C.H.
Lady Morgan and Curry.—An anecdote in the last number of the Quarterly Review, p. 477., "this is the first set down you have given me to-day," reminds me of an incident in Dublin society some quarter of a century ago or more. The good-humoured and accomplished—Curry (shame to me to have forgotten his christened name for the moment!) had been engaged in a contest of wit with Lady Morgan and another female célébrité, in which Curry had rather the worst of it. It was the fashion then for ladies to wear very short sleeves; and Lady Morgan, albeit not a young woman, with true provincial exaggeration, wore none, a mere strap over her shoulders. Curry was walking away from her little coterie, when she called out, "Ah! come back Mr. Curry, and acknowledge that you are fairly beaten." "At any rate," said he, turning round, "I have this consolation, you can't laugh at me in your sleeve!"
Scotus.
Sir Walter Scott and Erasmus.—Has it yet been noticed that the picture of German manners in the middle ages given by Sir W. Scott, in his Anne of Geierstein (chap. xix.), is taken (in some parts almost verbally) from Erasmus' dialogue, Diversoria? Although Sir Walter mentions Erasmus at the beginning of the chapter, he is totally silent as to any hints he may have got from him; neither do the notes to my copy of his works at all allude to this circumstance.
W.G.S.
Parallel Passages.—A correspondent in Vol. i., p. 330, quoted some parallels to a passage in Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar. Will you allow me to add another, I think even more striking than those he cited. The full passage in Shakspeare is,
"There is a tide in the affairs of man,
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives
Is bound in shallows and in miseries."