Marot, christened Clement, the French poet, who is said, in a quotation from le Seigneur des Accords in the foregoing note, to have been imitated by Drusac, lived in the reign of Francis I., and was a Protestant. There is a portrait of him at page 161 of “Les Vrais Portraits des Hommes Illustres” of Théodore de Bèze, Geneva, 1581, whereto a short sketch of his life is attached; which says, that “par une admirable félicité d’esprit, sans aucune cognoissance des langues ni des sciences, il surpassa tous les poëtes qui l’auoient dévancé.” He was twice banished on account of his religion; and when in exile translated one-third of the Psalms into French verse. “Mais au reste,” says Théodore, “ayant passé presque toute sa vie à la suite de cour, (où la piété et l’honēsteté n’ōt guères d’audiance,) il ne se soucia pas beaucoup de réformer sa vie peu Chrétienne, ains se gouuernoit à sa manière accoutumée mesmes en sa vieillesse, et mourut en l’âge de 60 ans à Turin, où il s’estoit retiré sous la faueur du Lieutenant du Roi.” He was a Quercinois, having been born at Cahors, in Quercy.
The following lines were written after his death by Jodelle, who was famed for these “vers rapportez.”
Quercy, la Cour, le Piedmont, l’Univers
Me fit, me tint, m’enterra, me cogneut,
Quercy mon los, la cour tout mon temps eut.
Piedmont mes os, et l’univers mes vers.
Guildhall.—Misson, in his “Mémoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre,” published anonymously at the Hague in 1698, under this head, accounts thus philologically for the name:—“Il est à croire que la grande salle étoit autrefois dorée, puisque le mot de Guild ou Gild-hall, signifie SALLE DOREE.” To do him justice, however, after quoting so ridiculous a passage, I must annex his note, as follows:—“D’autres disent que Guild est un ancien mot qui signifie incorporé: Guildhall; la salle des incorporez ou associez.”—p. 236.
Juliet was no doubt a delectable little creature, but, like most of the genus, she was but a flimsy metaphysician. “What’s in a name?” that depends now-a-days on the length or age of it. The question should be put to a Buckinghamshire meeting man, if one would desire to know the qualities of all the component parts of an Abraham or Absalom. In some parts of the country, people seem to think they have bilked the devil, and booked sure places in heaven for their children, if, at their christening, they get but a scripture name tacked to the urchins. “In proof whereof,” Esther, Aaron, and Shadrack Puddyfat, with master Moses Myrmidon, formed a blackberrying party that I fell in with a summer back near Botley, on the road between Chesham and Hemel Hempstead. At a farm-house in Bucks it is no uncommon sight for the twelve apostles to be seen tucking in greens and bacon, or for the tribes of Israel to be found drunk together in a pot-house. Some poor drunken-brained bigots would not accept even the free services of a ploughman, whose name was not known before the flood.
Note.—The names above seem so very ludicrous, that I have no doubt there will be many sceptics to the belief of their reality if this passage be printed; but I declare positively, on the word, honour, and faith of a man and a gentleman, that they are as true, real, and existent, as Thomas Tomkins, or any other the most usual and common place.
J. J. K.