Herrings.—"The lovers of fish" may be glad to learn what a bloater is, a mystery which I endeavoured to unravel when lately on the Norfolk coast. A bloater, I was informed, is a large, plump herring (as we say a bloated toad); and the genuine claimants of the title fall by their own weight from the meshes of the net.
The origin of the simile—"As dead as a herring"—may not be generally known. This fish dies immediately upon its removal from the native element (strange to say) from want of air; for swimming near the surface it requires much, and the gills, when dry, cannot perform their function.
C. T.
Byron and Rochefoucauld.—The following almost word-for-word renderings of two of Rochefoucauld's Réflexions occur in the third and fourth stanzas of the third canto of Byron's Don Juan. I am not aware that any notice has been taken of them beyond a note appended to the first passage, in Moore's edition of Byron's Works, attributing the mot to Montaigne:
"Yet there are some, they say, who have had none,
But those who have ne'er end with only one."—Byron.
"On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une."—Rochefoucauld's Maximes et Réflexions Morales.
"In her first passion, woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is love."—Byron
"Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l'amant; dans les autres elles aiment l'amour."—Rochefoucauld's Maximes et Réflexions Morales.