lignity, I will declare the cause of the change
in question. Born the thirteenth child of my family, and the second of
my brothers in it, I bore, for the purpose of being distinguished from
them, according to the custom of Beance, the name of a village in which
my father {336} possessed some landed property. This village was called
Ouarville, and Ouarville became the name by which I was known in my own
country. A fancy struck me that I would cast an English air over my
name, and therefore I substituted, in the place of the French diphthong
_ou_, the _w_ of the English, which has the same sound. Since this
nominal alteration, having put it as a signature to my published works
and to different deeds, I judged it right to preserve it. If this be a
crime, I participate in the guilt of the French _literati_, who, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, made no scruple whatsoever of
_grecising_ or (if we may use the expressions) _latinising_ their
appellations. _Arouet_, to escape from a reproachful pun upon his name,
changed it into that of _Voltaire_. The _Anglomania_ (if such it may be
called) has occasioned me to alter mine; not, as it has been pretended,
to draw in dupes, or to avoid passing for the son of my father, since I
have perpetually borne, signed, and printed the name of my father after
that second name which was given to me according to the custom of my
country."

There are many other interesting particulars, but the above is all that
bears upon his adoption of the name Warville, and will, perhaps, be
considered pretty conclusive.

N. J. A.

"_Branks_," (Vol. ix., p. 149.).--In Wodrow's _Biographical Collections_,
vol. ii. p. 72., under the date June 15, 1596, will be found the following:

"The Session (of Glasgow) appoint jorgs and _branks_ to be made for
punishing flyters."

I cannot at this moment refer particularly, but I know that the word is to
be found in Burns' _Poems_ in the sense of a rustic bit or bridle. The term
is still in use in the west of Scotland; and country horses, within the
memory of many, were tormented with the clumsy contrivance across their
noses. With all its clumsiness it was very powerful, as it pressed on the
nostrils of the animal: its action was somewhat like that of a pair of
scissors.

L. N. R.

_Theobald le Botiller._ (Vol. viii., p. 367.).--If MR. DEVEREUX refers to
Lynch on _F