Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851

"Dated 1. December, 1406."

From the original in the Surrenden collection.

L. B. L.

Gray and Burns.—

"Authors, before they write, should read."

So thought Matthew Prior; and if that rule had been attended to, neither would Lord Byron have deemed it worth notice that "the knell of parting day," in Gray's Elegy, "was adopted from Dante;" nor would Mr. Cary have remarked upon "this plagiarism," if indeed he used the term. (I refer to "Notes and Queries," Vol. iii., p. 35.) The truth is, that in every good edition of Gray's Works, there is a note to the line in question, by the poet himself, expressly stating that the passage is "an imitation of the quotation from Dante" thus brought forward.

I could furnish you with various notes on Gray, pointing out remarkable coincidences of sentiment and expression between himself and other writers; but I cannot allow Gray to be a plagiary, any more than I can allow Burns to be so designated, in the following instances:—

At the end of the poem called The Vision, we find—

"And like a passing thought she fled."

In Hesiod we have—

"ὁ δ' ἔπτατο ὥστε νόημα."—Scut. Herc. 222.

Again, few persons are unacquainted with Burns's lines—

"Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,An' then she made," &c.

In an old play, Cupid's Whirligig (4to. 1607), we read—

"Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art."

Pliny, in his Natural History, has the pretty notion that

"Nature, in learning to form a lily, turned out a convolvulus."

Varro.

Richard III., Traditional Notice of.—I have an aunt, now eighty-nine years of age, who in early life knew one who was in the habit of saying:

"I knew a man, who knew a man, who knew a man who danced at court in the days of Richard III."

Thus there have been but three links between one who knew Richard III. and one now alive.

My aunt's acquaintance could name his three predecessors, who were members of his own family: their names have been forgotten, but his name was Harrison, and he was a member of an old Yorkshire family, and late in life settled in Bedfordshire.

Richard died in 1484, and thus five persons have sufficed to chronicle an incident which occurred nearly 370 years since.

Mr. Harrison further stated that there was nothing remarkable about Richard, that he was not the hunchback "lump of foul deformity" so generally believed until of late years.

The foregoing anecdote may be of interest as showing that traditions may come down from remote periods by few links, and thus be but little differing from the actual occurrences.

H. J. B.

66. Hamilton Terrace,

St. John's Wood, March 5. 1851.

Oliver Cromwell.—Echard says that his highness sold himself to the devil, and that he had seen the solemn compact. Anthony à Wood, who doubtless credited this account of a furious brother loyalist, in his Journal says:

"Aug. 30, 1658. Monday, a terrible raging wind happened, which did much damage. Dennis Bond, a great Oliverian and anti-monarchist, died on that day, and then the devil took bond for Oliver's appearance."

Clarendon, assigning the Protector to eternal perdition, not liking to lose the portent, boldly says the remarkable hurricane occurred on September 3, the day of Oliver's death. Oliver's admirers, on the other hand, represent this wind as ushering him into the other world, but for a very different reason.

Heath, in his Flagellum (I have the 4th edit.), says:

It pleased God to usher in his end with a great whale some three months before, June 2, that came up as far as Greenwich, and there was killed; and more immediately by a terrible storm of wind: the prognosticks that the great Leviathan of men, that tempest and overthrow of government, was now going to his own place!"

I have several works concerning Cromwell, but in no other do I find this story very like a whale. Would some reader of better opportunities favour us with a record of these two matters of natural history, not as connected with the death of this remarkable man, but as mere events? Your well-read readers will remember some similar tales relative to the death of Cardinal Mazarine. These exuberances of vulgar minds may partly be attributed to the credulity of the age, but more probably to the same want of philosophy which caused the ancients to deal in exaggeration.

B. B.

Snail-eating.—The practice of eating, if not of talking to, snails, seems not to be so unknown in this country as some of your readers might imagine. I was just now interrogating a village child in reference to the addresses to snails quoted under the head of "Folk Lore," Vol. iii., pp. 132. and 179., when she acquainted me with the not very appetising fact, that she and her brothers and sisters had been in the constant habit of indulging this horrible Limacotrophy.

