om inquiries made in the neighbourhood, that the name of
Claridge is still common at Hanwell, a small village near Banbury--that
"land o'cakes,"--and that last century there was a John Claridge, a
small farmer, resident there, who died in 1758, and who might have been
a grandson of the "far-famed," but unjustly defamed, "shepherd of
Banbury."

_Apropos_ of the "cakes" for which this flourishing town has long been
celebrated, I beg to inform your correspondent ERICA (Vol. vii., p.
106.) and J. R. M., M.A. (p. 310.) that there is a receipt "how to make
a very good Banbury cake," printed as early as 1615, in Gervase
Markham's _English Hus-wife_.

W. B. RYE.

* * * * *

NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS.

(_Continued from_ p. 353.)

_To miss_, to dispense with. This usage of the verb being of such
ordinary occurrence, I should have deemed it superfluous to illustrate,
were it not that the editors of Shakspeare, according to custom, are at
a loss for examples:

"We cannot _miss_ him."

_The Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2. (where see Mr. Collier's note, and
also Mr. Halliwell's, Tallis's edition).

"All which things being much admirable, yet this is most, that
they are so profitable; bringing vnto man both honey and wax,
each so wholesome that we all desire it, both so necessary that
we cannot _misse_ them."--_Euphues and his England._

"I will have honest valiant souls about me;
I cannot _miss_ thee."

Beaumont and Fletcher, _The Mad Lover_, Act II. Sc. 1.

"The blackness of this season cannot _miss_ me."

The second _Maiden's Tragedy_, Act V. Sc. 1.

"All three are to be had, we cannot _miss_ any of them."--Bishop
Andrewes, "A Sermon prepared to be preached on Whit Sunday, A.D.
1622," _Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology_, vol. iii. p. 383.

"For these, for every day's dangers we cannot _miss_ the
hand."--"A Sermon preached before the King's Majesty at
Burleigh, near Oldham, A.D. 1614," _Id._, vol. iv. p. 86.

"We cannot _miss_ one of them; they be necessary all."--_Id._,
vol. i. p. 73.

It is hardly necessary to occupy further room with more instances of so
familiar a phrase, though perhaps it may not be out of the way to
remark, that _miss_ is used by Andrewes as a substantive in the same
sense as the verb, namely, in vol. v. p. 176.: the more usual form being
_misture_, or, earlier, _mister_. Mr