin soil left to turn up in search of the genuine root. I may possibly not succeed where so many have failed, but the attempt, at least, is worth making. question, I may refer to "N. & Q.," 5th S. i. 401, for an able summary by the editor, and also to a letter signed C*** (Mr. Cockayne), 4th S. xi. 437. These articles, with the references which they contain, are sufficient to bring out the various theories, which may in a few words be summarized as follows: On comparing these extracts, the question at once arises whether Belle Rive was not merely a second name of the Villa Diodati (just as Chapuis was another appellation of the Campagne Mont Alègre). Both are described as situated upon the high banks of the lake; both were in or near Coligny. Observe, also, that in the second passage quoted, Moore represents Byron as moving directly from the Hôtel de Sécheron to the Villa Diodati. We need only suppose that, in printing or copying, the words or Diodati" were acci- In order to avoid repetition, and to put such of dentally omitted in the first extract after "called your readers as may be bitten by the etymological Belle Rive," to clear away and reconcile all dis-maggot au courant with the present aspect of the crepancies. Medwin follows in the same sense, omitting any allusion to Belle Rive. He says:§ "After a fortnight's residence at Dejean's, Shelley and his female friends removed to the Campagne Montallegre, on the opposite side of the lake; and shortly after Lord Byron took that (the campagne) of Diodati." In deciding for or against the separate existence of a Villa Belle Rive the dates are all-important. Counting a fortnight from the Shelleys' arrival at the Hôtel de Sécheron, they would move on May 28 or 29; and, indeed, on June 1, Mrs. 2. "This day is called Wytsonday because the Shelley writes that they had changed their resi- Holy Ghost brought wytte and wysdome into dence, and she, moreover, dates her letter from Cristis disciples." This is quoted by Hearne from Campagne C******" which initial, and six a book printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and is supsequent asterisks, must stand for Campagne Cha-ported by a passage from Richard Rolle of Hampuis, that is Mont Alègre. If, as we are told, pole (A.D. 1358). Byron outstayed his friends a fortnight at the 3. Another correspondent quotes Brady's Clavis Hôtel, he would have occupied the Villa Diodati Calendaria, in which it is said that the original on the 11th or 12th of June; and we have inde-name of the season of the year was Wittentide, or the time of choosing the wits or wise men to the Wittenagemote. *Letters, vol. ii. p. 27. + Ibid., vol. ii. p. 6. This seems to have been a common topographical name. Compare our "Mount Pleasant." § See vol. i. p. 238 of The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Thomas Medwin. The words in parenthesis are mine. Medwin is a loose and incorrect writer, but in this instance he seems to know the ground, and he tells us that he was at Diodati "two years after," i.e. in 1818, I suppose. The name is filled in at full in the reprint of the Six Weeks' Tour as a portion of the Essays and Letters. from Abroad, Moxon, 1840, 8vo. See vol. ii. p. 56. I suppose "Chapius" (sic) is a misprint. 1. Whitsunday is equivalent to Dominica Alba, and was so called from the white garments worn by neophytes on that day. 4. Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, suggests A.-S. wieða, Fl. wijen, to consecrate, applied as a period of peculiar sanctity. 5. Reading, in his Sermons on the Lessons for Sundays throughout the Year (vol. ii. 291), says :— "It was a custom amongst our ancestors upon this day (Whitsunday) to give all the milk of their ewes and kine to their poor neighbours, for the love of God, and in ¶Letters and Journals, vol. ii. p. 7. The date of the letter is June 27. order to qualify themselves to receive the blessings of the Holy Spirit. And from the food which the poor made of that milk, called white-meat, this day is supposed by some to have taken the name of Whit-Sunday." 