Replies to Minor Queries.
Mitigation of Capital Punishment to a Forger (Vol. vii., p. 573.).—If your correspondent H. B. C. really wishes to be released from his hard work in hunting up the truth of my and other narratives of the mitigation of capital punishment to forgers, I shall be happy to receive a note from him with his name and address, when I will give him the name and address of my informant in return. By this means I may be able to relieve his shoulder from a portion of its burden, and myself from any farther imputations of "mythic accompaniments," &c., which are unpalatable phrases even when coming from a gentleman who only discloses his initials.
Alfred Gatty.
Ecclesfield.
Chronograms (Vol. v., p. 585.) and Anagrams (Vol. iv., p. 226).—Though we have ceased to practise these "literary follies," they are not without interest; and you will perhaps think it worth while to add the following to your list:
"Hugo Grotius, his Sophompaneas.
By FranCIs GoLDsMIth."
has no date on the title-page, the real date of 1652 being supplied by the chronogram, which is a better one than most of those quoted in "N. & Q.," inasmuch as all the numerical letters are employed, and it is consequently not dependent on the typography.
James Howell concludes his Parly of Beasts as follows:
"Gloria lausque Deo sæCLorVM in sæcVla sunto.
A chronogrammaticall verse which includes not onely this year, 1660, but hath numericall letters enow [an illustration, by the way, of enow as expressive of number] to reach above a thousand years farther, untill the year 2867."
Query, How is this made out? And are there any other letters employed as numerical than the M, D, C, L, V, and I? If not, I can only make Howell's chronogram equivalent to 1927.
The author, in his German Diet, after narrating the death of Charles, son of Philip II. of Spain, says:
"If you desire to know the yeer, this chronogram will tell you:
fILIVs ante DIeM patrIos InqVIrIt In annos,"
which would represent the date of 1568.
The same work contains an anagram on "Frere Jacques Clement," the murderer of Henry III. of France: "C'est l'enfer qui m'a créé."
J. F. M.
Abigail (Vol. iv., p. 424.; Vol. v., pp. 38. 94. 450.).—Can it be shown that this word was in general use, as meaning a "lady's maid," before the time of Queen Anne. It probably was so used;
but I have always thought it likely that it became much more extensively employed, after Abigail Hill, Lady Masham, became the favourite of that queen. She was, I believe, a poor cousin of Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, and early in life was employed by her in the humble capacity of lady's maid. After she had supplanted the haughty duchess, it is not unlikely that the Whigs would take a malicious pleasure in keeping alive the recollection of the early fortunes of the Tory favourite, and that they would be unwilling to lose the opportunity of speaking of a lady's maid as anything else but an "Abigail." Swift, however, in his use of the word, could have no such design, as he was on the best of terms with the Mashams, of whose party he was the very life and soul.
H. T. Riley.
Burial in unconsecrated Ground (Vol. vi., p. 448.).—Susanna, the wife of Philip Carteret Webb, Esq., of Busbridge, in Surrey, died at Bath in March, 1756, and was, at her own desire, buried with two of her children in a cave in the grounds at Busbridge; it being excavated by a company of soldiers then quartered at Guildford. Their remains were afterwards disinterred and buried in Godalming Church.
H. T. Riley.
"Cob" and "Conners" (Vol. vii., pp. 234. 321.).—These names are not synonymous, nor are they Irish words. It is the pier at Lyme Regis, and not the harbour, which bears the name of the Cob. In the "Y Gododin" of Aneurin, a British poem supposed to have been written in the sixth century, the now obsolete word chynnwr occurs in the seventy-sixth stanza. In a recent translation of this poem, by the Rev. John Williams Ab Ithel, M.A., this word is rendered, apparently for the sake of the metre, "shore of the sea." The explanation given in a foot-note is, "Harbour cynwr from cyn dwfr." On the shore of the estuary of the Dee, between Chester and Flint, on the Welsh side of the river, there is a place called "Connah's Quay." It is probable that the ancient orthography of the name was Conner.
Cob, I think, is also a British word,—cop, a mound. All the ancient earth-works which bear this name, of which I have knowledge, are of a circular form, except a lone embankment called The Cop, which has been raised on the race-course at Chester, to protect it from the land-floods and spring-tides of the river Dee.
