developed into commercial importance in very
modern times. On the verge of the northern
hills there are groups of bleak wild rocks,
bearing the name of Bride Stones, which
are unquestionably Druidical remains. The
Forest of Hardwick, a hunting-ground pos-
sessed by Earl Warrenne, extended on the
western border to Todmorden. What of anti-
quity survives is found chiefly in the place-
names of mountain, township, valley, and
stream; generally, indeed, in the natural
features of the country, and also in the
quaint old homesteads which are still stand-office until his death (thirty-two years).
ing on the slopes of the hills.

Sir Hew Dalrymple of North Berwick, Bart. (1652-1737), was appointed Lord President of the Court of Session in 1698, and held that office until his death (thirty-nine years).

David Erskine, Lord Dun (1670-1758), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1710, and a Lord of Justiciary in 1714. He retired in 1753 (forty-three years).

The borough coat of arms has been designed by Mr. W. Ormerod, of Scaitcliffe Hall. It is not such as an antiquary would have suggested; nevertheless, it is a suitable and excellent conception, especially when we bear in mind that it has been devised for a commercial town. The artist has represented the trade and manufactures of Todmorden, and there is one happy idea at least embodied in this coat of arms in linking together the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York, the newly incorporated borough extending over portions of these two counties. The town hall stands in both Yorkshire and Lancashire. F.

JUDICIAL LONGEVITY.

(See 8th S. xii. 446.)

I HAVE not seen a full report of Lord Esher's remarks on taking leave of Bench and Bar, but I presume that in saying, "I believe it is the longest period of a judge being a judge that has ever been," he meant that he had been a judge for a longer period than any other in England-not Great Britain. Doubtless, also, your correspondent MR. PINK refers to England only when he says that Sir Thomas Parker's tenure of the judicial office is probably the longest on record. Some of the senators of the College of Justice in Scotland have held office for a longer period than either Lord Esher or Sir Thomas Parker. The following examples of judicial longevity in the Court of Sessionthe supreme tribunal in Scotland-may be of interest. It will be observed that all of these occupied the bench for a longer period than the late Master of the Rolls. I have not gone back further than the end of the seventeenth century.

Sir John Maxwell of Pollok (died 1732) was appointed a Judge of the Court of Session in 1699, and in the same year became Lord Justice Clerk. He was removed from the latter office in 1702, but remained a Lord of Session until his death (thirty-three years).

John Elphinstone, Lord Coupar, afterwards fifth Lord Balmerino (1675-1746), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1714, and held

Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton (1692-1766), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1724, and Lord Justice Clerk in 1735. He held office as a judge until his death (forty-two years).

Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Bart. (16931766), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1726, and became Lord Justice Clerk in 1763. He held office until his death (forty years).

Alexander Fraser, Lord Strichen (died 1775), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1730, and held office until his death (fortyfive years).

Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1752, and retired in 1782 (thirty years).

James Veitch, Lord Elliock (died 1793), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1760, and held office until his death (thirty-three years).

James Erskine, Lord Barjarg (died 1796), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1761, and held office until his death (thirty-five years).

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714-1799), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1767, and held office until his death (thirty-two years).

John Campbell, Lord Stonefield (died 1801), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1762, and Lord of Justiciary in 1787. He resigned the latter office, but retained the former until his death (thirty-nine years).

Sir William Miller of Barskimming, Bart., Lord Glenlee (1755-1846), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1795, and resigned office in 1840 (forty-five years).

Adam Gillies, Lord Gillies (1760-1842), was appointed a Lord of Session in 1811, and a Lord of Justiciary in 1812. In 1837 he resigned the latter office, and became a Judge of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland. He appears to have acted as a judge until his death (thirty-one years).

Charles Hope, Lord Granton (1763-1851), was appointed Lord Justice Clerk in 1804, Lord President in 1811, and Lord JusticeGeneral in 1836. He retired in 1841 (thirtyseven years).

David Boyle (1772-1853) was appointed a Lord of Session in 1811, and Lord Justice

Clerk later in the same year. He succeeded writing corresponds to Pope's, that the writer Hope as Lord President and Lord Justice- of the corrected lines was simply an amanuGeneral in 1841. He retired in 1852 (forty-ensis working at Thomson's dictation. Mr. one years).