6. In "N. & Q.," 2nd S. i. 521, MR. MACKENZIE WALCOTT derives Whitsun from the German Pfingsten (Low Ger. Pingsten). This has met with support in other quarters. Jupiter. Wachter, however, has set the question 7. MR. COCKAYNE ("N. & Q.," 4th S. xi. 437) rejects altogether the Christian derivation of the "Dominica alba, ab albis vestibus sic dicta, quibus word, and refers it to a heathen custom of wel-candidati baptismi comparebant. Erant autem anticoming the summer and seeking for a bright sun. 8. Two other suggestions may be passed over very lightly one that Whitsunday is huict Sunday, the eighth after Easter; the other that, as Whitsunday was introduced after the Conquest, some word was brought over by Norman ecclesiastics, which was rendered intelligible to Saxon ears by being corrupted into the forms White Sunday or Wit Sunday. In glancing over these various theories, the principal thing that strikes one is the marvellously small basis, and in most the utter absence, of any facts to sustain the conclusions arrived at. Imagination and conjecture raise up a house of cards, which a breath suffices to destroy. In the following remarks I propose to confine myself to facts which may be tested by any one who will take the trouble to investigate them, and simply to point out the direction towards which these facts will lead us. I have no theory to maintain, and am equally content whatever the result may be. In the first place, it is a fact that, down to the period of the Conquest, Whitsuntide, Whitsunday, are not found in our language. The earliest known occurrence is an entry in the Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 1067: "Sona æfter tham com Mathild seo hlæfdie hier to lande, and Ealdred arcebischof hig gehalgode to cwene on Westmynstre on hwitan sunnan dag." In the rubrics to the A.-S. Gospels Pentecost is always used. quitus tria baptismi tempora, Festum Nativitatis Christi (quo die baptizatus est Chlodoveus), Paschatis et Pen tecostes." Ihre gives the Old Norse name for Pentecost, Hwita dagar; Ten Kate (Nederduitsche Sprake, 1723) gives Witte Zondag, Dominica Pentecostes. These changes must have had their origin in some altered circumstances or customs, which it may be well to inquire into. We turn now to a different quarter. The publication, in 1874, of the Icelandic-English Dictionary of Cleasby and Vigfusson opened a new era in the study of Teutonic philology, especially in its Norse and Anglo-Saxon relations. It is not a mere dictionary, but a laborious and valuable collection of illustrations of a rich and copious language closely allied to our own, which has undergone little change during the last eight hundred years, and which possesses an unequalled extent of early mediæval literature. Iceland was colonized at the latter end of the ninth century, and Christianized about A.D. 1000, principally by missionaries from Saxony, who would, of course, bring with them their own ecclesiastical terms. Now neither Pfingsten nor Pentecost has ever been current in Iceland. The first bishop of Iceland was consecrated on Whitsunday, A.D. 1056, and the day is recorded as HvitDrottin's Dagr, White Lord's Day, which afterwards settled down as Hvitasunnu-dagr, Whitsunday, and Hvitasunnudags-vika, Whitsundayweek. A reference to the article will well repay perusal for the variety of information it conveys on the early history of Whitsuntide. I extract a few notices: From A.D. 1200, Whitsun, in its archaic forms, was in common use. In the Ancren Riwle (1200) we find hwite-sunne dei; in Layamon's Brut (1205), white sunne tide; and so on subsequently, Pentecost falling into disuse. Wicliffe uses witsontide "The great festivals, Yule, Easter, and Pentecost, but in 1 Cor. xvi. 8, where Cranmer's Bible of 1551 especially the two latter, were the great seasons for has wytsontyde. Our A. V. has in all cases Pen-christening, whence the first Sunday after Easter was tecost. Amongst our congeners on the Continent the reverse change took place. From a very early period Pentecost, amongst the Teutonic nations, took the name of High Ger. Pfingsten, Flem. Pinckster, Danish Pintse, Swed. Pingest. The derivation of this has been a subject of dispute, some maintaining that these words are merely corruptions of the Greek TEVTηKOσT; others that, as Easter is named after a heathen divinity, Pfingsten may be so called from Pin, the Teutonic called 'Dominica in Albis,'* but in the Northern churches, perhaps owing to the cold weather at Easter, Pentecost seems to have been specially appointed for christening.t "At the introduction of Christianity, neophytes, in the week after their baptism, used to wear white garments called hvíta vaðir, 'white weeds,' as a symbol of baptism cleansing from sin and of a new birth. A neophyte was called hvit-vaðungr, a white weedling.'