LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 1894.

CONTENT 8.—-No 107.

NOTES:- 66 :- Coaching" and "Cramming," 21- William Hoare, R.A., 23-Hermentrude-Preservation of Genealogies-Dulcarnon, 25-Sir Albert Pell-"Platform "Nelson's Birthplace, 26—Anniversaries, 27.

QUERIES:-"Larvaricus"-Name of Watchmaker-"Riding about of victoring"-"Nuder" "—" Goblin "- John Buckna(e)ll-Lincoln Inventory, 27 -Hester Hawes Prujean Square-Counts Palatine-Monumental BrassesCol. George Twistleton-Fulham Bridge-Sir John Moore -Aldersey-Cromwell and Napoleon, 28-St. WinifredExtraordinary Field-Verses-Little Chelsea-Sir Eustace d'Aubrichecourt-St. Thomas of Canterbury, 29.

REPLIES:-Man with Iron Mask, 29-Thomas Parker, Lord Macclesfield, 30-Macdonell of Glengarry-" Adam," 31 -Devonish: Leoline Jenkins-Roman Daughter-Ivy in America-Institute-"Leaps and bounds"-Lord Chancellor Cowper, 32-Sedan Chair-King Charles and the 1642 Prayer Book-Heads on City Gates-Great Chesterford Church-" Bred and born," 33-Public Execution of Criminals-" Morbleu "-Folk-lore-Dante and Noah's Ark

Hear, hear!" 34-Italian Birdcage Clock-Italian Idiom-Survivors of Unreformed House of CommonsMiss-Mistress-Armorial Bearings, 36-Troy Town-Yeo -Euphues "Sh" and "Tch," 37-Prosecution for Heresy-"Admiral Christ "-" Michery," Thieving, Knavery "To hold tack," 38" Whips "-Epitaph, 39. NOTES ON BOOKS:-Lee's 'Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XXXVII.-Lang's Scott's Quentin Durward-Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno'-Weigall's 'Letters of Lady Burghersh.' Notices to Correspondents.

Notes.

"COACHING" AND "CRAMMING."

Having been repeatedly asked to quote the references in my letter on the above subject in the Athenæum of July 29, 1893, I hope the Editor will allow these extracts to appear in 'N. & Q., especially as (in Dr. J. A. H. Murray's words) the facts adduced in the 'N. E. D.' do not support my theory that "coaching" is of Oxford, and "cramming" (as between the two universities) of Cambridge origin.

The earliest example in the N. E. D.' of the word cramming, applied to reading, is the passage first, I believe, given in Richardson (1836) from Watts's 'Improvement of the Mind' (1741). An earlier instance, in precisely the same sense, is to be found in Locke's 'Conduct of the Understanding' (written about 1697; Locke died October, 1704):

66

They dream on in a constant course of reading and cramming themselves; but not digesting anything, it produces nothing but a heap of crudities."-P. 36 of Mr. Fowler's edition (Clarendon Press).

I have not been able to find any instance of the use of the word again until the appearance of No. 33 of the Microcosm (July 2, 1787):—

"And natural dulness......is crammed with a crude mass of indigested learning; like a green goose at Michaelmas or a mathematical ignoramus before his

examination."

In 1795 appeared the well-known correspondence

The Morning Chronicle had, in 1800, a Cambridge drinking-song, the chorus of which was :— Then lay by your books, lads, and never repine, And cram your attics

With dry mathematics,

But moisten your clay with bumpers of wine.

See Gradus ad Cantabrigiam,' first edition, 1803. Between my first and second letters in the Athenæum (April and May, 1892), I spent an afternoon in the British Museum in a vain search for this edition of the 'Gradus.' I suspected that the passage presently to be quoted-which is found in my own copy of the second edition-would be in it. I could not get at the first edition, however, nor could I get any help from the officials; and I sorely missed the presence of Dr. Garnett, of whose ever-ready help in the early eighties I still cherish a most grateful recollection. Soon after the appearance of my reply to Dr. Murray's letter in the Athenæum, I received a note from but whose name and works were, of course, perDr. Charnock, to whom I was personally a stranger, the first edition (1803) of the Gradus ad Cant.' fectly familiar to me. He kindly referred me to So I determined to search for the work once more, and was delighted to find it newly entered as among the Grenville books. I had completely forgotten that the Grenville Library was separately catalogued. Here is the quotation at last :—

tory to keeping in the schools, or standing examination "To cram-(knowledge is as food, Milton).-Preparafor degrees, those who have the misfortune to have but weak and empty heads are glad to become foragers on others' wisdom; or, to borrow a phrase from Lord Bolingbroke, to keep their magazine well stuff'd by some one of their own standing who has made better use of furnish the most apposite illustration:his time. The following passage from Shakspeare will

You CRAM these words into mine ears against

The stomach of my sense.

'Tempest.' One would think that Milton alluded to a college CRAMtake and SWALLOW DOWN at pleasure (glib and easy) MING, when he spoke of knowledge, for him that will, to which, proving but of bad nourishment in the concoction, as it was heedless in the DEVOURING, puffs up unhealthily, a certain big face of pretended learning." "On Divorce.'

