Kitabı oku: «Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853», sayfa 2

Various

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A WORK ON THE MACROCOSM

I intended to have contributed a series of papers to "N. & Q." on the brute creation, on plants and flowers, &c.; and in a Note on the latter subject I promised to follow it up. However, as circumstances have changed my intentions, I think it may be well to mention that I have in hand a work on Macrocosm, or World of Nature around us, which shall be published in three separate parts or volumes. The first shall be devoted to the Brute Creation; the second shall be an Herbal, with a Calendar of dedicated Flowers prefixed; the third shall contain Chapters on the Mineral Kingdom: in the last I shall treat of the symbolism of stones, and the superstitions respecting them. I purpose in each case, as far as possible, to go to the fountain-head, and shall give copious extracts from such writers as St. Ildefonso of Toledo, St. Isidore of Seville, Vincent of Beauvais, St. Basil, Origen, Epiphanius, and the Christian Fathers.

As the work I have sketched out for myself will require time to mature, I shall publish very shortly a small volume, containing a breviary of the former, which will give some idea of the manner in which I shall treat the proposed subject.

Many correspondents of "N. & Q." have evinced great interest in the line I intend to enter upon. (See Vol. i., pp. 173. 457.; Vol. iv., p. 175.; Vol. vi., pp. 101. 272. 462. 518.) Their Queries have produced no satisfactory result. I myself made a Query in my "Chapter on Flowers," some months ago, respecting Catholic floral directories, and two works in particular, about which I was most anxious, and which were quoted in The Catholic Florist, London, 1851, and I have received no answer. Mr. Oakley, indeed, wrote to me to say that he "only edited it, and wrote a preface," and that he forwarded my Query "to the compiler:" the latter personage, however, has not favoured me with a reply.

In spite of all these discouragements, I have taken the step of bringing my contemplated work before the readers of "N. & Q.," and I shall gratefully acknowledge any communications relative to legends, folk-lore, superstitions, symbolism, &c. bearing on the subjects proposed. As I intend inserting a bibliographical list of the chief works which come under the scope of each volume, I might receive much valuable assistance on this point, especially as regards Oriental and other foreign books, which might escape my researches. As regards the brute creation, I have gotten, with the kind assistance of the editor of "N. & Q.," Hildrop's famous reply to Father Bougeant; and I have sent to Germany for Dr. Kraus's recent work on the subject.

Eirionnach.

DR. SOUTH'S LATIN TRACT AGAINST SHERLOCK

None of South's compositions are more striking or characteristic than his two English tracts against Sherlock, his Animadversions on Sherlock's Vindication of the Trinity, 1693-94, 4to., and his Tritheism charged on Sherlock's new Notion of the Trinity, 1694, 4to. For caustic wit and tremendous power of vituperation, I scarcely know any controversial works which surpass, or even equal them. South looked upon Sherlock with profound scorn as a Sciolist, and hated him most cordially as a heretic and a political renegade. He accordingly gives him no quarter, and seems determined to draw blood at every stroke. Mrs. Sherlock is of course not forgotten, and one of the happiest passages in the Tritheism charged is the well-known humorous illustration of Socrates and Xantippe, p. 129. It is somewhat curious that, notwithstanding these two works of South have attracted so much notice, it seems to be quite unknown that he also published a Latin tract against Sherlock, in further continuation of the controversy, in which the attack is carried on with equal severity. The title of the tract in question is, Decreti Oxoniensis Vindicatio in Tribus ad Modestum ejusdem examinatorem modestioribus Epistolis a Theologo Transmarino. Excusa Anno Domini 1696, 4to., pp. 92. The tract, of which I have a copy, is anonymous, but it is ascribed to South in the following passages in The Agreement of the Unitarians with the Catholic Church, part i. 1697, 4to., which is included in vol. v. of the 4to. Unitarian Tracts, and evidently written by one who had full information on the subject. His expressions (p. 62.) are—"Dr. South, in his Latin Letters, under the name of a Transmarine Divine;" and a little further on, "Dr. South, in two (English) books by him written, and in three Latin letters, excepts against this (Sherlock's) explication of the Trinity." In confirmation of this ascription, I may observe that the Latin tract is contained in an extensive collection of the tracts in the Trinitarian Controversy formed by Dr. John Wallis, which I possess, and in which he has written the names of the authors of the various anonymous pieces. He took, as is well known, a leading part in the controversy, and published himself an anonymous pamphlet (not noticed by his biographers), also in defence of Oxford decrees. On the title-page of the Latin tract he has written "By Dr. South." I have likewise another copy in a volume which belonged to Stephen Nye, one of the ablest writers in the controversy, and who ascribes it in the list of contents in the fly-leaf, in his handwriting, to Dr. South. These grounds would appear to be sufficient to authorise our including this tract in the list of South's works, though, from the internal evidence of the tract itself alone, I should scarcely have felt justified in ascribing it to him.

