Читать книгу: «Notes and Queries, Number 24, April 13, 1850», страница 6

Various

Шрифт:

C.B.

Gray's Elegy.—In reply to the Query of your correspondent "J.F.M." (No. 7. p. 101.), as well as in allusion to remarks made by others among your readers in the following numbers on the subject of Gray's Elegy, I beg to state that, in addition to the versions in foreign languages of this fine composition therein enumerated, there is one printed among the poem, original and translated, by C.A. Wheelwright, B.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge, published by Longman & Co. 1811. (2d. edition, 1812.) If I mistake not, the three beautiful stanzas, given by Mason in his notes to Gray, viz. those beginning,—

"The thoughtless world to majesty may bow,"
"Hark! how the sacred calm that breathes around,"
"Him have we seen," &c.

(the last of which is so remarkable for its Doric simplicity, as well as being essential to mark the concluding period of the contemplative man's day) have not been admitted into any edition of the Elegy.

With the regard to the last stanza of the epitaph, its meaning is certainly involved in some degree of obscurity, though it is, I think, hardly to be charged with irreverence, according to the opinion of your correspondent "S.W." (No. 10. p. 150.). By the words trembling hope, there can be no doubt, that Petrarch's similar expression, paventosa speme, quoted in Mason's note, was embodied by the English poet. In the omitted version, mentioned in the beginning of this notice, the epitaph is rendered into Alcaics. The concluding stanza is as follows:—

"Utra sepulti ne meritis fane,
Et parce culpas, invide, proloqui,
Spe nunc et incerto timore
Numinis in gremio quiescunt."

ARCHÆUS.

Wiesbaden, Feb. 16. 1850.

Cromwell's Estates (No. 18. p. 277., and No. 21. p. 339.).—I am much obliged to "SELEUCUS" for his answer to this inquiry, as far as regards the seignory of Gower. It also throws a strong light on the remaining names; by the aid of which, looking in Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire, I have identified Margore with the parish of Magor (St. Mary's), hundred of Caldecott, co. Monmouth: and guess, that for Chepstall we must read Chepstow, which is in the same hundred, and the population of which we know was stout in the royal cause, as tenants of the Marquis of Worcester would be.

Then I guess Woolaston may be Woolston (hundred of Dewhurst), co. Gloucester; and Chaulton, one of the Charltons in the same county, perhaps Charlton Kings, near Cheltenham; where again we read, that many of the residents were slain in the civil war, fighting on the king's side.

This leaves only Sydenham without something like a probable conjecture, at least: unless here, too, we may guess it was miswritten for Siddington, near Cirencester. The names, it is to be observed, are only recorded by Noble; whose inaccuracy as a transcriber has been shown abundantly by Carlyle. The record to which he refers as extant in the House of Commons papers, is not to be found, I am told.

Now, if it could be ascertained, either that the name in question had been Cromwell's, or even that they were a part of the Worcester estates, before the civil war, we should have the whole list cleared,—thanks to the aid so effectually given by "SELEUCUS'S" apposite explanations of one of its items.

Will your correspondents complete the illustrations thus well begun?

V.

Belgravia, March 26.

MISCELLANIES

Franz von Sickingen.—Your correspondent "S.W.S." (No. 21. p. 336.) speaks of his having had some difficulty in finding a portrait of Franz Von Sickingen; it may not therefore, by uninteresting to him to know (if not already aware of it) that upon the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Treves, is a monument of Richard Von Greifenklan, who defended Treves against the said Franz; and upon the entablature are portraits of the said archbishop on the one side, and his enemy Franz on the other. Why placed there it is difficult to conceive, unless to show that death had made the prelate and the robber equals.

W.C.

BODY AND SOUL

(From the Latin of Owen.)

The sacred writers to express the whole,
Name but a part, and call the man a soul.
We frame our speech upon a different plan,
And say "somebody," when we mean a man.
Nobody heeds what everybody says,
And yet how sad the secret it betrays!

RUFUS.

"Laissez faire, laissez passer."—I think your correspondent "A MAN IN A GARRET" (No. 19. p. 308.) is not warranted in stating that M. de Gournay was the author of the above axiom of political economy. Last session Lord J. Russell related an anecdote in the House of Commons which referred the phrase to an earlier date. In the Times of the 2nd of April, 1849, his Lordship is reported to have said, on the preceding day, in a debate on the Rate-in-Aid Bill, that Colbert, with the intention of fostering the manufactures of France, established regulations which limited the webs woven in looms to a particular size. He also prohibited the introduction of foreign manufactures into France. The French vine-growers, finding that under this system they could no longer exchange their wine for foreign goods, began to grumble. "It was then," said his Lordship, "that Colbert, having asked a merchant what he should do, he (the merchant), with great justice and great sagacity, said, 'Laissez faire et laissez passer'—do not interfere as to the size and mode of your manufactures, do not interfere with the entrance of foreign imports, but let them compete with your own manufactures."

