Minor Notes.
Doctor Johnson a Prophet.
—Can any of your readers inform me where the following anecdote is recorded? It bears the mark of authenticity, and if so adds, to the extraordinary gifts of the great moralist, that of prophecy; be it observed, however, that the prognostication is founded on a deduction of science. As the Doctor was one evening leaning out of the window of his house in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, he observed the parish lamplighter nimbly ascend a ladder for the purpose of lighting one of the old glimmering oil lamps which only served to make "darkness visible." The man had scarcely descended the ladder half way, when he discovered that the flame had expired; quickly returning he lifted the cover partially, and thrusting the end of his torch beneath it, the flame was instantly communicated to the wick by the thick vapour which issued from it.
"Ah!" exclaimed the Doctor, after a pause, and giving utterance to his thoughts, "Ah! one of these days the streets of London will be lighted by smoke!" It is needless to add that in the succeeding century the prediction was verified.
M. W. B.
Coleridge and Plato.
—Without becoming "a piddler in minute plagiarisms" (as Gifford called Warton), I think the following coincidence worth noting. S. T. Coleridge, in his "Lines on an Autumnal Evening," has these lines:
"On seraph wing I'd float a dream by night,
To soothe my love with shadows of delight;
Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies.
And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes."
Plato had written ("To Stella," in Anthol. Palat.):
Ἀστέρας εἰσαθρεῖς Ἀστὴρ ἐμός· εἴθε γενοίμην
Οὐρανὸς ὡς μυρίοις ὄμμασιν εἴς σε βλέπω.
I cannot withhold Shelley's exquisite version:
"Fair star of life and love, my soul's delight!
Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?
O that my spirit were yon heaven of night,
Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!"
Revolt of Islam, c. ix. st. 36.
Dr. Wellesley's Anthologia Polyglotta contains several versions of Plato's lines. There is also one by Swynfen Jervis, in Lewis's Biographical History of Philosophy, s. v. Plato.
C. P. PH***.
Epitaph in St. Giles' Church, Norwich.—
"ELIZABETHA BEDINGFIELD,
Sorori Francisce Sve
S. R. Q. P.
"My name speaks what I was, and am, and have,
A Bedding field, a piece of earth, a grave,
Where I expect, untill my soule shall bring
Unto the field an everlasting spring;
For rayse and rayse out of the earth and slime,
God did the first, and will the second time.
Obiit Die 10 Maii 1637."
The above epitaph is curious; but what is the meaning of the letters "S. R. Q. P.?"
NEDLAM.
Hair in Seals.
—Stillingfleet, referring to a MS. author, who wrote a chronicle of St. Augustine's, says:
"He observes one particular custom of the Normans, that they were wont to put some of the hair of their heads or beards into the wax of their seals: I suppose rather to be kept as monuments than as adding any strength or weight to their charters. So he observes, that some of the hair of William, Earl of Warren, was in his time kept in the Priory of Lewis."
Orig. Brit., chap. I., Works, Lond. 1710, tom. iii. p. 13.
J. SANSOM.
To "eliminate."
—The meaning of this word, according both to its etymology and its usage in the Latin authors, is quite clear; it is to "turn out of doors." Figuratively, it has been used by mathematicians to denote the process by which all incidental matters are gradually thrown out of an equation to be solved, &c., so that only its essential conditions at last remain. Of late, however, I have observed it used not of the act of elimination, but of the result; a sense quite foreign to its true meaning, and producing great ambiguity. Thus, in a recent Discourse, the object of biblical exegesis is declared to be "the elimination of the statements of the Bible respecting doctrine;" the author evidently meaning, not what his words imply,—to get rid of the statements of the Bible,—though that has been sometimes the problem of exegesis, but to present the doctrinal result in a clear form, and detached from everything else.
A PRECISIAN.