Jas. Crossley.

SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE

Parallel Passages.—

"You leaden messengers,
That ride upon the violent wings of fire,
Fly with false aim; move the still-piecing air,
That sings with piercing,—do not touch my lord!"

All's Well that Ends Well, Act III. Sc. 2.

"the elements,
Of whom your swords are tempered, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that's in my plume."

The Tempest, Act III. Sc. 3.

There can be little doubt that the clever corrector of Mr. Collier's folio had the last of these passages in view when he altered the word move of the first, into wound of the second: but in this instance he overshot the mark, in not perceiving the nice and subtle distinction which exists between them. The first implies possibility: the second impossibility.

In the second, the mention of, to "wound the loud wind, or kill the still-closing water," is to set forth the absurdness of the attempt; but in the first passage there is a direct injunction to a possible act: "Fly with false aim, move the still-piecing air." To say "wound the still-piecing air" would be to direct to be done, in one passage, that which the other passage declares to be absurd to expect!

If it were necessary to disturb move at all, the word cleave would be, all to nothing, a better substitution than wound.

Whether the annotating of Mr. Collier's folio be a real or a pseudo-antique, it is impossible to deny that its executor must have been a clever, as he was certainly a slashing hitter. It cannot, therefore, be wondered that he should sometimes reach the mark: but that these corrections should be received with that blind and superstitious faith, so strangely exacted for them, can scarcely be expected. Indeed, it is to be regretted that they have been introduced to the public with such an uncompromising claim to authority; as the natural repugnance against enforced opinion may endanger the success of the few suggestive emendations, to be found amongst them, which are really new and valuable.

A. E. B.

Leeds.

P.S.—With reference to the above Note, which, although not before printed, has been for some time in the Editor's hands, I have observed in a Dublin paper of Saturday, April 9th, a very singular coincidence; viz. the recurrence of the self-same misprint corrected by Malone, but retained by Messrs. Collier and Knight in their respective editions of Shakspeare. Had the parallel expressions still-closing, still-piecing, which I have compared in the above paper, been noticed by these editors, they would no more have hesitated in accepting Malone's correction than they would object to the same correction in the misprint I am about to point out; viz.

"Two planks were pointed out by the witnesses, viz. one with a knot in it, and another which was piered with strips of wood," &c.—Saunders's Newsletter, April 9th, 3rd page, 1st col.

The Passage in "King Henry VIII.," Act III. Sc. 2. (Vol. vii., pp. 5. 111. 183.).—Is an old Shakspearian to talk rashly in "N. & Q." without being called to account? "If 'we can,'" says Mr. Singer, "'by no means part with have,' we must interpolate been after it, to make it any way intelligible, to the marring of the verse." Now, besides the passage in the same scene—

——"my loyalty,
Which ever has, and ever shall be growing,"

pointed out by your Leeds correspondent, there is another equally in point in All's Well that Ends Well, Act II. Sc. 5., which, being in prose, settles the question as to whether the omission of the past participle after the auxiliary was customary in Shakspeare's time. It is Lafeu's farewell to Parolles:

"Farewell, Monsieur: I have spoken better of you, than you have or will deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil."

Either this is "unintelligible," and "we must interpolate" deserved, or (the only possible alternative) all three passages are free from Mr. Singer's objection.

C. Mansfield Ingleby.

Birmingham.

On a Passage in "Macbeth."—Macbeth (Act I. Sc. 7.) says:

"I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other."

Should not the third line be—

"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its sell!"

Sell is saddle (Latin, sella; French, selle), and is used by Spenser in this sense.