Sir George Deas, Lord Deas (1804-1887), was appointed a Lord of Session and Judge of Exchequer in 1853, and a Lord of Justiciary in 1854. He resigned in 1885 (thirty-two years).

John Inglis, Lord Glencorse (1810-1891), was appointed Lord Justice Clerk in 1858, and Lord President and Lord Justice-General in 1867. He held office until his death (thirtythree years). J. A. Edinburgh.

To the names of those already given that of the late Hugh Barclay, LL.D., Sheriff Substitute of Perthshire, may be added, as having for a much longer period occupied the bench. He received his appointment in 1829, and retired from office in October, 1883, at the age of eighty-four, the father of the judicial bench in Great Britain, having discharged the onerous and important duties of Judge Ordinary of the large county of Perth for fifty-four years. He did not long enjoy his well-merited rest, having died in the following year. Dulce et venerabile nomen. Few in Scotland were better known or more revered than Sheriff Barclay for his ability as a lawyer, soundness as a judge, and usefulness as a citizen in every good work. He was a multifarious writer, and his legal works are held in much esteem by the profession. Apart from his eminence as a judge and an author, he was one of the most kind-hearted and amiable of men, and justly endeared himself to all who had the privilege of his acquaintance. A. G. REID. Auchterarder.

POPE AND THOMSON.

(See 8th S. xii. 327, 389, 437.)

Collins's argument, which is summarized as follows, is very convincing. He says:—

"What has long, therefore, been represented and circulated as an undisputed fact, namely, that Pope assisted Thomson in the revision of The Seasons,' rests not, as all Thomson's modern editors have supposed, on the traditions of the eighteenth century and on the testimony of authenticated handwriting, but on a mere assumption of Mitford. That the volume in question really belonged to Thomson, and that the corrections are original, hardly admits of doubt, though Mitford gives neither the pedigree nor the history of this most interesting literary relic. It is, of course, possible that the corrections are Thomson's own, and that the differences in the handwriting are attributable to the fact that in some cases he was his own scribe, in others he employed an amanuensis; but the intrinsic unlikeness of the corrections made in the strange hand to his characteristic style renders this improbable. In any case, there is nothing to warrant the assumption that the corrector was Pope."

With the exception of the fact that Mr. Collins expresses doubt as to the internal resemblance between the revised readings of 'The Seasons' and that of Thomson's recognized work, the argument effectually resolves itself into one in favour of Thomson's authorship of the disputed emendations. And I think most students of Thomson will admit that the advance he made from first to last in point of style, as shown especially in "The Castle of Indolence' and in his later dramas, goes far to explain this divergency of manner between the early and later text of "The Seasons.'

In support of Mr. Collins's contention (to my mind, however, already sufficiently strong), I would urge one or two further points of evidence.

1. Thomson, who, despite MR. TOVEY's illadvised gibe, gave no token in the course of his career that he was stamped with dishonesty, declared himself to be his own reviser. In a letter to Lyttelton, 14 July, 1743, he says:—

"Some reasons prevent my waiting upon you immediately; but, if you will be so good as let me know how long you design to stay in the country, nothing shall hinder me from passing three weeks or a month with you before you leave it. In the meantime, I will go on correcting 'The Seasons,' and hope to carry down more than one of them with me.

I AM obliged by, and readers of 'N. & Q.' will value, MR. TOVEY'S careful supplementary account of the disputed MS. readings of 'The Seasons. My object in stating my query in N. & Q.,' however, was more to emphasize the expediency of an additional scrutiny of the calligraphy of the second writer in the revised MS. I was not unaware of MR. TOVEY'S minute and painstaking investigation on the subject, as evinced in his notes to the new Aldine edition of Thomson; but it seemed to me that, in face of all the evidence there adduced, Mr. Churton Collins had completely reduced the crux of the matter to one 2. The vast amount of correction involved of handwriting. I am still inclined to believe, in the revised edition of 'The Seasons' imin the absence of decided proof that the hand-plies a contrast too tremendous with the

If Mitford's theory is to be accepted, Pope ought to have been somehow smuggled into that visit to Hagley; but no record appears of such an extraordinary step.