* "The Sagas contain many touching episodes of neophytes, especially such as were baptized in old age, and died whilst in their white weeds. Olafr á Haukagili var skírðr ok andaðisk í hvíti váðum': Olaf was baptized in Hawksgill, and breathed his last in his white weeds.'"+ It has been maintained that sun in Whitsuntide has no relation to Sunday, and that the form should be Whitsun-day, Whitsun-week. The history of the word does not support this view. The original Icelandic form was Hvita-daga, Hvitadaga-vika, and it was only at a subsequent period that sunna was incorporated in the term. The adoption and retention of Whitsunday and Whitsuntide are thus satisfactorily accounted for, at least in Iceland. The abandonment of Weisse Sonntag in Germany, &c., and the adoption of Pfingsten, may be explained by the introduction of infant baptism rendering the white robes of the adult neophytes obsolete, and leading them to fall back on the simple numerical expression for the day; whilst in Iceland, isolated during many centuries from much intercourse with Europe, there has always existed a passionate adherence to old customs. There still remains the anomaly of the adoption in England after the Conquest of the term Whitsunday, about the same period that the Germans abandoned its equivalent. The only explanation which appears at all satisfactory is the influence of the Danes and Northmen, who were dominant in England at or a little before that period, and whose speech and habits were identical with those of the Icelanders. I think from the foregoing statements it may be reasonably considered as established— 1. That, as generally happens, the simplest and most obvious explanation is the true one. It is proved from a variety of sources that the Pentecostal Sunday was the "Dominica in Albis"; specially so in the Northern churches, where the term Whitsunday originated. In one country, at least, the illustrations of the custom and the application of the name are abundant and clear. Ceteris paribus the same results might be expected in other countries, even if subsequently altered by other circumstances. 2. If this be so, the other speculations of necessity fall to the ground. As there is not one of them which has the least basis of historical fact to rely on, it seems almost a waste of time to allude to them. The derivation of Whitsun from Pfingsten reminds one of the joke of "cucumber" being derived from "Jeremiah King." It would violate every known law of phonetic change. The original form of Whit was hwit, with the strong guttural * Niðrstigningr Saga. + Forn Sögur. aspirate. If one could suppose any connexion, the derivation would be the other way. This original form of the word equally negatives the derivation from wyt or wysdome, which was a mere fancy thrown out at a time when etymology was little understood. The others, which are mere conjectures without the slightest attempt at proof or illustration, may be passed over. I throw out the above for the candid consideration of those who take an interest in such subjects. J. A. PICTON. Sandyknowe, Wavertree. SHAKSPEARIANA. THE OBELI OF THE GLOBE EDITION IN THE "MERCHANT OF VENICE."-The editors of the Globe edition inform us in their preface that "whenever the original text has been corrupted in such a way as to affect the sense, no admissible emendation having been proposed, or whenever a lacuna occurs too great to be filled up with any approach to certainty by conjecture," they "have marked the passage with an obelus (†).” I find seven passages thus marked in the Merchant of Venice. I think I shall be able to show that in no case was an obelus needed. I take them in their order, placing the mark exactly where it is placed in the Globe. 1. "Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book, I shall have good fortune."-Globe, p. 187, col. 1. A change in punctuation removes the difficulty: "Well! if any man in Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book. I shall have good for tune." Having examined the lines of life in the palm of 2. "And for the Jew's bond which he hath of me, The difficulty seems to have arisen from understanding by "mind" the intellectual faculty. If difficulty. Antonio would not have Bassanio's by "mind we understand thoughts, there is no thoughts of love disturbed by the intrusion of the "bond." |