N, a T is often added; and hence the Dames Burnt, and Brent. Walls, in Saxon, is an inclosure or ruins. Isannavaria, the interpretation of which is at present unknown, as well as the foregoing, is derived from Is, water, in, a diminutive, and Varta, from Bar, or Var, a head or hill. Much has been said by authors on the word Varia; but nothing which I have seen to the purpose. Daventry may be a translation of Isannavaria, from Day, a stream, en a diminutive; and Triath or Traithe, derived from Aithe, a hill, and now pronounced Tri: Tri, or Try, may however mean habitation or town. This land seems to have taken its name partly from the spring on Burrow Hill. Bennaventa, and this station, have been accounted the same place: but of this hereafter. The original site of Isannavaria is on Burrow Hill, which I shall now explain. Burrow is a name which we have every day in our mouths; we have indeed swallowed, but we have never dige-ted it. The words Berry, Bury, Borowe, Borough, and Burrow, have been unknown in their original and various significations to all our writers. I, or Y is Gaelic for little; and the diminutives of Bear, Ber, Bar, and Bur, border, head, &c. in general use, are Berry, and Bury, Berry, when referred to the tops of hills, may be derived from Bearradh. Bir, or Ber, water; and Bar, or Ber, a head, &c.; may also, in composition of names, be found with diminutive endings. Berry, taken for granted as implying top, and being found in names situated in bottoms, has been supposed by Kennett and Spelman, to imply tops and bottoms: but neither of these is implied in this word, further than as means little top, little border, little stream, little bottom, &c. The words Berry, Bury, Borow, Borough, and Burrow, are said to have originally meant hill; but how to account for this, as etymologists have been unacquainted with the roots of words, is unknown. Ber, Bor, and Bur, are then derived, in their roots, from A, a hill, or rising ground; pronounced A, and changed to ar, er, and ur. These roots are from the Gaelic, and imply border, rising ground, or hill; and with B prefixed, the same as before mentioned of Band P: to these if we add the diminu. tive I, or Y, we have the word Berry, or Bury. Bor, or Bur, in Borow, Burrow, or Borough, is derived as before; but Qu, or Ow, is an augment, as in the river named by the Romans Danou, winch we usually write Danube; and the difference between our Berrys and Burrows, is, that the first are small hills, or bills with small tops; and the second are larger ones, or hills with large tops. These, of oid, were fortified, or walled, were places of safety; were accounted castles and camps, from camps of old having been formed upon them; and, in process of time, all fortified, or walled towns, from being places of safety, were named Boroughs. Lastly, boroughs being places of safety, the name was transferred from the pluces to the inhabitants, who became safeguards of eac.: other; and bodies of ten families, who became such safeguards, were at length called boroughs. I have now explained these terms. Tripontium comes next in this route. It has been accounted a Roman name for three bridges. "But it is not to be imagined," says Dr. Stukeley, "that the Romans would make a bridge over this rill, or one so eminently large as to denominate the town." Tri then may be derived from Triath, and this from Aithe, or i, a hill, as mentioned be fore: Pont is an old Ceitic name for point. Rugby is accounted this station by Horseley: it was formerly written Rocheberrie; but the distance of this place from Benonis is too great by the joint concurrence of Antoninus and Richard. Its names too are neither of them a translation of Tripontium. Lilborn is also said, by various authors, to be the place; and here castles, trenches, pavements, &c. are still to be seen: the distance here, indeed, is not so wide as at Rugby, but the present name agrees not with Tripontium. Shaughwell, Showel, or Shovel, is likewise stated to have been this station, and this name might perhaps agree with Tripontium : but the distance here seems too little. At Cathorpe there are said to be remains; and this place, and Lilborn, might originally have been one territory: be this however as it may, we must now attend to Cathorpe only. In composition, roots of words for Land take many consonants as prefixes. As On. Land, therefore takes Din Don; so Or, border or point, takes D in Appledore, and other names of places on borders. Moreover, Ham, border, has a P postfixed in Hamp-shire; in like manner, Dor, used as border or point, has a P