"We hooks them out of the wall (she says) with a stick, in winter time, and not in summer time (so it seems they have their seasons); and we roasts them, and, when they've done spitting, they be a-done; and we takes them out with a fork, and eats them. Sometimes we has a jug heaped up, pretty near my pinafore-full. I loves them dearly."

Surely this little bit of practical cottage economy is worth recording.

C. W. B.

Queries

BIDDINGS IN WALES

There is a nursery song beginning—

"Harry Parry, when will you marry?When apples and pears are ripe.I'll come to your wedding, without any bidding,And," &c. &c. &c.

Does this mean that I will come without an invitation, or without a marriage-present? It will be observed that Parry is a Welsh name, and that bidding is a Welsh custom, as is shown by Mr. Spurrell (Vol. iii., p. 114.). He has anticipated my intention of sending you a bidding-form, which has been lying upon my table for some weeks, but which I have not had time to transcribe; I now send it you, because it somewhat varies from Mr. Spurrell's, and yet so much resembles it as to show that the same formula is preserved. Both show that the presents are considered as debts, transferable or assignable to other parties. Is this the case in all districts of Wales where the custom of bidding prevails? I think I have heard that in some places the gift is to be returned only when the actual donor "enters into the matrimonial state." It will be observed, too, in these forms, relations only transfer to relations. Is it considered that they may assign to persons not relations? Some of your Welsh correspondents may reply to these questions, which may elucidate all the varieties of practice in a custom which contributes much to the comfort of a young couple, and, in many instances, is an incentive to prudence, because they are aware that the debt is a debt of honour, not to be evaded without some loss of character.

"December 26. 1806.

"As we intend to enter the Matrimonial State on Tuesday the 20th of January, 1807, we purpose to make a Bidding on the occasion the same day for the young man at his father's house, in the village of Llansaint, in the parish of St. Ishmael; and for the young woman, at her own house, in the said village of Llansaint; at either of which places the favour of your good company on that day will be deemed a peculiar obligation; and whatever donation you may be pleased to confer on either of us then, will be gratefully received, and cheerfully repaid whenever required on a similar occasion, by

Your humble servants,Seth Rees,Ann Jenkins.

"The young man's father and mother, and also the young woman's father and mother, and sister Amy, desire that all gifts of the above nature due to them, may be returned on the same day; and will be thankful for all favour shown the young couple."

E. H.

Minor Queries

Lord of Relton (Vol. iii., p. 56.)—Will your correspondent Monkbarns favour me with the date of the paper from which he copied the paragraph quoted, and whether it was given as being then in use, or as of ancient date?

Can any of your readers inform me from what place the Lord of Relton derived his name? What was his proper name, and who is the present representative of the family?

Is there any family of the name of Relton now existing in the neighbourhood of Langholme, or in Cumberland or Westmoreland?

F. B. Relton.

Beatrix de Bradney.—In your "Notes And Queries" for January 25th, 1851, p. 61., you have given Sir Henry Chauncy's Observations on Wilfred Entwysel.

Sir Bertin left a daughter named Lucy, of whom Master Bradene of Northamptonshire is descended. Can F. R. R., or any genealogist, inform me whether this Master Bradene is descended from Simon de Bradney, one of the Knights of the Shire for Somersetshire in the year 1346? In Collins's Somersetshire, vol. iii. p. 92., he mentions:

"In St. Michael's Church, Bawdrip, under a large Gothic arch lies the effigy in armour of Sir Simon de Bradney or Bredenie.

"The Manor of Bradney, in Somersetshire, supposed to have ended in Beatrix de Bradney, an heiress, and passed with her into other families; this Beatrix was living in the forty-sixth year of Edward III."

Can you inform me whom she married? About sixty-five years ago it was purchased by the late Joseph Bradney, Esq., of Ham, near Richmond; and his second son, the Reverend Joseph Bradney, of Greet, near Tenbury, Shropshire, is the present possessor.

