Notes and Queries, Number 170, January 29, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc

In Short

Notes and Queries is a Victorian periodical designed as a public clearinghouse for literary men, artists, and antiquarians to exchange obscure facts, folklore, and historical corrections. It moves from detailed inquiries about ancient charters and Shakespearean textual variants to folk remedies for the hooping-cough and early photographic techniques. The volume endures as a fascinating mirror of nineteenth-century intellectual curiosity, capturing the precise, eccentric debates of scholars who pursued arcane knowledge with meticulous enthusiasm long before the age of digital search engines.

The Story

The volume opens with deep scholarly investigations into Scottish history, examining Robertson's Index of Charters and the preservation of ancient national records. From these institutional foundations, the text transitions into lively literary disputes, such as George Daniel's critique of the shifting ways editors have handled the text and bed of Shakespeare, comparing successive scholars to competing physicians administering dubious cures.

The inquiry broadens into etymological and historical puzzles, exploring the origins of the word Yankee, the geographical location of ancient meteoric stones in Thrace, and the long-standing political friction surrounding American fisheries off Cape Cod. Interspersed among these high-minded debates are rich segments of regional folk lore, documenting domestic cures for the hooping-cough involving blackberries and donkeys, alongside minor historical notes concerning Nostradamus and the Orkney Islands held in pawn.

As the volume progresses, correspondents debate specific textual cruxes, dissecting a notoriously difficult line from Henry VIII and reviewing Sir Henry Wotton's advice to Milton. The exchange shifts toward early media history with records of English comedians performing in the Netherlands during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, complete with municipal council decrees and payments made in French wine.

Further scholarly friction arises around historical calculation, notably a sharp correction of Robert Southey's calendar blunder regarding St. Mathias' Day in leap-year, which leads into a dense technical breakdown of Roman bissextile naming conventions. The volume moves toward its conclusion through a dense catalog of minor queries and replies concerning historical portraits of Martha Blount, the presence of the gorse in Scandinavia, and the botanical rarity of mistletoe growing on oak trees. It finally closes with extensive lists of desiderata—books and odd volumes sought by collectors—alongside period advertisements for early photographic chemicals, scientific treatises, and household elixirs, rounding out a complete snapshot of Victorian intellectual life.

How It Unfolds

• The scholarly foundation — The volume begins with rigorous investigations into medieval Scottish charters and archival preservation, establishing a tone of serious historical inquiry.
• The medical satire of letters — A theatrical ballad reimagines generations of Shakespearean editors as conflicting physicians bleeding and purging a sickly poet.
• The collection of folklore — Country remedies for the hooping-cough and localized earthworks sit alongside international queries on American fisheries and colonial history.
• The textual cross-examination — Contributors debate obscure lines in Shakespeare and parse the epistolary warnings exchanged between historical literary figures.
• The theatrical archives — Municipal records from Dutch towns reveal the administrative conditions imposed upon traveling English actors abroad.
• The calendar correction — A sharp critique unpacks Robert Southey's confusion over Roman leap-year calculations with exhaustive etymological precision.
• The final inventory — The volume concludes with miscellaneous notes on natural history, rare book desiderata, and contemporary trade advertisements.

The People

George Daniel steps forward as a sharp literary critic, diagnosing the textual interventions of past editors with witty medical metaphors. James Cornish contributes a satirical ballad that personifies generations of scholars—including Johnson, Warburton, and Steevens—as competing doctors attempting to cure a bedridden Shakespeare.

W. W., a frequent correspondent based in Malta, drives many of the international and historical inquiries, probing everything from American fisheries to rare sixteenth-century maps. J. Emerson Tennent appears as an official and topographer struggling to balance parliamentary duties with his forthcoming history of Ceylon.

W. D. V. acts as an archival excavator, unearthing municipal treasurer accounts and council minutes from Utrecht and Leyden that document the travels of early English comedians. A. E. B. serves as a meticulous calendar theorist, stepping in to correct Robert Southey's historical misunderstandings of Roman timekeeping with deep structural authority.

Finally, figures like James Graves and Thomas Lawrence engage in a gritty antiquarian debate over the practical mechanics of primitive cooking vessels, contrasting organic gourds and bamboo against the grim historical lore of drinking from human skull-cups.

In Its Own Voice

"Doctor Pope to incision at once did proceed, And the Bard for the simples he cut; For his regular practice was always to bleed, Ere the fees in his pocket he put."

James Cornish uses this stanza in a satirical ballad to mock the intrusive editorial habits of early Shakespearean critics.

"The gourd is probably the original vessel for heating water, &c. &c., its exterior being kept moistened by water while on the fire, as still practised by some people..."

Thomas Lawrence introduces technical citations from hydraulic literature to support the feasibility of primitive cooking methods in ancient debates.

"To certain English Comedians, for their playing at the town-hall, eight quarts of French wine."

W. D. V. quotes directly from the treasury accounts of Utrecht to document the official municipal reception of traveling players in 1597.

What It's Really About

The volume explores the democratization of scholarship through shared correspondence, arguing that history and literature are built collectively rather than in isolation. It investigates how textual errors propagate across centuries through careless editing, misremembered facts, and institutional neglect. Beneath the surface of the plotless inquiries lies a deeper preoccupation with provenance: how we verify the authenticity of a charter, a folk remedy, an etymology, or a scrap of verse. It questions the reliability of historical memory, demonstrating how local traditions, physical artifacts like meteoric stones, and marginalia in old prayer books serve as anchors against time. Ultimately, it champions the notion that no item of human inquiry—whether an Elizabethan actor's permit or a recipe for cough syrup—is too small for preservation.

Why Read It Today

Readers who love browsing through secondhand bookshops, antique footnotes, and the eccentric margins of history will find infinite pleasure in these pages. Reading it feels like sitting in a quiet, lamp-lit Victorian reading room while invisible scholars pass handwritten slips of paper back and forth across tables, each eager to correct an ancestor or rescue a forgotten phrase from oblivion.

Modern readers must navigate its distinct nineteenth-century density, where Latin tags go untranslated, references assume a classical education, and long paragraphs of unyielding typography demand patient attention. Yet the reward is an unfiltered intimacy with a lost intellectual culture. It stays with you not for a dramatic narrative arc, but for the sheer charm of its human eccentricities—the realization that two hundred years ago, intelligent people cared just as passionately about the origin of a slang word or the habits of a seventeenth-century poet as we do today.