Oxford, April 16. 1850.
Horns.—For answer to the third Query of "L.C." (No. 24. p. 383.), I subscribe the following, from Coleridge:—
"Having quoted the passage from Shakspeare,
"'Take thou no scorn
To wear the horn, the lusty horn;
It was a crest ere thou wert born."
As You Like It, Act iv. sc. 2.
"I question (he says), whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that, like this of 'Horns,' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin."—Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 120. Pickering, 1849.
ROBERT SNOW.
Coal Brandy (No. 22. p. 352.).—This is only a contraction of "coaled brandy," that is, "burnt brandy," and has no reference to the purity of the spirit. It was the "universal pectoral" of the last century; and more than once I have seen it prepared by "good housewives" and "croaking husbands" in the present, pretty much as directed in the following prescription. It is only necessary to remark, that the orthodox method of "coaling," or setting the brandy on fire, was effected by dropping "a live coal" ("gleed") or red-hot cinder into the brandy. This is copied from a leaf of paper, on the other side of which are written, in the hand of John Nourse, the great publisher of scientific books in his day, some errata in the first 8vo. edit. of Simsons's Euclid, and hence may be referred to the year 1762. It was written evidently by some "dropper-in," who found "honest John" suffering from a severe cold, and upon the first piece of paper that came to hand. The writer's caligraphy bespeaks age, and the punctuation and erasures show him to have been a literary man, and a careful though stilted writer. It is not, however, a hand of which I find any other exemplars amongst Nourse's correspondence.