I pointed out in the Athenæum (May, 1892) that R. L. Edgeworth used the term crammer in 1809; and yet the 'N. E. D.' gives as its earliest authority for the word what is practically the same

passage, from Maria Edgeworth's (1813). The 'Patronage' passage, I may add, had previously appeared in Mr. Farmer's Slang and its Analogues,' though neither the 'N. E. D.' nor Dr. Murray, in his letter, says so.

We now come to 1810. In that year appeared Dr. Tatham's 'New Address to the Free Members of Convocation,' from which the 'N. E. D.' quotes. In his letter Dr. Murray_characterizes this as a "technical" quotation. Tatham's use fulfils Dr. Murray's dictum completely; it is certainly both "depreciatory and hostile."" That it did not obtain "technical" currency at Oxford at that date was not the eccentric Rector of Exeter's fault. The thing did not exist in the Oxford of that day, having been successfully guarded against, as is clear from Copleston's pamphlets. The same conclusion is to be drawn from H. H. Drummond's 'Reply to the Edinburgh Review' (1810), where pointed reference is made to Tatham's "strange" epithets. Here is Copleston's use :—

"That specious error that the more there is crammed into a young man's mind, whether it stays there or not, still the wiser he is."- Reply to Edinb. Rev.' (1810), p. 175.

.

Mr. John Hughes, of Oriel College (Sir Walter Scott's "young Oxonian friend, a poet, a draughtsman, and a scholar," see Introd. to Quentin Durward'), the father of His Honour Judge Hughes, writes as follows:

"Of the necessity of the modern system of getting up books for a degree, styled by the young men coaching or cramming,' I cannot presume to offer an opinion; all I can say is that Mr. Copleston's mode of lecturing rendered it a work of supererogation." Memoirs of Bp. Copleston, p. 30. Letter, dated Donnington Priory, March 20, 1851.

And here the imp Digredivus tempts me to notice Dr. Murray's reference to "the new Oxford statute respecting Public Examination introduced three years before," i. e., in 1807, as being careless, if not "misleading." I suppose it was thought good enough when dealing with men of one word, or, more exactly, of one sense of one word.” Í regret that I can lay no claim to such an extreme refinement of specialization. Nearly all the quotations "exhibited" in my letters to the Athenæum were taken in the course of a Sunday afternoon's hunt among books on my own shelves, after reading Mr. Walter Wren's odd account of the invention of "cramming."

"

I had better add here that the common "technical" term at Cambridge, until the century was well on in its teens, was "getting up" books, and the corresponding one at Oxford was "taking up books. In 1817, Mason, of Cambridge, published a portrait of Jemmy Gordon, with the inscription: James Gordon of Cambridge

Who to save from Rustication
Crams the dunce with Declamation.

J. Wright, of Trinity's, ' Alma Mater' appeared

"[At Cambridge] everything which is learnt so as to be produced on paper at a moment's notice is called cram."-Vol. i. p. 47.

"O'Doherty," i. e., Maginn, on the occasion of a visit to Cambridge, sent some verses to Blackwood, from which I quote:

Ours, is no Whigling, chance-cramm'd for an honour That blooms in the Tripos, to fade in the House. Blackwood, viii. p. 375 (1821). Appendix to 'Gradus ad Cant.,' second edition (1824):

"But now comes the time when he is to be ex

amined for the Little Go; and about three weeks before the examination he begins to read. He finds himself unequal to the task without cramming. He, in consequence, engages a private tutor, and buys all the crambooks,"

The Saturday Review, August, 1858, p. 150, is the earliest authority for cram-books in the N. E. D.' -"published for the occasion"-(p. 128).

'Letters from Cambridge' (1828):

"Now to point out the superior utility of a tutor, fresh from the senate-house; such a person will necessarily have crammed [note, "cramming-knowledge in a kind of a metaphysical sense, independent of perception "] a great deal, and this with considerable judgment...... What would you think of a tutor whose whole celebrity depends upon his skill in the art of felicitous cramming, who has attained very high distinctions without a single particle of genius, talent, or ability? Go to him and say, 'I want such and such a place. Very well, sir (he will answer, and take down the J- MSS.); 'very well, you must get up half this page; you see, I have marked it, and (turning over the pages) this short proof here, it is often set; and there's the crepusculum, that you must have by all means.'...... Things were managed differently in the days of cram (for classics have had their cram days too, though they are happily past)."-Pp. 68-72.

The cryptic use of crepusculum in the above passage is not in the N. E. D.'

Dean Alford's 'Life ':

"I think that if I really can cram these, as we Cantabs call it, it will be a very respectable set out in classics."— Letter dated Sept., 1828, p. 35.

"Dec. 2, 1828, at the lecture Evans gave us a quantity of cram about the choruses in the Eumenides.'"-P. 36. "Dec. 12, Evans's lecture all cram about 'Thucydides.'

when I have been writing out cram till I cannot write "May 18, 1830, I shall not easily forget this night, legibly and am brimfull of the examination."-P. 51.