Notes and Queries, Number 04, November 24, 1849

Various

Notes and Queries, Number 04, November 24, 1849

OUR PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

When we consulted our literary friends as to the form and manner in which it would be most expedient to put forth our "NOTES AND QUERIES," more than one suggested to us that our paper should appear only once a month, or at all events not more frequently than once a fortnight, on the ground that a difficulty would be experienced in procuring materials for more frequent publication. We felt, however, that if such a medium of Inter-communication, as we proposed to establish was, as we believed, really wanted, frequency of publication was indispensable. Nothing but a weekly publication would meet what we believed to be the requirements of literary men. We determined, therefore, to publish a Number every Saturday; and the result has so far justified our decision, that the object of our now addressing our readers is to apologise to the many friends whose communications we are again unavoidably compelled to postpone; and to explain that we are preparing to carry out such further improvements in our arrangements as will enable us to find earlier admission for all the communications with which we are favoured.

One other word. It has been suggested to us that in inviting Notes, Comments, and Emendations upon the works of Macaulay, Hallam, and other living authors, we may possibly run a risk of offending those eminent men. We hope not. We are sure that this outght not to be the case. Had we not recognised the merits of such works, and the influence they were destined to exercise over men's minds, we should not have opened our pages for the purpose of receiving, much less have invited, corrections of the mistakes into which the most honest and the most able of literary inquirers must sometimes fall. Only those who have meddled in historical research can be aware of the extreme difficulty, the all but impossibility, of ascertaining the exact or the whole truth, amidst the numerous minute and often apparently contradictory facts which present themselves to the notice of all inquirers. In this very number a correspondent comments upon an inference drawn by Mr. Hallam from a passage in Mabillon. In inserting such a communication we show the respect we feel for Mr. Hallam, and our sense of the services which he has rendered to historical knowledge. Had we believed that if he has fallen into a mistake in this instance, it had been not merely a mistake, but a deliberate perversion of the truth, we should have regarded both book and writer with indifference, not to say with contempt. It is in the endeavour to furnish corrections of little unavoidable slips in such good honest books—albeit imperfect as all books must be—that we hope at once to render good service to our national literature, and to show our sense of genius, learning, and research which have combined to enrich it by the production of works of such high character and last influence.

NOTES

LATIN EPIGRAM AGAINST LUTHER AND ERASMUS

Mr. Editor,—Your correspondent "Roterodamus" (pp. 27, 28) asks, I hope, for the author of the epigram which he quotes, with a view to a life of his great townsman, Erasmus. Such a book, written by some competent hand, and in an enlarged and liberal spirit, would be a noble addition to the literature of Europe. There is no civilised country that does not feel an interest in the labours and in the fame of Erasmus. I am able to answer your correspondents question, but it is entirely by chance. I read the epigram which he quotes several years ago, in a book of a kind which one would like to see better known in this country—a typographical or bibliographical history of Douay. It is entitled, "Bibliographie Douaisienne, ou Catalogue Historique et Raisonné des Livres imprimés à Douai depuis l'année 1563 jusqu'a nos jours, avec des notes bibliographiques et littéraires; Par H.R. Duthilloeul. 8vo. Douai, 1842." The 111th book noticed in the volume is entitled, "Epigrammata in Hæreticos. Authore Andrea Frusio, Societatis Jesu. Tres-petit in 8vo. 1596." The book is stated to contain 251 epigrams, "aimed," says M. Duthilloeul, "at the heretics and their doctrines. The author has but one design, which is to render odious and ridiculous, the lives, persons, and errors of the apostles of the Reformation." He quotes three of the epigrams, the third being the one your correspondent has given you. It has this title, "De Lutheri et Erasmi differentia," and is the 209th epigram in the book.

I have never met with a copy of the work of Frusius, nor do I know any thing of him as an author. The learned writer who pours out a store of curious learning in the pages of Gentleman's Magazine is more likely than any body that I know to tell you something about him.

Mons. Duthilloeul quotes another epigram from the same book upon the Encomium Moriæ, but it is too long and too pointless for your pages. He adds another thing which is more in your way, namely, that a former possessor of the copy of the work then before him had expressed his sense of the value of these "epigrammes dévotes" in the following NOTE:—

"Nollem carere hoe libello auro nequidem contra pensitato."

