It seems to me that a just blindness fell upon men so evil-minded as to desire the falsification of chronology and history for polemical ends, that they should have utterly missed the moral principle by which they would be thought animated. No prelate ordaining a young person, unknown to himself, save by academical reputation, could know that person's sex. The want of beard is no criterion; nor is the female lip in all instances very smooth. But if it were true that a person eminently distinguished by studies, and bringing from Athens a high reputation for merit, could upon those grounds alone obtain the suffrages of the Roman chapter, more honour would be conferred upon it than that chapter, or other dispensers of patronage, have usually merited. Instead of being unknown, the candidates in the days of Benedict III. were, if anything, too well known; for the jobbery and faction, of which this fable would indicate the entire, and almost unnatural, absence, were sufficiently at work.
A. N.
"Nettle in dock out" (Vol. iii., p. 205.).
—Bishop Andrewes uses the phrase, "in docke out nettle, in nettle out docke," to denote unsteadiness. The passage occurs in Sermon I., "Of the Resurrection," folio, p. 391.:
"Now then that we bee not, all our life long, thus off and on, fast or loose, in docke out nettle, and in nettle out docke; it will behove us once more yet to looke back," &c. &c. &c.
REVERT. Wittingham, Easter Eve.
Mind your P's and Q's (Vol. iii., pp. 328. 357.).
—This phrase was, I believe, originally "Mind your toupées and your queues,"—the toupée being the artificial locks of hair on the head, and the queue the pigtail of olden time.
There used to be an old riddle as follows:—Who is the best person to keep the alphabet in order?—Answer: A barber, because he ties up the queue, and puts toupées in irons.
NEDLAM.