Vol. IV.—No. 111. NOTES AND QUERIES: A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

"When found, make a note of."—CAPTAIN CUTTLE.

VOL. IV.—No. 111.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13. 1851.

Price Threepence. Stamped Edition, 4d.

CONTENTS.

NOTES:—

Cowley and Gray. No. III. [465]

Old Song: The Cuckold's Cap, by J. R. Relton [468]

The Gododin, by Thomas Stephens [468]

Folk Lore:—Lincolnshire Folk Lore [470]

Minor Notes:—Modern Greek Names of Places—"There is no mistake"—Remarkable Prophecy—The Ball that killed Nelson—Gypsies [470]

QUERIES:—

Dial Motto at Karlsbad [471]

Suppressed Epilogue by Dryden, by Henry Campkin [472]

Minor Queries:—Barrister—Indian Jugglers—Priory of Hertford—Jacobus Creusius (or Crucius)—Clekit House—Ballad on the Rising of the Vendée—Stanza on Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar"—Prophecy respecting 1837—Lines on the Bible—En bon et poyer—"England expects every man," &c.—Religious Houses in East Sussex—Parish Registers, Right of Search, Fees claimable—Bacon a Poet—Tregonwell Frampton—Weever and Fuller; their Autographs wanted—Is the Badger Amphibious? [472]

MINOR QUERIES ANSWERED:—Royal Registers—Paul Hoste—"Liber Mirabilis"—Saint Richard, King of England—Saint Irene or St. Erini [474]

REPLIES:—

Cockney [475]

Replies to Minor Queries:—The Word Infortuner—Foreign Ambassadors—Petition for the Recall from Spain of the Duke of Wellington [476]

MISCELLANEOUS:—

Notes on Books, Sales, Catalogues, &c. [477]

Books and Odd Volumes wanted [478]

Notices to Correspondents [478]

Advertisements [478]

[List of Notes and Queries volumes and pages]

Notes.

COWLEY AND GRAY, NO. III.

Before again recurring to Gray's partiality for the poems of Cowley, I will make a remark or two on Mr. Wakefield's edition of Gray.

In his delightful "Ode to Adversity" Gray has written:

"Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge, and tort'ring hour,

The bad affright, afflict the best."

Upon which Wakefield gives us this brilliant criticism:

"'Torturing hour.' There seems to be some little impropriety and incongruity in this. Consistency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain."

Afterwards he seems to speak diffidently of his own judgment, which is rather an unusual thing in Mr. Wakefield. Well would it have been for the reputations of Bentley, Johnson, and Wakefield, that, before improving upon Milton and Gray and Collins, they had remembered the words of a truly great critic, even Horace himself:

"Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus:

Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens,

Poscentique gravem persæpe remittit acutum;

Nec semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus.

Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis

Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,

Aut humana parum cavit natura."

Epist. ad Pisones, 347.

Not by any means that I am allowing in this case the existence of a "macula," or an "incuria" either. To D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature I think I am indebted for the remark, that Gray borrowed the expressions from Milton:

"When the scourge

Inexorably, and the torturing hour

Calls us to penance."

Par. Lost, lib. ii. 90.

It is therefore with Milton, and not with Gray, that Mr. Wakefield must settle the matter. And in proof of my earnest sympathies with him during the very unequal contest, I will console him with "proprieties," "congruities," "consistencies of figure," and "material images," enough.

"The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel."

Goldsmith's Traveller, ad finem.

Or better for this purpose still:

"Swords, daggers, bodkins, bearded arrows, spears,

Nails, pincers, crosses, gibbets, hurdles, ropes,

Tallons of griffins, paws and teeth of bears,

Tigre's and lyon's mouths, not iron hoops,

Racks, wheels, and trappados, brazen cauldrons which

Boiled with oil, huge tuns which flam'd with pitch."

Beaumonts's Psyche, cant. XXII. v. 69. p. 330. Cambridge, 1702. Folio.

"Torturing hour" is used by Campbell in his Pleasures of Hope, Part I.:

"The martyr smiled beneath avenging power,

And braved the tyrant in his torturing hour."

And, indeed, "sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child," had used it before any of them:

"Is there no play, to ease the anguish of a torturing hour."

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

Again, Gray writes in his truly sublime ode, "The Bard:"

"On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the poet stood,

(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air),

And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,

Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre."

Ordinary readers would have innocently supposed the above "pictured" passage beyond all praise or criticism. "At non infelix" Wakefield:

"A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd."

Macbeth.

I must give his note as it stands, for I question whether the whole range of verbal criticism could produce anything more ludicrous:

"I wish Mr. Gray could have introduced a more poetical expression, than the inactive term stood, into this fine passage: as Shakspeare has, for instance, in his description of Dover cliff:

'Half way down

Hangs one, that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!'

King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.

"Which is the same happy picture as that of Virgil:

"'Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo.'

Ecl. I. 77."

He might, when his hand was in, have adduced other passages also from Virgil, e.g.:

"Imminet in rivi præstantis imaginis undam."

Culex, 66.