postfixed in Dusseldorp: but Dorp, and Thorp, are the same; and each meant originally originally border, point, &c. I have now explained another unknown term. Cathorpe is on the Watling Street, and lies at the proper distance from Benonis. Cau, or Cat, may imply a hill; and either may be synonymous with Tri, in Tripoutium. Thorp has been proved to be a synonyme of Pont, the remainder of this term: Cauthorp, Catthorp, or Cathorp, may therefore be a translation of this station. Lastly. Benonis implies The great Head, or The Head Land; and if Is be not a dative ending, this part of the word may come from Ais, a hill, aud imply fort, or camp. This land I sup pose to be in the parish of Copston, which is a translation of Benon; for it also implies the Top or Head Land. Claychester refers to the exact place of the station, as lying on the cliff or side of the hill. At the place where the fosse crosses the Watling Street, there is erected a handsome obelisk, with a Latin inscription, purporting among other things, that the Venones here kept their quar ters. We are, Mr. Editor, amused by the inscriptions of Sulloniacis and Benones, from the mistakes of ancient terms; but in history and description, we have misconceptions without number, arising from the same cause: we need not erect pillars to perpetuate these. Benon, or Venon, being a name for Head Land, and this being one of the princi pal, if not the chief, in the middle of the kingdom, the name was given from its features. I have now, sir, cleared the way, in part, for shorter explanations; and at some future time will resume my labor. A. B. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, THE HE Augustan age (as it is called) of English literature, produced so many writers of eminence, that those of a second rank were thrown into the shade, and are now prized less than they deserve. I was led to this reflection by perusing the poems of Fenton, who was highly esteemed by Pope, who wrote his epitaph, in which he calls him "an honest man;" of course, according to the same poet, "the noblest work of God.” The poet of whom I am writing, stands higher in my estimation than many who are better known, and oftener read; and as I have no reason to suppose that I differ much in taste from other admirers of poetry, I may justly conMONTHLY MAG. No. 197. clude, that his beauties only require pointing out, to be duly appreciated; this is my motive for these observations. Add to this, I feel myself bound by gratitude to an author who has given me so much pleasure, to attempt the rescue of his works from the neglect they have so unaccountably and undeservedly expe rienced. Every one conversant with English poetry, knows the tameness and stupidity (so well ridiculed by Goldsmith in one of his Essays) which mark the compositions called Pastoral Elegies. Fen ton's Florelio is an admirable exception; in beauty of imagery, richness of colouring, and elegance of expression it is far superior to any poem of the kind I ever read. His Epistles to Lambard and Southerne, possess that easy flow of chaste humour that should always distinguish productions of that description. I shall pass over Fenton's Tales, (only remarking that his "Widow's Will," and "Fair Nun," are equal to the "Hans Carvel," and "Paulo Purganti," of Prior, and his Tale in the manner of Chaucer, superior to that by Pope,) and proceed to notice his odes, which, though few, are excellent; particularly that to the Sun on New-year's Day, the opening stanza of which is equal in grandeur to the commencement of any poem in the world. Begin, celestial source of light, To gild the new-revolving sphere, And, from the pregnant womb of Night, Urge on to birth the infant year. Conspicuous with thy silver bow; And what can be more sublime than the passage (after celebrating the battle' of Blenheim)? Britannia, wipe thy dusty brow, Beautiful too as Gray's Ode to Spring undoubtedly is, it has not a stanza equal to the first of Fenton's to Lord Gower, written in the same season. After having said all this, I may be told that my remarks are unnecessary; for that Fenton's works are in every wellselected library. So, perhaps, are those of Welsted, Ward, and the other heroes of the Dunciad; but I would have the author I am writing of quoted as others are, who are not his superiors in genius. 