British Sidanen probably meant Sidanen of Ancient Britain, or Wales, to whom some unnamed and adulatory courtier had compared Queen Elizabeth. I fancied also that I recollected, in Warner's Albion's England, some allusion to Elizabeth under the name of Sidanen, but I cannot at present find it.
As I have my pen in hand, may I add another word, quite upon a different subject: it is upon the nimium (pardon the word) vexata questio about esile, as it is spelt in the first and second folios of Hamlet. Have any of your correspondents, from MR. SINGER to MR. CAMPKIN, with all their learning and ingenuity, been able at all to settle the point? Surely, then, I cannot be blamed for not taking upon me dogmatically to decide it eight years ago. I stated the two positions assumed by adverse commentators, and what more could I do? What more have your friends done? The principle I went upon was to make my notes as short as possible; and after pages on pages have been employed in your miscellany, it seems, in my humble judgment, that the case is not one jot altered. Esile may still either mean vinegar (eyesel) or the river Eisell.
J. PAYNE COLLIER.
SWEARING ON THE HORNS AT HIGHGATE.
Can any of your readers give a satisfactory explanation of what Lord Byron, in the LXXth stanza of the first canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, calls the worship of the solemn horn? The whole stanza is as follows:
"Some o'er thy Thamis row the ribbon'd fair,
Others along the safer turnpike fly;
Some Richmond Hill ascend, some send to Ware,
And many to the steep of Highgate hie.
Ask ye, Bœotian shades! the reason why? (15)