Colbert died twenty-nine years before M. de Gournay was born. Lord J. Russell omitted to state whether Colbert followed the merchant's advice.

C. ROSS.

College Salting and Tucking of Freshmen (No. 17. p. 261., No. 19. p. 306.).—A circumstantial account of the tucking of freshmen, as practised in Exeter College, oxford, in 1636, is given in Mr. Martyn's Life of the First Lord Shaftesbury, vol. i. p. 42.

"On a particular day, the senior under-graduates, in the evening, called the freshmen to the fire, and made them hold out their chins; whilst one of the seniors, with the nail of his thumb (which was left long for that purpose), grated off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and then obliged him to drink a beer-glass of water and salt."

Lord Shaftesbury was a freshman at Exeter in 1636; and the story told by his biographer is, that he organised a resistance among his fellow freshmen to the practice, and that a row took place in the college hall, which led to the interference of the master, Dr. Prideaux, and to the abolition of the practice in Exeter College. The custom is there said to have been of great antiquity in the college.

The authority cited by Mr. Martyn for the story is a Mr. Stringer, who was a confidential friend of Lord Shaftesbury's, and made collections for a Life of him; and it probably comes from Lord Shaftesbury himself.

C.

Byron and Tacitus.—Although Byron is, by our school rules, a forbidden author, I sometimes contrive to indulge myself in reading his works by stealth. Among the passages that have struck my (boyish) fancy is the couplet in "The Bride of Abydos" (line 912),—

"Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease!
He makes a solitude, and calls it—peace!"

Engaged this morning in a more legitimate study, that of Tacitus, I stumbled upon this passage in the speech of Galgacus (Ag. xxx.),—

"Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem adpellant."

Does not this look very much like what we call "cabbaging?" If you think so, by adding it to the other plagiarisms of the same author, noted in some of your former numbers, you will confer a great honour on

A SCHOOLBOY.

The Pardonere and Frere.—If Mr. J.P. Collier would, at some leisure moment, forward, for your pages, a complete list of the variations from the original, in Smeeton's reprint of The Pardonere and Frere, he would confer a favour which would be duly appreciated by the possessors of that rare tract, small as their number must be; since, in my copy (once in the library of Thomas Jolley, Esq.), there is an autograph attestation by Mr. Rodd, that "there were no more than twenty copies printed."

G.A.S.

Mistake in Gibbon (No. 21. p. 341.).—The passage in Gibbon has an error more interesting than the mere mistake of the author. That a senator should make a motion to be repeated and chanted by the rest, would be rather a strange thing; but the tumultuous acclamations chanted by the senators as parodies of those in praise of Commodus, which had been usual at the Theatres (Dio), were one thing; the vote or decree itself, which follows, is another.

There are many errors, no doubt, to be found in Gibbon. I will mention one which may be entertaining, though I dare say Mr. Milman has found it out. In chap. 47. (and see note 26.), Gibbon was too happy to make the most of the murder of the female philosopher Hypatia, by a Christian mob at Alexandria. But the account which he gives is more shocking than the fact. He seems not to have been familiar enough with Greek to recollect that 'ανειλον means killed. Her throat was cut with an oyster-shell, because, for a reason which he has very acutely pointed out, oyster-shells were at hand; but she was clearly not "cut in pieces," nor, "her flesh scraped off the bones," till after she was dead. Indeed, there was no scraping from the bones at all. That they used oyster-shells is a proof that the act was not premeditated. Neither did she deserve the title of modest which Gibbon gives her. Her way of rejecting suitors is disgusting enough in Suidas.

C.B.

Public Libraries.—In looking through the Parliamentary Report on Libraries, I missed, though they may have escaped my notice, any mention of a valuable one in Newcastle-on-Tyne, "Dr. Thomlinson's;" for which a handsome building was erected early last century, near St. Nicholas Church, and a Catalogue of its contents has been published. I saw also, some years ago, a library attached to Wimborne Minster, which appeared to contained some curious books.

The Garrison Library at Gibraltar is, I believe, one of the most valuable English libraries on the continent of Europe.