EDWARD F. RIMIBAULT.
[Some additional and curious
allusions to this probably mythic
virago are recorded in Mr.
Halliwell’s Descriptive Notices of
Popular English Histories,
printed for the Percy Society.]
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A NOTE ON SPELLING.—“SANATORY,” “CONNECTION.”
I trust that “NOTES AND QUERIES” may, among many other benefits, improve spelling by example as well as precept. Let me make a note on two words that I find in No. 37.: sanatory, p. 99., and connection, p. 98.
Why “sanatory laws?” Sanare is to cure, and a curing-place is, if you like, properly called sanatorium. But the Latin for health is sanitas, and the laws which relate to health should be called sanitary.
Analogy leads us to connexion, not connection; plecto, plexus, complexion; flecto, flexus, inflexion; necto, nexus, connexion, &c.; while the termination ction belongs to words derived from Latin verbs whose passive participles end in ctus as lego, lectus, collection; injecio, injectus, injection; seco, sectus, section, &c.
CH.
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Minor Notes.
Pasquinade on Leo XII.—The Query put to a Pope (Vol. ii., p. 104.), which it is difficult to believe could be put orally, reminds me of Pope Leo XII., who was reported, whether truly or not, to have been the reverse of scrupulous in the earlier part of his life, but was remarkably strict after he became Pope, and was much disliked at Rome, perhaps because, by his maintenance of strict discipline, he abridged the amusements and questionable indulgences of the people. On account of his death, {132} which took place just before the time of the carnival in 1829, the usual festivities were omitted, which gave occasion to the following pasquinade, which was much, though privately, circulated—
“Tre cose mat fecesti, O Padre santo:
Accettar
il papato,
Viver
tanto,
Morir
di Carnivale
Per
destar pianto.”
J. Mn.
Shakspeare a Brass-rubber.—I am desirous to notice, if no commentator has forestalled me, that Shakspeare, among his many accomplishments, was sufficiently beyond his age to be a brass-rubber:
“What’s
on this tomb
I cannot read; the character I’ll
take with wax.”
Timon of Athens, v. 4.
From the “soft impression,” however, alluded to in the next scene, his “wax” appears rather to have been the forerunner of gutta percha than of heel-ball.
T.S. LAWRENCE.
California.—In the Voyage round the World, by Captain George Shelvocke, begun Feb. 1719, he says of California (Harris’s Collection, vol. i. p. 233.):—