However, with all due respect for Mr. Wakefield's "happy pictures," I do not see anything left, but his eyebrows, for the luckless bard to hang by! He could not have hung by his hair, which "stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air;" nor yet by his hands, which "swept the deep sorrows of his lyre." Besides, there can scarcely be more opposite pictures than that of a man gathering samphire, or kids browsing, amongst beetling rocks; and the commanding and awe-inspiring position in which Gray ingeniously places his bard. The expressions chosen by Virgil, Shakspeare, and Gray were each peculiarly suitable to the particular objects in view. If Gray was thinking of Milton, as I intimated in a former letter, he may have still kept him in mind:

"Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood

Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd,

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge

In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair

Shakes pestilence and war."

Par. Lost, lib. ii. 706.

Or again:

"On th' other side, Satan, alarm'd,

Collecting all his might dilated stood,

Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd:

His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest

Sat Horror plum'd; nor wanted in his grasp

What seem'd both spear and shield."

Par. Lost, lib. iv. 985.

It would be easy to adduce similar instances from the ancient sources, but I will only mention From Milton an illustration of the συστρεψας of Demosthenes, and of the passionate abruptness with which Gray commences "The Bard:"

"As when of old some orator renown'd

In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence

Flourish'd, since mute, to some great cause addressed

Stood in himself collected, while each part,

Motion, each act won audience ere the tongue,

Sometimes in height began, as no delay

Of preface brooking through his zeal of right."

Par. Lost, lib. ix. 670.

Wakefield's hypercritical fastidiousness would have completely defeated the intentions of Gray. His "Bard" had a mission to fulfil which could not have been fulfilled by one suspended like king Solomon, in the ancient Jewish traditions, or like Mahomet's coffin, mid-way between heaven and earth. His cry was δος που στω, and the poet heard him. And thus, from his majestic position, was not—

"Every burning word he spoke

Full of rage and full of grief?"

In the full blaze of poetic phrensy, he flashes out at once with the awfully grand and terrible exordium:

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!

Confusion on thy banners wait!

Tho' fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,

They mock the air with idle state.

Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,

From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears."

Collins thus describes the passion of anger:

"Next Anger rush'd;—his eyes on fire,

In lightnings own'd his secret stings:

In one rude clash he struck the lyre,

And swept with flurried hand the strings."

Word-painting can go no farther. When, however, he comes to melancholy, in lines which contain more suggestive beauty, as well as more poetic inspiration, than perhaps any others of the same length in the English language, how does he sing?

"With eyes upraised, as one inspired,

Pale Melancholy sate retired;

And, from her wild sequester'd seat,

In notes, by distance made more sweet,

Pour'd thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul:

And, dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels join'd the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole,

Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay,

Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace, and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died away."

Ode on the Passions.

This is the concentrated essence of poetry. Surely Gray had forgotten Collins when he penned the beautiful lines:

"But not to one in this benighted age,

Is that diviner inspiration given,

That burns in Shakspeare's or in Milton's page,

The pomp and prodigality of heaven,

As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,

The meaner gems, that singly charm the sight,

Together dart their intermingled rays,

And dazzle with a luxury of light."

Stanzas to Mr. Bentley.

From a memorandum made by Gray himself, it is evident that he once had contemplated placing his "Bard" in a sitting posture; but I cannot but rejoice that he altered his mind, for such breath-taking words could never have been uttered in so composed and contented a posture. I give part of it from Mr. Mason's edition:

"The army of Edward I., as they marched through a deep valley, are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure, seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock; who, with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the misery and desolation he had brought on his country, &c., &c. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its foot."—Vol. i. p. 73. Lond. 1807.

The last two lines of the passage before us—

"And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,

Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre"—

remind us in some degree of Cowley:

"Sic cecinit sanctus vates, digitosque volantes

Innumeris per fila modis trepidantia movit,

Intimaque elicuit Medici miracula plectri."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 13.

Again:

"Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes."

Gray, The Bard.

"Namque oculis plus illa suis, plus lumine cœli

Dilexit."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 14.

And—

"The Attick warbler pours her throat."

Ode to Spring.

"Tum magnum tenui cecinerunt gutture Numen."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 20.

Also—

"The hues of bliss more brightly glow,

Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe;

And blended form with artful strife,

The strength and harmony of life."

Gray, On the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude.

The word chastised is similarly used by Cowley:

"From Saul his growth, and manly strength he took,

Chastised by bright Ahinoam's gentler look."

Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 133.

The idea of the whole passage may be found in Pope:

"Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train;

Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;

These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,

Make and maintain the balance of the mind;

The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife,

Gives all the strength and colour of our life."

Essay on Man, Epist. II.

Again:

"Amazement in his van with Flight combin'd,

And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind."

Gray, The Bard.

"Victorious arms thro' Ammon's land it bore,

Ruin behind, and terror march'd before."

Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 135.

Wakefield mentions some parallel passages, but omits the best of all:

"A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; Yea, and nothing shall escape them."—Joel, ii. 3.

In the "Ode on the Installation" Gray says:

"Their tears, their little triumphs o'er

Their human passions now no more."

Wakefield dwells enraptured on the expression human passions. Cowley speaks of "humana quies" (Davideidos, lib. i. p. 3.). Horace says:

"—— Carminibus quæ versant atque venenis

Humanos animos."

