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A NOTE OF ADMIRATION!
Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Miss Johanna Baillie, dated October 12, 1825, (Lockhart's Life of Sir W. S., vol. vi. p. 82.), says,—
"I well intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some stern old divine says, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.' There was such a whirl of laking, and boating, and wondering, and shouting, and laughing, and carousing—" [He alludes to his visiting among the Westmoreland and Cumberland lakes on his way home, especially] "so much to be seen, and so little time to see it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I suppose, 'the burning marle' of the infernal regions."
How easily a showy absurdity is substituted for a serious truth, and taken for granted to be the right sense. Without having been there, I may venture to affirm that "Hell is not paved with good intentions, such things being all lost or dropt on the way by travellers who reach that bourne;" for, where "Hope never comes," "good intentions" cannot exist any more than they can be formed, since to fulfil them were impossible. The authentic and emphatical figure in the saying is, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions;" and it was uttered by the "stern old divine," whoever he might be, as a warning not to let "good intentions" miscarry for want of being realized at the time and upon the spot. The moral, moreover, is manifestly this, that people may be going to hell with "the best intentions in the world," substituting all the while well-meaning for well-doing.
J.M.G
Hallamshire.
THE EARL OF NORWICH AND HIS SON GEORGE LORD GORING
As in small matters accuracy is of vital consequence, let me correct a mistake which I made, writing in a hurry, in my last communication about the two Gorings (Vol. ii., p. 65.). The Earl of Norwich was not under sentence of death, as is there stated, on January 8, 1649. He was then a prisoner: he was not tried and sentenced till March.2
The following notice of the son's quarrels with his brother cavaliers occurs in a letter printed in Carte's bulky appendix to his bulky Life of the Duke of Ormond. As this is an unread book, you may think it worth while to print the passage, which is only confirmatory of Clarendon's account of the younger Goring's proceedings in the West of England in 1645. The letter is from Arthur Trevor to Ormond, and dated Launceston, August 18, 1645.
"Mr. Goring's army is broken and all his men in disorder. He hates the council here, and I find plainly there is no love lost; they fear he will seize on the Prince, and he, that they will take him: what will follow hereupon may be foretold, without the aid of the wise woman on the bank. Sir John Colepeper was at Court lately to remove him, to the discontent of many. In short, the war is at an end in the West; each one looks for a ship, and nothing more.
"Lord Digby and Mr. Goring are not friends; Prince Rupert yet goes with Mr. Goring, but how long that will hold, I dare not undertake, knowing both their constitutions."
It will be observed that the writer of the letter, though a cavalier, here calls him Mr. Goring, when as his father was created Earl of Norwich in the previous year, he was Lord Goring in cavalier acceptation.
He is indiscriminately called Mr. Goring and Lord Goring in passages of letters by cavaliers relating to the campaign in the West of 1645, which occur in Carte's Collection of Letters (vol. i. pp. 59, 60. 81. 86.).
A number of letters about the son, Lord Goring's proceedings in the West in 1645 are printed in the third volume of Mr. Lister's Life of Lord Clarendon.
The Earl of Norwich's second son, Charles, who afterwards succeeded as second earl, commanded a brigade under his brother in the West in 1645. (Bulstrode's Memoirs, p. 142.; Carte's Letters, i. 116. 121.)
Some account of the father, Earl of Norwich's operations against the parliament in Essex in 1648, is given in a curious autobiography of Arthur Wilson, the author of the History of James I., which is printed in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, book xi. part 5. Wilson was living at the time in Essex.
An interesting fragment of a letter from Goring the son to the Earl of Dorset, written apparently as he was on the point of retiring into France, and dated Pondesfred, January 26, 1646, is printed in Mr. Eliot Warburton's Memoirs of Prince Rupert, iii. 215.
Mr. Warburton, by the way, clearly confounds the father with the son when he speaks of the Earl of Norwich's trial and reprieve (iii. 408.). Three letters printed in Mr. W.'s second volume (pp. 172. 181, 182.), and signed "Goring", are probably letters of the father's, but given by Mr. Warburton to the son.
I perceive also that Mr. Bell, the editor of the lately published Fairfax Correspondence, has not avoided confusion between the father and son. In the first volume of the correspondence relating to the civil war (p. 281.), the editor says, under date January, 1646,—
"Lord Hopton in the meanwhile has been appointed to the command in Cornwall, superseding Goring. Also has been sent off on several negociations to France."