2 G I will I will conclude with assuring any one, who may be induced by these remarks to read more accurately the mementos of departed genius that occasioned them, that if he has a true taste for poetry, he will find much, very much, in Fenton, to gratify it. R. C. F. For the Monthly Magazine. On an ERRONEOUS NOTION respecting the ORIGIN of SPANISH MARINO SHEEP; and on the FIORIN GRASS. Na reference to my General Trea is reference, pages 282, 133, and 429, I apprehend Mr. Raukin will be convinced of the total want of grounds for that report which has of late been circulated in the public prints, namely, that the Spanish fine-woolled sheep, now in such deservedly high request among us, originated in this country, and were imported by the Spaniards from our Cotteswold or Gloucestershire hills. Mr. Rankin quotes, from John Stowe's Chronicle, the information that in 3464, king Edward permitted the export of certain Cotteswolde sheep to Spain; which the chronicler assigns as the reason for the Spanish staple of wool at Bruges, in Flanders, greatly exceeding our own. Dr. Campbell, in his Political Survey, I have no doubt, grounded his opinion, lately revived, on the paragraph in Stowe which Mr. Rankin has quoted; but I have really forgotten whether the doctor has given his authority. Few historical facts stand better authenticated, than the existence of covered, erythræan, or fine-woolled sheep; and the use of fine wool, in Spain and Italy, during the time of the ancient Romans; on which the curious reader will find ample satisfaction in the pages of Columella. The keeping of travelling flocks of Merino, or Marino sheep, also bears much earlier date than the reign of our Edward, in the fifteenth century, as will appear by consulting the Spanish economical writers. That the Marina sheep (Marino, as originally reaching Spain by sea), are of Grecian, or rather Asiatic origin, will be easily credited an the authority of the ancient writers; and that this country first imported them from Spain some centuries since, is both credible in itself, and attested by foreign if not our native historians. The sheep in question are, like the southern horse, obviously the production of warmer climes, and radically unlike the species of northern Europe. In the memoirs of the ci-devant Royal Society of Agriculture at Rouen in Normandy, it is stated, that in the fif teenth century, our Edward IV. obtained a considerable flock of fine-woolled sheep from Spain, of the king of Castile, which was the original foundation of the excellence of our clothing-wool: that properly qualified persons were appointed to superintend the distribution and management of the Spanish sheep: that two ewes and a ram were sent to every parish in which the pasture was judgeď suitable to such stock; the care of them being entrusted to the must respectable yeomen, on whom particular privileges were, in consequence, conferred: written instractions for the management of these sheep, were also delivered to the shepherds; who were taught to select the finest native ewes for the Spanish cross, in order to the general improvement of our wool. Henry VIII. and queen Elizabeth are said also, on the same authority, to have paid great attention to this important object, in common with another-that of improving the breed of horses. Thus we see, after all this bustle of presumed novelty in the Spanish cross, we have been long since forestalled, nihil sub sole novum; and George II. has been patriotically treading in the footsteps of his predecessor, Edward IV.; whilst so many of our old shepherds have been afraid to venture upon a measure successfully and generally put in practice by their great, great, I know not how many times great, grandsires! What, my good notable, cautious, economical old friend! dare you not pace in that beaten track whence have procceded your South Downs, your old Cotteswolds, and Rylands; and all that now native English fine wool, and fine mutton, to which you are so attached? It is not at all a singular or strange coincidence, that Edward should at the same time import Spanish sheep, and accommodate his good friends of that country with a few English. MarkStowe's Chronicle speaks only of a licence to export certein Cotteswolde sheep,' implying probably a small number, whereas the import from Spain appears to have been considerable, might have been practised before the fifteenth cen tury, and in ali probability really was long afterwards. I have been thus far speaking of facts: now for a conjecture; an uncertain however, and speculative commodity, in which I do not generally affect to deal. The king of Castile having accommo dated dated brother Edward with fine and short-woolled sheep, the latter royal shepherd might have obliged the former with a specimen of the produce of his Country-the long and coarse-woolled. It