Perhaps some one who possesses or has access to the book would give us a complete list of the persons who are the subjects of these defamatory epigrams. And I may add, as you invite us to put our queries, Is not Erasmus entitled to the distinction of being regarded as the author of the work which the largest single edition has ever been printed and sold? Mr. Hallam mentions that, "in the single year 1527, Colinæus printed 24,000 copies of the Colloquies, all of which were sold." This is the statement of Moreri. Bayle gives some additional information. Quoting a letter of Erasmus as his authority, he says, that Colinæus, who—like the Brussels and American reprinters of our day—was printing the book at Paris from a Basle edition, entirely without the concurrence of Erasmus, and without any view of his participation in the profit, circulated a report that the book was about to be prohibited by the Holy See. The curiosity of the public was excited. Every one longed to secure a copy. The enormous edition—for the whole 24,000 was but one impression—was published contemporaneously with the report. It was a cheap and elegant book, and sold as fast as it could be handed over the booksellers counter. As poor Erasmus had no pecuniary benefit from the edition, he ought to have the credit which arises from this proof of his extraordinary popularity. The public, no doubt, enjoyed greatly his calm but pungent exposure of the absurd practices which were rife around them. That his humorous satire was felt by its objects, is obvious from this epigram, as well as from a thousand other evidences.

JOHN BRUCE.

HALLAMS MIDDLE AGES—ALLEGED IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY

Sir,—When reading Hallam's History of the Middle Ages a short time ago I was startled by the following passage which occurs amongst other evidences of the ignorance of the clergy during the period subsequent to the dissolution of the Roman Empire.

"Not one priest in a thousand in Spain about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of salutation to another."—Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 332.

And for this statement he refers to Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, p. 52.

On referring to Mabillon, I find that the passage runs as follows:—

"Christiani posthabitis scripturis sanctis, earumque interpretibus, Arabum Chaldæorumque libris evolvendis incumbentes, legem suam nesciebant, et linguam propriam non advertebant latinam, ita ut ex omni Christi collegio vix inveniretur unus in milleno hominum genere, qui salutatorias fratri posset rationabiliter dirigere litteras."

So that although Mabillon says that scarce one in a thousand could address a Latin letter to another, yet he by no means says that it was on account of their general ignorance, but because they were addicting themselves to other branches of learning. They were devoting all their energies to Arabic and Chaldæan science, and in their pursuit of it neglected other literature. A similar remark might be made of respecting many distinguished members of the University to which I belong; yet who would feel himself justified in inferring thence that Cambridge was sunk in ignorance?

CANTAB.

ADVERSARIA

[In our Prospectus we spoke of NOTES AND QUERIES becoming everybody's common-place book. The following very friendly letter from an unknown correspondent, G.J.K., urges us to carry out such an arrangement.

"Sir,—I beg leave to forward you a contribution for your 'NOTES AND QUERIES,' a periodical which is, I conceive, likely to do a vast deal of good by bringing literary men of all shades of opinion into closer juxtaposition than they have hitherto been.

"I would, however, suggest that in future numbers a space might be allotted for the reception of those articles (short of course), which students and literary men in general, transfer to their common-place books; such as notices of scarce or curious books, biographical or historical curiosities, remarks on ancient or obsolete customs, &c. &c. &c. Literary men are constantly meeting with such in the course of their reading, and how much better would it be if, instead of transferring them to a MS. book to be seen only by themselves, or perhaps a friend or two, they would forward them to a periodical, in which they might be enshrined in imperishable pica; to say nothing of the benefits such a course of proceeding would confer on those who might not have had the same facilities of gaining the information thus made public.

"In pursuance of this suggestion, I have forwarded the inclosed paper, and should be happy, from time to time, to contribute such gleanings from old authors, &c. as I might think worth preserving.

"G.J.K."

We readily comply with G.J.K.'s suggestion, and print, as the first of the series, his interesting communication, entitled:]

1. Writers of Notes on Fly-leaves, &c.

The Barberini Library at Rome contains a vast number of books covered with marginal notes by celebrated writers, such as Scaliger, Allatius, Holstentius, David Haeschel, Barbadori, and above all, Tasso, who has annotated with his own hand more than fifty volumes. Valery, in his Voyages en Italie, states that a Latin version of Plato is not only annotated by the hand of Tasso, but also by his father, Bernardo; a fact which sufficiently proves how deeply the language and philosophy of the Greek writers were studied in the family. The remarks upon the Divina Commedia, which, despite the opinion of Serassi, appear to be authentic, attest the profound study which, from his youth, Tasso had made of the great poets, and the lively admiration he displayed for their works. There is also in existence a copy of the Venice edition of the Divina Commedia (1477), with autograph notes by Bembo.

Christina of Sweden had quite a mania for writing in her books. In the library of the Roman College (at Rome) there are several books annotated by her, amongst others a Quintus Curtius, in which, as it would appear, she criticises very freely the conduct of Alexander. "He reasons falsely in this case," she writes on one page; and elsewhere, "I should have acted diametrically opposite; I should have pardoned;" and again, further on, "I should have exercised clemency;" an assertion, however, we may be permitted to doubt, when we consider what sort of clemency was exercised towards Monaldeschi. Upon the fly-leaf of a Seneca (Elzevir), she has written, "Adversus virtutem possunt calamitates damna et injuriæ quod adversus solem nebulæ possunt." The library of the Convent of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem at Rome, possesses a copy of the Bibliotheca Hispanu, in the first volume of which the same princess has written on the subject of a book relating to her conversion:* "Chi l'ha scritta, non lo sa; chi lo sa, non l'ha mai scritta."