N. W. S. (2.)
Coleridge's Unpublished MSS. (Vol. iv., p. 411.; Vol. vi., p. 533.).—Theophylact, at the first reference, inquired whether we are "ever likely to receive from any member of Coleridge's family, or from his friend Mr. J. H. Green, the fragments, if not the entire work, of his Logosophia." Agreeing with your correspondent, that "we can ill afford to lose a work the conception of which engrossed much of his thoughts," I repeated the Query in another form, at the second reference (supra), grounding it upon an assurance of Sara Coleridge, in her introduction to the Biographia Literaria, that the fragment on Ideas would hereafter appear, as a sequel to the Aids to Reflection. Whether this fragment be identical with the Logosophia, or, as I suspect, a distinct essay, certain it is that nothing of the kind has ever been published.
From an interesting conversation I had with Dr. Green in a railway carriage, on our return from the Commemoration at Oxford, I learned that he has in his possession, (1.) A complete section of a work on The Philosophy of Nature which he took down from the mouth of Coleridge, filling a large volume; (2.) A complete treatise on Logic; and (3.) If I did not mistake, a fragment on Ideas. The reason Dr. Green assigns for their not having been published, is, that they contain nothing but what has already seen the light in the Aids to Reflection, The Theory of Life, and the Treatise on Method. This appears to me a very inadequate reason for withholding them from the press. That the works would pay, there can be no doubt. Besides the editing of these MSS., who is so well qualified as Dr. Green to give us a good biography of Coleridge?
C. Mansfield Ingleby.
Birmingham.
Selling a Wife (Vol. vii., p. 602.).—A case of selling a wife actually and bonâ fide happened in the provincial town in which I reside, about eighteen years ago. A man publicly sold his wife at the market cross for 15l.: the buyer carried her away with him some seven miles off, and she lived with him till his death. The seller and the buyer are both now dead, but the woman is alive, and is married to a third (or a second) husband. The legality of the transaction has, I believe, some chance of being tried, as she now claims some property belonging to her first husband (the seller), her right to which is questioned in consequence of her supposed alienation by sale; and I am informed that a lawyer has been applied to in the case. Of course there can be little doubt as to the result.
Sc.
Life (Vol. vii., pp. 429. 608.).—Compare with the lines quoted by your correspondents those of Moore, entitled "My Birthday," the four following especially:
"Vain was the man, and false as vain,
Who said[[9]], 'Were he ordain'd to run
His long career of life again,
He would do all that he had done.'"
Many a man would gladly live his life over again, were he allowed to bring to bear on his
second life the experience he had acquired in that past. For in the grave there is no room, either for ambition or repentance; and the degree of our happiness or misery for eternity is proportioned to the state of preparation or unpreparation in which we leave this world. Instead of many a man, I might have said most good men; and of the others, all who have not passed the rubicon of hope and grace. The vista of the past, however, appears a long and dreary retrospect, and any future is hailed as a relief: yet on second and deeper thought, we would mount again the rugged hill of life, and try for a brighter prospect, a higher eminence.
Jarltzberg.
Footnote 9:[(return)]
Fontenelle.
"Immo Deus mihi si dederit renovare juventam,
Utve iterum in cunis possim vagire; recusem."
Isaac Hawkins Browne, De Animi Immortalitate, lib. i., near the end.
(See Selecta Poemata Anglorum Latina, iii. 251.)
F. W. J.
Passage of Thucydides on the Greek Factions (Vol. vii., p. 594.).—The passage alluded to by Sir A. Alison appears to be the celebrated description of the moral effects produced by the conflicts of the Greek factions, which is subjoined to the account of the Corcyræan sedition, iii. 82. The quotation must, however, have been made from memory, and it is amplified and expanded from the original. The words adverted to seem to be:
"μέλλησις δὲ προμηθὴς δειλία εὐπρεπὴς, τὸ δὲ σῶφρον τοῦ ἀνάνδρου πρόσχημα, καὶ τὸ πρὸς ἅπαν ξυνετὸν ἐπὶ πᾶν ἀργόν."
Thucydides, however, proceeds to say that the cunning which enabled a man to plot with success against an enemy, or still more to discover his hostile purposes, was highly esteemed.
L.
