Minor Notes.
A Hint to Catalogue Makers.
—Among the many excellent schemes proposed for the arrangement and diffusion of common means of information, one simple one appears to have been passed over by your many and excellent correspondents. I will briefly illustrate an existing deficiency by an example.
While collecting materials for a projected critical commentary on the Timæus of Plato, I was surprised to find the commentary of Chalcidius wholly wanting in our library at Christ Church. Subsequently (when I did not want it, having secured a better edition at the end of Fabricius' Hippolytus) I discovered a fine copy of Badius Ascensius' editio princeps, bound up with Aulus Gellius and Macrobius, but utterly ignored in the Christ Church catalogue.
This instance shows the necessity of carefully examining the insides of books, as well as the backs and title-pages, during the operation of cataloguing. Our public libraries are rich in instances of a similar oversight, and many an important and recherché work is unknown, or acquires a conventional rarity, through its concealment at the end of a less valuable, but more bulky, treatise.
I have been aroused to the propriety of publishing this suggestion, by purchasing, "dog cheap", a volume labelled Petrus Crinitus, but containing Hegesippus (i.e. the pseudo-Ambrosian translation from Josephus) and the Latin grammarians at the end, all by the afore-mentioned printer.
THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.
Virgil and Goldsmith.
—The same beautiful thought is traceable in both Virgil and Goldsmith. In book iii. of the Æneid, lines 495-6. we read:
"Vobis parta quies; nullum maris æquor arandum;
Arva neque Ausoniæ, semper cedentia retro,
Quærenda."
In the Traveller these lines occur:
"But me, not destined such delights to share,
My prime of life in wandering spent and care;
Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue
Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view;
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies ——"
ALFRED GATTY.
Mental Almanac (Vol. iv., p. 203.).
—MEM. The additive number for this present November is 1. Hence next Wednesday is 4 + 1, that is, the 5th. The Sunday following, is 1 + 1 + 7, that is, the 9th. And similarly for any other day or week in this month.
A. E. B
Leeds, Nov. 1. 1851.
Merlin and the Electric Telegraph.
—The following extract from the prophecy of Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth's British History, book vii. ch. 4., reads rather curiously in these days of railways and of electric telegraph communication between France and England:—
"Eric shall hide his apples within it, and shall make subterraneous passages. At that time shall the stones speak, and the sea towards the Gallic Coast be contracted into a narrow space. On each bank shall one man hear another, and the soil of the isle shall be enlarged. The secrets of the deep shall be revealed, and Gaul shall tremble for fear."
I should like to be informed if there have ever been any detailed and systematic attempts made at interpreting the whole of this curious prophecy of Merlin's.
W. FRASER.