Goring went off to France on his own account; his father was at that time Charles I.'s ambassador at the court of France.
I should like to know the year in which a letter of Goring the son's, printed by Mr. Bell in vol. i. p. 23., was written, if it can be ascertained. As printed, it is dated "Berwick, June 22." Is Berwick right? Is there a bath there? The letter is addressed to Sir Constantine Huygens, and in it is this passage—
"I have now my lameness so much renewed that I cannot come to clear myself; as soon as the bath has restored me to my strength, I shall employ it in his Highness's service, if he please to let me return into the same place of his favour that I thought myself happy in before."
I should expect that this letter was written from France after Goring's abrupt retreat into that country. It is stated that the letter comes from Mr. Bentley's collection.
The Earl of Norwich was in Flanders in November 1569, and accompanied the Dukes of York and Gloucester from Brussels to Breda. (Carte's Letters, ii. 282.)
CH.
If the following account of the Goring family given by Banks (Dormant and Extinct Peerage, vol. iii. p. 575.) is correct, it will appear that the father and both his sons were styled at different times. "Lord Goring," and that they may very easily be distinguished.
"George Goring, of Hurstpierpont, Sussex, the son of George Goring, and Anne his wife, sister to Edward Lord Denny, afterwards Earl of Norwich, was created Baron Goring in the fourth of Charles I., and in the xxth of the same reign advanced to the earldom of Norwich, which had become extinct by the death of his maternal uncle above-mentioned, S.P.M.
"He betrayed Portsmouth, of which he was governor, to the king, and rendered him many other signal services. He married Mary, one of the daughters of Edward Nevill, vith Baron of Abergavenny, and had issue four daughters, and two sons, the eldest of whom, George, was an eminent commander for Charles I., and best known as 'General Goring,' and who, after the loss of the crown to his royal master, retired to the Continent, and served with credit as lieutenant-general to the King of Spain. He married Lettice, daughter of Richard Earl of Cork, and died abroad, S.P., in the lifetime of his father, who survived till 1662, and was succeeded by his only remaining son, Charles Lord Goring, and second Earl of Norwich, with whom, as he left no issue by his wife, daughter of – Leman, and widow of Sir Richard Beker, all his honours became extinct in 1672. He was unquestionably the Lord Goring noticed by Pepys as returning to England in 1660, and not the old peer his father, who, if described by any title, would have been styled 'Earl of Norwich.'"
BRAYBROOKE.
July 1, 1850.
QUERIES
JAMES CARKASSE'S LUCIDA INTERVALLA, AN ILLUSTRATION OF PEPYS' DIARY
I met lately with a quarto volume of poems printed at London in 1679, entitled:
"Lucida Intevalla containing divers miscellaneous Poems written at Finsbury and Bethlem, by the Doctor's Patient Extraordinary."
On the title-page was written in an old hand the native of the "patient extraordinary" and author James Carkasse, and that of the "doctor" Thomas Allen. A little reading convinced me that the writer was a very fit subject for a lunatic asylum; but at page 5, I met with an allusion to the celebrated Mr. Pepys, which I will beg to quote:—
"Get thee behind me then, dumb devil, begone,
The Lord hath eppthatha said to my tongue,
Him I must praise who open'd hath my lips,
Sent me from Navy, to the Ark, by Pepys;
By Mr. Pepys, who hath my rival been
For the Duke's3 favour, more than years thirteen;
But I excluded, he high and fortunate,
This Secretary I could never mate;
But Clerk of th' Acts, if I'm a parson, then
I shall prevail, the voice outdoes the pen;
Though in a gown, this challenge I may make,
And wager win, save if you can, your stake.
To th' Admiral I all submit, and vail—"
The book from which I extract is cropped, so that the last line is illegible. Can the noble editor of Pepys' Diary, or any of your readers, inform me who and what was this Mr. James Carkasse?
W.B.R.
MINOR QUERIES
Epigrams on the Universities.—There are two clever epigrams on the circumstance, I believe, of Charles I. sending a troop of horse to one of the universities, about the same time that he presented some books to the other.
The sting of the first, if I recollect right, is directed against the university to which the books were sent, the king—
"—right well discerning,
How much that loyal body wanted learning."
The reply which this provoked, is an attack on the other university, the innuendo being that the troops were sent there—
"Because that learned body wanted loyalty."