Julia R. Bockett.Southcote Lodge, near Reading.

"Letters on the British Museum."—In the year 1767 was published by Dodsley a work in 12mo. pp. 92., with the above title; and at p. 85. is printed "A Pastoral Dialogue," between Celia and Ebron, beginning, "As Celia rested in the shade," which the author states he "found among the manuscripts." I wish to know, first, who was the anonymous author of these letters; and, secondly, in what collection of manuscripts this "Dialogue" is to be found.

μ.

Ballad Editing.—The "Outlandish Knight" (Vol. iii.,p. 49.).—I was exceedingly glad to see Mr. F. Sheldon's "valuable contribution to our stock of ballad literature" in the hands of Mr. Rimbault, and thought the treatment it received no better than it deserved. Blackwood, May, 1847, reviewed Mr. Sheldon's book, and pointed out several instances of his "godfathership;" among others, his ballad of the "Outlandish Knight," which he obtained from "a copy in the possession of a gentleman at Newcastle," was condemned by the reviewer as "a vamped version of the Scotch ballad of 'May Collean.'" It may be as the reviewer states, but the question I would wish answered is one affecting the reviewer himself; for, if I mistake not, the Southron "Outlandish Knight" is the original of "May Collean" itself. I have by me a copy, in black letter, of the "Outlandish Knight," English in every respect, and as such differing considerably from Mr. Sheldon's border edition, and from "May Collean;" and, with some slight alterations, the ballad I have is yet popularly known through the midland counties. If any of your correspondents can oblige me with a reference to the first appearance of "May Collean," sheet or book, I shall esteem it a favour.

Emun.

Birmingham.

Latin Epigram on the Duchess of Eboli.—In his controversy with Bowles touching the poetry of Pope, Byron states that it was upon the Princess of Eboli, mistress of Philip II. of Spain, and Mangirow, the minion of Henry III. of France, that the famous Latin epigram, so well known to classic readers, was composed, concluding with the couplet:

"Blande puer lumen quod habes concede parenti,Sic tu cæcus Amor, sic erit illa Venus."

Can any contributor to the "Notes and Queries" suggest what authority his lordship has for his statement? Many years since, a curious paragraph appeared in one of the public journals, extracted apparently from an historical work, specifying the extraordinary political embroglios which the one-eyed duchess occasioned, eliciting from one of the statesmen of her times the complimentary declaration, that if she had had two eyes instead of only one, she would have set the universe on fire. A reference to this work—I fancy one of Roscoe's—would be of material service to an historical inquirer.

C. R. H.

Engraved Portrait.—

"All that thou see'st and readest is divine,Learning thus us'd is water turn'd to wine;Well may wee then despaire to draw his minde,View here the case; i'th Booke the Jewell finde."

The above quatrain is placed beneath a portrait characteristically engraved by Cross. Above the head is the following inscription:—

"Ætatis Suæ 50º. Octob. 10. 1649."

Of whom is this a portrait? It is no doubt well known to collectors, and is of course a frontispiece; but having never yet seen it vis-à-vis with a title-page, I am at a loss as to the author of whom it is the vera effigies. Possibly some of your readers will be kind enough to enlighten me upon the matter, and favour me with the name of the British worthy thus handed down to posterity by Cross's admirable burin.

Henry Campkin.

Blackstone's Commentaries and Table of Precedence.—The first edition of Blackstone was published at Oxford in 4to., in the year 1765; and the Table of Precedence, in the 12th chapter of the First Book, found in subsequent editions edited by Mr. Christian, does not occur in Blackstone's first edition. Can any of your readers, having access to good legal theories, inform me in which of Blackstone's own editions the Table of Precedence was first inserted?

E.

The Two Drs. Abercromby.—In the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were two physicians of the name of Abercromby, who both graduated at the university of Leyden, and were afterwards the authors of various published works. The first work of David Abercromby mentioned in Watt's Bibliotheca is dated in 1684, and the first written by Patrick Abercromby in 1707. As it was usual to compose an inaugural dissertation at obtaining the doctorate, and such productions were ordinarily printed (in small quarto), J. K. would feel obliged by the titles and dates of the inaugural dissertations of either or both of the physicians above mentioned.