Sat. viii. 19. lib. i.

Human passions is not, however, a creation of Gray's; for, if not anywhere else, he might have found the words very often in the writings of William Law, as vigorous a prose writer as England can boast of since the days of Dr. South. See his answer to Dr. Trapp's Not Righteous overmuch, p. 62., Lond. 1741; and his Serious Call, cap. xii. p. 137., and cap. xxi. p. 293., Lond. 1816.

To mention its use by modern writers would be endless. I selected these few passages on reading Mr. Wakefield's laudations, for otherwise I should not perhaps have remarked the words as unusual. Wakefield adduces from Pope's Eloisa to Abelard:

"One human tear shall drop, and be forgiven."

"Noble rage," Gray's Elegy. "Noble rage," Cowley's Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 137. Again, in the Elegy:

"Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The mopeing owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign."

Cowley, in describing the palace of Lucifer, has some fine sentences; and amongst them:

"Non hic gemmatis stillantia sidera guttis

Impugnant sævæ jus inviolabile noctis."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 3.

And in English:

"No gentle stars with their fair gems of light,

Offend the tyrannous and unquestion'd night."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 6.

Akenside constantly used the adjective human in different conjunctions.

RT.

Warmington.

OLD SONG: THE CUCKOLD'S CAP.

The following song I never saw in print. I knew an old lady, who fifty years ago used to sing it. Is it known?

Near Reading there lived a buxom young dame,

The wife of a miller, and Joan was her name;

And she had a hen of a wondrous size,

The like you never beheld with your eyes:

It had a red head, gay wings, yellow legs,

And every year laid her a bushel of eggs,

Which made her resolve for to set it with speed,

Because she'd a mind to have more of the breed.

Now as she was setting her hen on a day,

A shepherd came by, and thus he did say:

"Oh, what are you doing?" She answered him then,

"I'm going to set my miraculous hen."

"O, Joan," said the shepherd, "to keep your eggs warm,

And that they may prosper and come to no harm,

You must set them all in a large cuckold's cap,

And then all your chickens will come to good hap."

"O, I have no cuckold's cap, shepherd," said she,

"But nevertheless I'll be ruled by thee;

For this very moment I'll trudge up and down,

And borrow one, if there be one in the town."

So she went to the baker's, and thus she did say:

"O, lend me a cuckold's cap, neighbour, I pray,

For I'm going to set my miraculous hen,

And when that I've done with't, I'll bring it again."

The baker's wife answered, and thus she replied:

"Had I got such a thing, you should not be denied;

But these nineteen or twenty years I have been wed,

And my husband ne'er had such a cap to his head.

But go to my cousin, who lives at the mill,

I know she had one, and she may have it still;

Tell her I sent you, she'll lend it, I know."

"Thank ye," says Joan, and away she did go.

So, straight to the house of the miller she went,

And told her that she by her cousin was sent,

To borrow a thing which was wondrous rare,

'Twas a large cuckold's cap, which her husband did wear.

"I do not dispute but such things there may be;

But why should my cousin, pray, send you to me?

For these nineteen or twenty years I've been a wife,

And my husband ne'er had such a cap in his life.

"But go to the quaker who lives at the Swan,

I know she had one, and if 'tisn't gone,

Tell her to lend it to you for my sake,

Which I the same for a great favour shall take."

So she went to the house of old Yea and Nay,

And said to his wife, who was buxom and gay,

"I'm come for to borrow, if that you will lend,

A large cuckold's cap: I was sent by a friend."

The quaker's wife answered and said, with a frown,

"Why, I've no such thing, if thou'dst give me a crown;

Besides, I'd not lend it, friend Joan, if I had,

For fear it should make my old husband run mad.

In town there are many young damsels, perhaps,

Who may be ingenious in making these caps,

But as for their names, I really can't say,

So, therefore, friend Joan, excuse me, I pray."

Now Joan being tired and weary withal,

She said, "I've had no good fortune at all.

I find that it is the beginning of sorrow,

To trudge up and down among neighbours to borrow.

A large cuckold's cap I wanted indeed,

A thing of small value, and yet couldn't speed:

But, as I'm a woman, believe me," says Joan,

"Before it be long, I'll have one of my own."

J. R. RELTON.

THE GODODIN.

This poem, though not absolutely the earliest in point of date, is the longest of the numerous poems produced among the Kymry of the north of England during the sixth and seventh centuries. Two translations have already appeared in English; one by the Rev. Edward Davies, the author of Celtic Researches, and the other by a gentleman named Probert. Of these the latter, though very imperfect and extremely defective, is the only one which an English reader should consult; the version given by Davies is only a very ingenious misrepresentation. The poem has no more reference to Hengist than it has to the man-in-the-moon; and GOMER might have suspected that a version which, without rule or reason, deprived historic personages of their reality, could not have been correct. Every proper name mentioned in the Gododin may be shown without any alteration to be those of persons living between 577 and 642. The proof of this assertion, when carefully examined, is all but overwhelming; but here I can only cite a few of the most tangible facts. The design of the poem is thus described by the bard himself:—