I quote from memory.
Can any of your readers, through the medium of your valuable paper, favour me with the correct version of the epigrams, and with the particular circumstances which gave rise to them?
J. SWANN.
Norwich.
Lammas Day.—Why was the 1st of August called "Lammas Day?" Two definitions are commonly given to the word "Lammas." 1. That it may mean Loaf-mass. 2. That it may be a word having some allusion to St. Peter, as the patron of Lambs.
O'Halloran, however, in his History of Ireland, favours us with another definition; upon the value of which I should be glad of the opinion of some of your learned contributors. Speaking of Lughaidh, he says:—
"From this prince the month of August was called Lughnas (Lunas), from which the English adopted the name Lammas, for the 1st day of August."
J. SANSOM.
Mother Grey's Apples.—At the time I was a little girl,—you will not, I am sure, be ungallant enough to inquire when that was, when I tell you I am now a woman,—I remember that the nursery maid, whose duty it was to wait upon myself and sisters, invariably said, if she found us out of temper—"So, so! young ladies, you are in the sulks, eh? Well, sulk away; you'll be like 'Mother Grey's apples,' you'll be sure to come round again." We often inquired, on the return of fine weather, who Mother Grey was, and what were the peculiar circumstances of the apples coming round?—questions, however, which were always evaded. Now, as the servant was a Cambridge girl, and had a brother a gyp, or bedmaker, at one of the colleges, besides her uncle keeping the tennis court there, I have often thought there must have been some college legend or tradition in Alma Mater, of Mother Grey and her apples. Will any of your learned correspondents, should it happen to fall within their knowledge, take pity on the natural curiosity of the sex, by furnishing its details?
A.M.
Jewish Music.—What was the precise character of the Jewish music, both before and after David? And what variety of musical instruments had the Jews?
J. SANSOM
The Plant "Haemony."—Can any of your readers furnish information of, or reference to the plant Haemony, mentioned in Milton's Comus, l. 638.:—
"—a small unsightly root,
But of divine effect,…
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,
But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil:
—More medicinal is it than that Moly,
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;
He called it Haemony, and gave it me,
And bade me keep it as of sov'reign use
'Gainst all enchantments," &c. &c.
The Moly that Hermes to Ulysses gave, is the wild garlick, [Greek: molu] by some thought the wild rue. (Odyss. b. x. 1. 302.) It is the [Greek: moluza] of Hippocrates, who recommends it to be eaten as an antidote against drunkenness. But of Haemony I have been unable to find any reference among our ordinary medical authorities, Paulus Aeginata, Celsus, Galen, or Dioscorides. A short note of reference would be very instructive to many of the readers of Milton.
J.M. BASHAM.
17. Chester Street, Belgrave Square.
Ventriloquism.—What evidence is there, that ventriloquism was made use of in the ancient oracles? Was the [Greek: pneuma puthonos] (Acts, xvi. 16.) an example of the exercise of this art? Was the Witch of Endor a ventriloquist? or what is meant by the word [Greek: eggastrimuthos] at Isai. xix. 3., in the Septuagint?
"Plutarch informs us," says Rollin (Ancient History, vol. i. p. 65.), "that the god did not compose the verses of the oracle. He inflamed the Pythia's imagination, and kindled in her soul that living light which unveiled all futurity to her. The words she uttered in the heat of her enthusiam, having neither method nor connection, and coming only by starts, to use that expression [Greek: eggastrimuthos] from the bottom of her stomach, or rather from her belly, were collected with care by the prophets, who gave them afterwards to the poets to be turned into verse."
If the Pythian priestess was really a ventriloquist, to what extent was she conscious of the deception she practised?
J. SANSOM.
Statue of French King, Epigram on.—Can any of your readers inform me who was the author of the following epigram, written on the occasion of an equestrian statue of a French king attended by the Virtues being erected in Paris:—
"O la belle statue! O le beau Piedestal!
Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!"
AUGUSTINE.
Lux Fiat.—Who was the first Christian or Jewish writer by whom lux fiat was referred to the creation of the angels?
J. SANSOM.
Hiring of Servants.—At Maureuil, in the environs of Abbeville, a practice has long existed of hiring servants in the market-place on festival days. I have observed the same custom in various parts of England, and particularly in the midland counties. Can any of your correspondents inform me of the origin of this?