was a very fair and obvious compliment. In the coinage, I think, of the late lord Sandwich, there was reciprocity in the thing. I should not indeed wonder, if the staple adverted to by Stowe, at Bruges, was of the coarsewoolled kiud; and that the Spaniards were emulous of excelling in that fabric likewise, since they have ever had long and coarse as well as fine and shortwoolled sheep, the former most probably the indigenous sheep of their country; and that it might, at that period, be desirable to improve their breed by an English cross. And this notion of mine, (as such merely I give it,) is in some sort confirmed by my old friend Gervase Markham, who flourished in the reign of Elizabeth; and who represents the Cot. teswolde-hill sheep, in contradistinction to those of Herefordshire, bearing the Lempster ore, or fine fleece, as of better bone, shape, and burden, than the others, but with wool of a staple coarser and deeper. As to Mr. Rankin's enquiry respecting the Cotteswold breed, nothing is more easy than to satisfy it: but he must previously be apprised, that we farmers and stock-breeders change our breeds of cattle, sheep, and pigs, from great to small, from small to great, from fine to coarsewoolled, from short to long-horned, from long and lop-eared to prick-eared and pug, and so on, in circles; not quite so often indeed, but much upon the same principle on which the cut of a coat, or the cock of a hat, is changed in Bondstreet. Thus old Gervase above quoted, and I think his cotemporary, Barnabe Goge (who, by the bye, also wrote very harmonious English verses, and perfectly correct as to measure), both found the Cotteswold-hill sheep a large and coarsewoolled breed. Thenceforth, but my reading does not extend to the precise date, the Cotteswold farmers made a chop, generally adopting fine-woolled sheep: and such they have been within my memory, a breed similar to the Ry. lands of Herefordshire; always, and at present, the finest native breed of England, and best adapted to the Spanish cross. Some thirty or forty years since, the Gloucester breeders made another chop, tupping their fine-woolled ewes with large and long-woolled midland country rams, on the occasion probably of improving in the quality of the food in their district. So they have at length returned to Markham's large boney breed, with a deep-stapled, or longwoolled, fleece. As the learned Francis Moore said, omnium rerum vicissitudo; which will be farther exemplified as soon as the abovesaid shepherds shall come to the right or left about again, by the adoption of the old new-fashioned Spanish cross. I have taken the pains to write, or rather repeat, thus much, in order to check a report which seemed growing undeservedly into public favour, carrying a bit of prejudice with it. For, under favour be it spoken, we have perhaps enough already of those happy national prejudices, which have so generally procured us the admiration and the love of all other nations; and it may not be politic to surfeit them with good things. And yet after all, and notwithstanding my immense and humble respect for those sages of the ancient, and more especially of the modern school, who' profess to find so much benefit to the moral world from the sly retention and cherishment of prejudices, I am too blind, or my brains are of too coarsewoolled a texture, to perceive this mighty benefit, or any benefit whatever. Econtrario, I opine, and must continue to opine, until the happy moment of conviction cometh, that false prejudices in the moral, as well as weeds in the agricultural world, ought to suffer a total and sweeping, if necessarily a gradual, eradication. And as a certain honest old whig said of yore, he would not leave a tory dog, or a tory cat, to pur and mew about the king; neither would I, who am neither whig nor tory, leave a single erroneous prejudice, to humbug and mislead besotted man. My creed, religious and moral, will admit of but one prejudice-in favour of truth, and no matter how strong that be. As to what and where truth is-seek and ye shall find. In conclusion, with a suitable gravity, I say to those who venture into the profound and erudite subjects above agitated, "Drink deep, or taste not, the bucolic spring." Somers Town, JOHN LAWRENCE. March 18. P. S. I wish to add a few words on the Fiorin Grass. Mr. Farey says correctly, that the late Mr. Davis supposed the Orcheston and long grass of Wiltshire, to be the same species as the forin; the correctness of which have not for many years seen either of these opinion appears to me a subject of doubt. I