where. This may be easily accounted
for by the feeling that modern as well as ancient authors have, viz., that
of laziness and inertness; revising the first 100 pages carefully, but
decreasing from that point. But to return: Later editors, I conceive,
erased the word Thurium used by Herodotus, who was piqued and vexed at his
native city, and substituted, or restored, Halicarnassus; not, however,
changing the text.

A learned friend of mine wished for the bibliographical history of the
classics. I told him then, as I tell the readers of the "NOTES AND QUERIES"
now, "Search for that history in the pages of the classics themselves;
extend to them the critical spirit that is applied to our own Chaucer,
Shakspeare, and Milton, and your trouble will not be in vain. The history
of any book (that is the general history of the gradual development of its
ideas) is written in its own pages." In truth, the prose classics deserve
as much attention as the poems of Homer.

KENNETH R. H. MACKENZIE.

January 20. 1851.

_Herstmonceux Castle_ (Vol. ii., p. 477.).--E. V. asks for an explanation
of certain entries in the Fine Rolls, A.D. 1199 and 1205, which I can, in
part, supply. The first is a fine for having seisin of the lands of the
deceased mother of the two suitors, William de Warburton and Ingelram de
Monceaux. As they claim as joint-heirs or parceners, the land must have
been subject to partibility, and therefore of socage tenure. If the land
was not in Kent, the entry is a proof that the exclusive right of
primogeniture was not then universally established, as we know it was not
in the reign of Henry II. See _Glanville_, lib. vii. cap. 3.

The next entry records the fine paid for suing out a writ _de rationabili
parte_ against (_versus_) one of the above coheirs. The demandant is either
the same coheir named above, viz. Ingelram, altered by a clerical error
into Waleram,--such errors being of common occurrence, sometimes from
oscitancy, and sometimes because the clerk had to guess at the extended
form of a contracted name,--or he is a descendant and heir of Ingelram,
{125} claiming the share of his ancestor. I incline to adopt the former
explanation of the two here suggested. The form of writ is in the Register
of Writs, and corresponds exactly with the abridged note of it in the Fine
Roll. The "esnecia," mentioned in the last entry (not extracted by E. V.),
is the majorat or senior heir's perquisite of the capital mansion. E