Thompson Cooper.
Cambridge.
This is, I suppose, a Manx penny, with the reverse of three legs, and the motto, which is usually read "Quocunque jeceris stabit."
C.
"Nine Tailors make a Man" (Vol. vi., pp. 390. 563.).—I extract the following humorous account of the origin of this saying from The British Apollo (12mo., reprint of 1726, vol. i. p. 236.):
"It happen'd ('tis no great matter in what year) that eight taylors, having finish'd considerable pieces of work at a certain person of quality's house (whose name authors have thought fit to conceal), and receiving all the money due for the same, a virago servant maid of the house observing them to be but slender-built animals, and in their mathematical postures on their shop-board appearing but so many pieces of men, resolv'd to encounter and pillage them on the road. The better to compass her design, she procured a very terrible great black-pudding, which (having waylaid them) she presented at the breast of the foremost: they, mistaking this prop of life for an instrument of death, at least a blunder-buss, readily yielded up their money; but she, not contented with that, severely disciplin'd them with a cudgel she carry'd in the other hand, all which they bore with a philosophical resignation. Thus, eight not being able to deal with one woman, by consequence could not make a man, on which account a ninth is added. 'Tis the opinion of our curious virtuosos, that this want of courage ariseth from their immoderate eating of cucumbers, which too much refrigerates their blood. However, to their eternal honour be it spoke, they have been often known to encounter a sort of cannibals, to whose assaults they are often subject, not fictitious, but real man-eaters, and that with a lance but two inches long; nay, and although they go arm'd no further than their middle-finger."
Sigma.
Sunderland.
On Quotations (Vol. vi., p. 408.).—There can be no doubt that quotations have frequently been altered, to make them more apt to the quoter's purpose, of which I believe the following to be an instance. We frequently meet with the quotation, "Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia," with a reference to Juvenal. I have not been able to find the passage in this shape, and presume it is an alteration from the address to Fortune, which occurs twice in his Satires, Sat. x. v. 365, 366., and Sat. xiv. v. 315, 316.:
"Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia: nos te