Bath, April 18.
_Criston_ (Vol. iii., p. 278.).--There is a small village in Somersetshire
called Christon, about five miles N.W. of Axbridge.
C. I. R.
_Tradesmen's Signs_ (Vol. iii., p. 224.).--In the delightful little volume
on Chaucer, in Knight's shilling series, entitled _Pictures of English
Life_, the author has the following on the Tabard, at p. 19.:--
"The sign and its supports were removed in 1776, when all such
characteristic features of the streets of London in the olden time,
disappeared _in obedience to a parliamentary edict_ for their
destruction."
It would appear, however, by the subsequent quotation from Brand's
_Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 359., that the edict above referred to was not
carried into execution against all signs; or that, if so, it was soon
repealed:--
"Lord Thurlow, in his speech for postponing the further reading of the
Surgeons' Incorporation Bill, July 17th, 1797, stated 'that by a
statute still in force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a
pole.'"
R. W. E.
Cor. Chr. Coll., Cambridge.
_Emendation of a Passage in Virgil_ (Vol. iii., p. 237.).--The emendation
of SCRIBLERUS is certainly objectionable, and by no means satisfactory, for
these reasons:--1st. "Ac sunt in spatio" is by no means elegant Latin,
which "addunt se in spatia" is; for the word "addunt" is constantly used in
the same way elsewhere.
2nd. The word "spatium" is seldom used to signify a chariot course.
"Spatia," the plural, was the proper expression, and is only so deviated
from in poetry in a single instance. (Juv. _Sat._ vi. 582.) It is used in
{358} the plural in Virg. _AEn_. v. 316. 325. 327.; Statius, _Theb._ vi.
594.; Horace, _Epist._ 1. xiv. 9.
_Vide_ Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, under art. Circus, p. 232.
Surely there is nothing unintelligible in the expression, "addunt se in
spatia," which is the reading given in almost all the best editions.
J. E. M.
* * * * *
Miscellaneous.
NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.
Archdeacon Cotton, whose endeavours to ascertain and record the succession
of the Prelates and Members of the Cathedral Bodies in Ireland are probably
known to many of our readers (at least, by the Queries which have appeared
in our Columns), has just completed his _Fasti Ecclesiae Hiberniae_, in 4
vols. 8vo. From the nature of the work, it is obvious that it could never
have been u
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