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.
W.C.T.
Edinburgh, March 30. 1850.