grass.sa grasses, and that which I have to say upon them is from the report of others I scarcely tsink that the Orcheston grass would grow on any dry or barren uplai siuation, which we are assured of the fiorin. Upwards of eight tons of nay from an English acre of land, is doubtless a vast produce, in respect of hulk and weight; but if the quality be hard, pipy, and innutritious, the eight tons in quantity may, in consumption, dwindle to less than a single ton in quality. Certainly however, watered land would have the favourable effect of softening a too harsh grass. I profess to have no experience in this article; but a friend of mine lately assured me, that from its coarseness, the fiorin grass is unworthy of cultivation; and I understood him to speak from experiment. The fate of Guinea and other grasses, formerly recommended with so much zeal, is well known. In truth, there are hardy and bulky grasses enough to be found, were they, on comparison with those we have of real use, worthy of cultivation. We have even had the culture of thistles recont mended of late years, by a learned doctor. I desire only to guard the public, by no means to check the experimental culture of the fiorin grass; one good and nutritious crop of which will, as it ought, overturn these my speculations: and in cases like this, I shall ever feel happy to find myself in an error. J. L. MEMOIRS AND REMAINS OF EMINENT PERSONS. MEMOIRS of the LIFE and WRITINGS of inclination for that particular branch of study to which he afterward attached himself. PAUL the late M. BITAUBE. AUL Jeremiah Bitaubé was born at Konigsberg, on the 24th of November 1732, of one of those families of French refugees whom the revocation of the edict of Nantes had dispersed over different parts of Europe, and who had particularly enriched the protestant countries of Germany. Prussia was one of the earliest in receiving, and afford. ing a settlement to some of these wandering colonies, who every where repaid their reception by introducing with them a spirit of industry, the cultivation of the arts and sciences, morality, and good examples. Accordingly she was not long in reaping the harvest of her benevolent hospitality: for though, previously to that period, less advanced than most other states in the progress of civilisation, she too afterwards enjoyed an enlightened age; and under Frederic the Great, who gave his name to this age, the north of Europe was illumined by one of those bright sunshines of genius which only break forth upon nations at distant intervals: nor can it be denied that the excitement and emulation produced by the new-settlers hastened its dawn, and increased its meridian splendour. As the refugees did not enjoy the rights of citizenship in Prussia, M. Bitaubé, when he had finished his course of studies, and was of an age to choose a profession, had only an option between trade (which his father pursued), medicine, and the church. As he had early imbibed a taste for literature, he made choice of the last; and perhaps it was this decision that also determined his An assiduous perusal of the bible, which in all protestant countries forms one of the principal foundations of pulpit-eloquence, gave M. Bitaubé an early familiarity with the simple and sublime images of that primitive state of mankind, of which the sacred writings offer so many and such inimitable models. In recurring to this source for the elements of religious knowledge, he had been struck with admiration at the accents of that poetry which, by sounds more noble and affecting than those of any profane lyre, announce a divine origin; and bespeak a master "whose brows," to use the expressions of Tasso, "instead of the perishable laurels of Hencon, are crowned with unfading stars amidst the celestial choirs." After having enjoyed the advantage of forming a taste in this elevated school of poetry, the mind is naturally disposed to feel the powerful charms of the works of Homer, and the other early productions of Greece. The manners of the patriarchal, instruct us in those of the heroic ages. These great pictures, in which man is shewn in a state of bold and majestic simplicity, undisfigured by the artificial gloss of a late stage of civilisation, shew most forcibly in how high a degree the times celebrated by the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey were favourable to poetical imitation. All that is known concerning the early years of M. Bitaubé, is drawn from some of his works composed at a more advanced age, among which he occasionally indulges in recollections of his youthful |