Lemontey has published some very curious Memoirs, which had been entirely written on the fly-leaves and margins of a missal by J. de Coligny, who died in 1686.

Racine, the French tragic poet, was also a great annotator of his books; the Bibliothèque National at Paris possesses a Euripides and Aristophanes from his library, the margins of which are covered with notes in Greek, Latin, and French.

The books which formerly belonged to La Monnoie are now recognizable by the anagram of his name. A Delio nomen, and also by some very curious notes on the fly-leaves and margins written in microscopic characters.

G.J.K.

ORIGIN OF WORD "GROG."

Mr. Vaux writes as follows:—Admiral Vernon was the first to require his men to drink their spirits mixed with water. In bad weather he was in the habit of walking the deck in a rough grogram cloak, and thence had obtained the nickname of Old Grog in the Service. This is, I believe, the origin of the name grog, applied originally to rum and water. I find the same story repeated in a quaint little book, called Pulleyn's Etymological Compendium.

[A.S. has communicated a similar explanation; and we are obliged to "An old LADY who reads for Pastime" for kindly furnishing us with a reference to a newly published American work, Lifts for the Lazy, where the origin of "Grog" is explained in the same manner.

The foregoing was already in type when we received the following agreeable version of the same story.]

ORIGIN OF WORD "GROG"—ANCIENT ALMS-BASINS

Mr. Editor,—As a sailor's son I beg to answer your correspondent LEGOUR'S query concerning the origin of the word "grog," so famous in the lips of our gallant tars. Jack loves to give a pet nickname to his favourite officers. The gallant Edward Vernon (a Westminster man by birth) was not exempted from the general rule. His gallantry and ardent devotion to his profession endeared him to the service, and some merry wags of the crew, in an idle humour, dubbed him "Old Grogham." Whilst in command of the West Indian station, and at the height of his popularity on account of his reduction of Porto Bello with six men-of-war only, he introduced the use of rum and water by the ship's company. When served out, the new beverage proved most palatable, and speedily grew into such favour, that it became as popular as the brave admiral himself, and in honour of him was surnamed by acclamation "Grog."

MACKENZIE WALCOTT, M.A.

P.S.—There are two other alms-basins in St. Margaret's worthy of note, besides those I mentioned in your last number. One has the inscription, "Live well, die never; die well and live ever. A.D. 1644 W.G." The other has the appropriate legend, "Hee that gives too the poore lends unto thee LORD." A third bears the Tudor rose in the centre. In an Inventory made about the early part of the 17th century, are mentioned "one Bason given by Mr. Bridges, of brasse." (The donor was a butcher in the parish.) "Item, one bason, given by Mr. Brugg, of brasse." On the second basin are the arms and crest of the Brewers' Company. Perhaps Mr. Brugg was a member of it. One Richard Bridges was a churchwarden, A.D. 1630-32.

M.W.

7. College Street. Nov. 17.

DYCE VERSUS WARBURTON AND COLLIER—AND SHAKSPEARE'S MSS

In Mr. Dyce's Remarks on Mr. J.P. Collier's and Mr. C. Knight's Editions of Shakspeare, pp. 115, 116, the following note occurs:—

"King Henry IV., Part Second, act iv. sc. iv.

"As humorous as winter, and as suddenAs flaws congealed in the spring of day."

"Alluding," says Warburton, "to the opinion of some philosophers, that the vapours being congealed in air by cold, (which is most intense towards the morning,) and being afterwards rarified and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion those sudden and impetuous guests of wind which are called flaws."—COLLIER.

"An interpretation altogether wrong, as the epithet here applied to 'flaws' might alone determine; 'congealed gusts of wind' being nowhere mentioned among the phenomena of nature except in Baron Munchausen's Travels. Edwards rightly explained 'flaws,' in the present passage, 'small blades of ice.' I have myself heard the word used to signify both thin cakes of ice and the bursting of those cakes."—DYCE.

Mr. Dyce may perhaps have heard the world floe (plural floes) applied to floating sheet-ice, as it is to be found so applied extensively in Captain Parry's Journal of his Second Voyage; but it remains to be shown whether such a term existed in Shakspeare's time. I think it did not, as after diligent search I have not met with it; and, if it did, and then had the same meaning, floating sheet-ice, how would it apply to the illustration of this passage?

That the uniform meaning of flaws in the poet's time was sudden gust of wind

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Conversion de la Reina de Suecia in Roma (1656).