Archbishop King (Vol. vii., p. 430.).—A few days since I met with the following passage in a brief sketch of Kane O'Hara, in the last number of the Irish Quarterly Review:
"In the extremely meagre published notices of O'Hara (the celebrated burletta writer), no reference has been made to his skill as an artist, of which we have a specimen in his etching of Dr. William King, archbishop of Dublin, in a wig and cap, of which portrait a copy has been made by Richardson."
This extract is taken from one of a very interesting series of papers upon "The Streets of Dublin."
Abhba.
Devonianisms (Vol. vii., p. 544.).—Pilm, Forrell.—Pillom is the full word, of which pilm is a contraction. It appears to have been derived from the British word pylor, dust. Forell is an archaic name for the cover of a book. The Welsh appear to have adopted it from the English, as their name for a bookbinder is fforelwr, literally, one who covers books. I may mention another Devonianism. The cover of a book is called its healing. A man who lays slates on the roof of a house is, in Devonshire, called a hellier.
N. W. S. (2.)
Perseverant, Perseverance (Vol. vii., p. 400.).—Can Mr. Arrowsmith supply any instances of the verb persever (or perceyuer, as it is spelt in the 1555 edition of Hawes, M. i. col. 2.), from any other author? and will he inform us when this "abortive hog" and his litter became extinct.
In explaining speare (so strangely misunderstood by the editor of Dodsley), he should, I think, have added, that it was an old way of writing spar. In Shakspeare's Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, it is written sperr. Sparred, quoted by Richardson from the Romance of the Rose, and Troilus and Creseide, is in the edition of Chaucer referred to by Tyrwhitt, written in the Romance "spered," and in Troilus "sperred."
Q.
Bloomsbury.
"The Good Old Cause" (Vol. vi., passim).—Mrs. Behn, who gained some notoriety for her licentious writings even in Charles II.'s days, was the author of a play called The Roundheads, or the Good Old Cause: London, 1682. In the Epilogue she puts into the mouth of the Puritans the following lines respecting the Royalists:
"Yet then they rail'd against The Good Old Cause;
Rail'd foolishly for loyalty and laws:
But when the Saints had put them to a stand,
We left them loyalty, and took their land:
Yea, and the pious work of Reformation
Rewarded was with plunder and sequestration."
The following lines are quoted by Mr. Teale in his Life of Viscount Falkland, p. 131.:
"The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in Nature or in book
Delights us—repose, avarice, expense,
This is the idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more;
The homely beauty of The Good Old Cause
Is gone: our peace and fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws."
Whence did Mr. Teale get these lines? Either The Good Old Cause is here used in a peculiar sense, or Mr. Teale makes an unhappy use of the quotation.
Jarltzberg.
Saying of Pascal (Vol. vii., p. 596.).—In reply to the question of W. Fraser, I would refer him to Pascal's sixteenth Provincial Letter, where, in the last paragraph but one, we read,—
"Mes révérends pères, mes lettres n'avaient pas accoutumé de se suivre de si près, ni d'être si étendues. Le peu de temps que j'ai eu a été cause de l'un et de l'autre. Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. La raison qui m'a obligé de hâter vous est mieux connue qu'à moi."
R. E. T.
Paint taken off of old Oak (Vol. vii., p. 620.).—About twenty-six years ago, by the adoption of a very simple process recommended by Dr. Wollaston, the paint was entirely removed from the screen of carved oak which fills the north end of the great hall at Audley End, and the wood reassumed its original colour and brilliancy. The result was brought about by the application of soft-soap, laid on of the thickness of a shilling over the whole surface of the oak, and allowed to remain there two or three days; at the end of which it was washed off with plenty of cold water. I am aware that potash has been often tried with success for the same purpose; but, in many instances, unless it is used with due caution, the wood becomes of a darker hue, and has the appearance of having been charred. It is worthy of remark, that Dr. Wollaston made the suggestion with great diffidence, not having, as he said, had any practical experience of the effect of such an application.
Braybrooke.
Passage in the "Tempest" (Vol. ii., pp. 259. 299. 337. 429.).—As a parallel to the expression "most busy least" (meaning "least busy" emphatically), I would suggest the common expression of the Northumbrians, "Far over near" (signifying "much too near").
H. T. Riley.