Gen. Sir C. Napier (Vol. viii., p. 490.).—I may state, for the instruction of officers who think study needless in their profession, that, having enjoyed the intimate friendship of Sir C. Napier for some time before he had the command in the midland district of England, I constantly found him engaged in inquiries connected with his profession. He was always in training. Not long before this time he had returned from Caen, in Normandy, and he told me that when there he had surveyed the ground on which William the Conqueror had acquired military fame before he made his descent on England, and his conclusion was that that Conqueror was remarkably well instructed for his time in the art of war. He expressed his intention to write on this subject; but great events soon afterwards called him to India, which became the scene of his own mastery in military and civil command.
T. F.
To Come (Vol. viii., p. 468.).—In the Lower Saxon dialect, to come is camen, and the imperfect, as in Gothic, quam. It would therefore seem that the English came is not an innovation, but a partial restoration or preservation of a very ancient form. (See Adelung's Wörterbuch.)
E. C. H.
Passage in Sophocles (Vol. viii., pp. 73. 478.).—The Italics were introduced to draw attention to the new version which was adventured, "N. & Q." being an excellent medium for such suggestions.
Sophocles having referred to "an illustrious saying of some one," and the old scholiast having furnished this saying,
"Ὅταν δ' ὁ δαίμων ἀνδρὶ πορσύνῃ κακὰ
Τὸν νοῦν ἔβλαψε πρῶτον ᾧ βουλεύεται,"
it merely became necessary to compare the form which Sophocles adopted to suit his metre with the words of this "illustrious saying," whence it appeared that—
ᾧ βουλεύεται = πράσσει δ' ὀλιγοστὸν χρόνον ἐκτὸς ἄτας;