1735.

4. In the one passage of any length which is noted by MR. TOVEY as corrected to text" of Pope-that including the splendid critical pronouncements on the great English poets in 'Summer,'ll. 1566-1579-internal evidence, it seems to me, decidedly supports the view that the poet who changed it from its original to its present reading was the same as penned the fifty-second stanza of 'The Castle of Indolence' and, in all probability, the vivid and epigrammatic monody on Congreve.

5. A further item of internal evidence appears to be readily drawn from the radical dissimilarity in style between Pope and Thomson. The diction of each is entirely different in descriptive quality; and, although the corrections in question are merely verbal, it is difficult to understand how they could have come appropriately from Pope. I subjoin a passage from Windsor Forest,' and another from the new material of the 1744 edition of "The Seasons.' In the one may be clearly traced the worker in rococo; in the other the creative artist in natural descrip

tion.

Pope writes:

There, interspers'd in lawns and op'ning glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades.
Here in full light the russet plains extend:
There wrapt in clouds the bluish hills ascend.
Even the wild heath displays her purple dyes,
And 'midst the desert fruitful hills arise,
That crowned with tufted trees and springing corn,
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.

'Windsor Forest,' it is true, was published thirty years before the finally revised edition of 'The Seasons'; but Pope, in the rest of his works, never varied from his tinsel delineations of nature. So far as style is concerned, Pope had absolutely nothing in common with this (Spring,' ll. 951-962):—

The bursting prospect spreads immense around;
And snatched o'er hill and dale, and wood and
lawn,

And verdant field, and darkening heath between,
And villages embosomed soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns marked
Of household smoke, your eye, excursive, roams;
Wide-stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
The hospitable genius lingers still,

To where the broken landscape, by degrees
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky, rise.
O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds

It is possible, of course, but not probable,
that Pope may have developed a greater gift
of "natural magic" in his later years; and if
any certainty could be thrown upon his claim
in this question from the matter of hand-
But when there is superadded to all the his-
writing one might be convinced, if surprised.
torical and internal array of evidence against
such a claim the fact that the best authori-
ties at the British Museum to-day, as well as
Prof. Courthope, discredit the plausibility of
the opinion that the handwriting referred to
is Pope's, I think the "suspense" on the whole
subject for which MR. TOVEY pleads is vir-
tually unnecessary.
Edinburgh.

W. B.

SYNTAX OF "NEITHER." Your readers' attention was recently drawn by MR. BAYNE day Review grammar, namely, (8th S. xii. 367) to a choice sample of Satur"neither of whom have......a right." Here the word is observed after the conjunctional pair a pronoun; but erroneous syntax is often "neither......nor." Thus, in a book recently published, Archdeacon Baly's Eur-Aryan Roots,' vol. i., I find two examples of the solecism in question. The first occurs at P. 101, "Neither the Sanscrit nor Zend have omission of the definite article before "Zend" an original name for wine," where also the is noticeable as characteristic of slipshod English. The second is at p. 185: "Neither Vigfusson nor Kluge cite O.N. Hala." I have been told that the author's grammar in the latter passage was disputed while the work was in the press, and that he stoutly defended his phrase, on the ground, to the best of my recollection, that neither and nor are here copulative, the predicate being of two subjects taken together, so that the sentence is equivalent to "Vigfusson and Kluge do not cite."

It is trifling with grammar to assert that these joint particles, neither, nor, are copulative as well as disjunctive. There is but one conjunction which is copulative, namely, and, though or is frequently used with the syntax proper to and, as vel was by Tacitus :

Mox rex vel princeps......audiuntur" (Germania,' xi.). Granted that "Neither À nor B cites" is equivalent to "A and B do not cite," this is no reason for pluralizing the verb. The two sentences are negative forms of different affirmatives, the former being the negation of "Either A or B cites," and the latter the negation of "A and B cite." Nega