"O'erleaping itself" is manifest nonsense; whereas the whole passage has evident reference to horsemanship; and to "vault" is "to carry one's body cleverly over anything of a considerable height, resting one hand upon the thing itself,"—exactly the manner in which some persons mount a horse, resting one hand on the pommel of the saddle.

It would then be perfectly intelligible, thus—

"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its saddle (sell),
And falls on the other (side of the horse)."

Does Mr. Collier's "New Text," or any other old copy, prove this?

S. Singleton.

Greenwich.

Minor Notes

Robert Weston.—I copy the following from a letter of R. L. Kingston to Dr. Ducarel in Nichols's Literary History, vol. iii. p. 629.:

"Robert Weston was Lord of Manor of Kilmington in Devon, and divided his estate among four daughters, reserving to the eldest son the royalties of his courts. In his will or deed of settlement is this clause:—'That the Abbot of Newnhams, near Axminster, had nothing to do in the highway any further than to his land of Studhays, and that he should stand without the court gate of his land of Studhays, and take his right ear in his left hand, and put his right arm next to his body under his left across, and so cast his reap-hook from him; and so far he shall come.'"
Balliolensis.

Sonnet on the Rev. Joseph Blanco White.—Some years ago, I copied the following sonnet from a newspaper. Can you say where it first made its appearance? After the annexed testimony of Coleridge, it is needless to say anything in its praise.

"SONNET ON THE REV. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.

Mysterious Night! When our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,
And lo! Creation widen'd in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd
Within thy beams, O Sun! Or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect, stood reveal'd,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive—wherefore not life?"

Coleridge is said to have pronounced this "The finest and most grandly conceived in our language; at least, it is only in Milton's and in Wordsworth's sonnets that I recollect any rival."

Balliolensis.

English and American Booksellers.—It is rather curious to note, that whilst English booksellers are emulously vying with one another to publish editions of Uncle Toms, Queechys, Wide Wide Worlds, &c., they neglect to issue English works which the superior shrewdness of Uncle Sam deems worthy of reprinting. Southey's Chronicle of the Cid, which was published by Longman in 1808, and not since printed in England, was brought out in a very handsome octavo form at Lowell, U. S., in 1846. And this, the "first American edition," as it is called on the title-page, can be readily procured from the booksellers in London; whereas the English original is not to be met with. In like manner, Macaulay's Essays were collected and published first in America; and so with Praed's Poems, and many others. Uncle Sam has lately announced collections of Dr. Maginn's and De Quincey's scattered Essays, for which we owe him our most grateful acknowledgments.

J. M. B.

Tunbridge Wells.

Odd Mistake.—

"One of the houses on Mount Ephraim formerly belonged to Judge Jeffries, a man who has rendered his name infamous in the annals of history by the cruelty and injustice he manifested in presiding at the trial of King Charles I."—Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells, by John Britton, F.S.A., p. 59.

Voilà comment on fait l'histoire!

J. M. B.

Tunbridge Wells.

Thomas Shakspeare.—In the year 1597 there resided in Lutterworth in Leicestershire, only distant from Stratford-upon-Avon, the birth-town of Shakspeare, a very few miles, one Thomas Shakspeare, who appears to have been employed by William Glover, of Hillendon in Northamptonshire, gentleman, as his agent to receive for him and give an acquittance for a considerable sum of money.

Having regard to the age in which this Thomas Shakspeare lived, coupled with his place of residence, is it not probable he was a relative of the great Bard?

Charlecote.

Early Winters.—I heard it mentioned, when in St. Petersburg very lately, that they have never had so early a commencement of winter as this last year since the French were at Moscow.

I find in accounts of the war, that the winter commenced then (1812) on November 7, N. S., with deep snow. Last year (1852) it commenced at St. Petersburg on October 16, N. S., as noted in my diary, with snow, which has remained on the ground ever since, accompanied at times with very severe frost.

Query: Can November 7, N. S., be the correct date? If it is, this last winter's commencement must be unprecedented; as I have always heard it remarked, that the winter began unusually early the year the French were at Moscow.

I may mention as a note, that by the last accounts from Russia, they say the ice in the Gulf of Finland was four and a half feet thick.