Minor Notes.
The Word "Repudiate."
—I cannot help following DR. KENNEDY'S example, and calling attention to another word in our language which is now-a-days, on many occasions, used very erroneously; I allude to the word repudiation, or rather the verb repudiate.
How frequently does one hear at public meetings such phrases as these: "I utterly repudiate the idea," "I repudiate the sentiment," "I repudiate the insinuation." A page might be filled with phrases of this description occurring in reported speeches of recent date. The word, in fact, is made by public speakers of "unadorned eloquence" and newspaper writers, to do duty for such words as to refuse, repel, reject, abandon, disown, cast off.
Now, Sir, I humbly conceive that repudiation means simply a dissolving of the marriage contract, hence of any contract or obligation and I believe I may say with safety, that in no standard classical author, ancient or modern, is the term repudiation, or the verb, repudiate, used, except in connexion with some obligation expressed, or in figurative allusion to such obligation. The term, when applied to the "drab-coloured men of Pennsylvania," is undoubtedly proper; they have indeed repudiated their debt, and perhaps brought the word and the thing into vogue; but to use such a phrase as "I repudiate the notion," is, I submit, surely to talk nonsense.
H. C. K.
—— Rectory, Hereford.
The First Panorama (Vol. iii., p. 526.).
—E. N. W. must have made some mistake in his recollection. Girton was a painter, and may have worked at the Panorama of London; but the "first Panorama" was by Mr. Robert Barker. The sketches were made by his son, Henry Aston Barker, when only a lad aged fifteen. They were taken from the top of the Albion Mills: they were also etched by H. A. Barker at the same age, and aqua-tinted by Birnie, and published in six sheets, 22 by 17, a set of which I possess, with a note of their history, as herein communicated, written in dorso, long ago, from Mr. B.'s own lips.
H. T. E.
E. N. W. is correct in saying, that a semicircular view of London from the top of the Albion Mills, near Blackfriar's bridge, preceded Barker's panoramas. It must have been painted about the year 1793. I saw it at the end of that year, or at the very beginning of 1794. But it was not exhibited in St. Martin's Lane, but in Castle Street, in a rough building—not, I believe, erected for the purpose—at the back of a small house on the eastern side of that street. Perhaps some other of your octogenarian readers may recollect its being there, as well as myself. The scene on the Thames was the water-procession on Lord Mayor's day.
W. D.
Chaucer and Gray (Vol. iii., p. 492).
—MR. THOMS suggests a very interesting parallel between a line in Chaucer, and Gray's "Even in our ashes", &c. Gray himself refers to Petrarch as his original, and the thought occurs in Shakspeare:
"In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie."
And Malone, in a note on the passage (Supplement to Shakspeare, 1780, vol. i. p. 640), adduces the passage in Chaucer quoted by MR. THOMS as an illustration. Steevens has mentioned the following passage in Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia "In ashes of despair, though burnt, shall make thee live." Compare, also, Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Sc. 2.
J. O. H.
To the verse,
"Even in our ashes live their wonted fires,"
Gray has himself appended a note, indicating that it was suggested by Petrarch, sonnet 169.; and "I will take the poet's word for a thousand pounds." It was originally written—
"Awake and faithful to her wonted fires,"
which has but little to do with Chaucer.
VARRO.
Burns and Propertius.
—There is a strange inclination to attribute similarity of sentiment to plagiarism; as if it were almost impossible for two men of genius to hit upon the same notions, independently of each other. In Propertius (II. i. 3, 4.) we find—
Non hæc Calliope, non hæc mihi cantat Apollo,
Ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit."
In Burns we read—
"O, were I on Parnassus' hill!
Or had of Helicon my fill;
That I might catch poetic skill
To sing how dear I love thee.
But Nith maun be my Muse's well,
My Muse maun be thy bonnie sel'."
Had Burns been much of a Latin scholar, he would probably have been accused of stealing from Propertius.
VARRO.
Shakspeare in Sweden.
—The writings of Shakspeare would appear from the following fact to be read with as much avidity and delight in Sweden as in his native country. A translation of his plays by Hagberg, Professor of Greek in the
University of Lund, is now in course of publication. Of this, twelve volumes have appeared; and although the first edition consisted of no less than two thousand copies, the whole have been sold off, and a second edition is in preparation. Professor Hagberg's translation is most favourably spoken of by those who are qualified to judge of its merits.
W. J. T.