Witte van Haemstede.—Can any of your readers inform me whether there still exist any descendants of Witte van Haemstede, an illegitimate scion of the ancient house of Holland? Willem de Water, in his Adelijke Zeeland, written in the seventeenth century, says that in his youth he knew a Witte van Haemstede of this family, one of whose sons became pastor of the Dutch congregation in London.—Navorscher, Jan. 1851, p. 17.

J. Bruckner—Dutch Church in Norwich.—In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1804 is a short memoir of the Rev. J. Bruckner. He was born in the island of Cadsand, completed his studies at Leyden, where he enjoyed the society of Hemsterhuis, Valckenaer, and the elder Schultens. In 1753 he became pastor of the Walloon, and afterwards of the Dutch congregation in Norwich, where he remained till his death in May, 1804. In 1767 he published at Leyden his Théorie du Système Animal; in 1790 appeared his Criticisms on the Diversions of Purley.

Could your correspondents furnish me with a complete list of Bruckner's works, and direct me to a history of the Dutch church in Norwich, from its origin to the present time?—Navorscher, Feb. 1851, p. 28.

Minor Queries Answered

[Under this heading we propose to give such Minor Queries as we are able to reply to at once, but which are not of a nature to be answered with advantage in our Notices to Correspondents. We hope by this means to economise our space.]

The Hereditary Earl Marshal.—Miss Martineau, in her History of England, book iii. ch. 8., speaks (in 1829) of

"three Catholic peers, the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Clifford, and Lord Dormer, having obtained entrance at last to the legislative assembly, where their fathers sat and ruled when their faith was the law of the land."

In Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, there is an anecdote, vol. vii. p. 695., of the Duke of Norfolk falling asleep and snoring in the House of Lords, while Lord Eldon was on the woolsack. Did not the Duke of Norfolk (though Roman Catholic) sit and vote in the House of Lords, either by prescription or special act of parliament, before 1829?

J. H. S.

[The anecdote told by Lord Campbell (but much better by Lord Eldon himself in Twiss's Life of the great Chancellor), does not refer to the late Duke of Norfolk, but to his predecessor Charles (the eleventh duke), who was a Protestant. The late duke never sat in parliament till after the Relief Bill passed. In 1824 a Bill was passed to enable him to exercise the office of Earl Marshal without taking certain oaths, but gave him no seat in the House. We may as well add, that Lord Eldon's joke must have been perpetrated—not on the bringing up of the Bill, when the duke was not in the House—but on the occasion of the Great Snoring Bill being reported (April 2, 1811), when the duke appears to have been present.]

The Beggar's Petition.—I shall feel obliged by your informing me who the author is of the lines—

"Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door."S.

[The authorship of this little poem has at times excited a good deal of attention. It has been attributed, on no very sufficient grounds, to Dr. Joshua Webster, M.D.; but from the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxx., p. 41., it appears that it is the entire production of the Rev. Thomas Moss, minister of Brierly Hill and Trentham, in Staffordshire, who wrote it at about the age of twenty-three. He sold the manuscript of that, and of several others, to Mr. Smart, printer, in Wolverhampton, who, from the dread which Mr. Moss had of criticism, was to publish them on this condition, that only twenty copies should have his name annexed to them, for the purpose of being presented to his relations and friends.]

"Tiring-irons never to be untied."—To what does Lightfoot (vol. vii. p. 214.) refer when, in speaking of the Scriptures, he says—

"They are not unriddleable riddles, and tiring-irons never to be untied"?

J. Eastwood.

Ecclesfield.

[The allusion is to a puzzle for children—often used by grown children—which consists of a series of iron rings, on to or off which a loop of iron wire may be got with some labour by those who know the way, and which is very correctly designated a tiring-iron.]

Replies

THE MEANING OF EISELL

[This controversy is becoming a little too warm for our pages. But Mr. Causton is entitled to have some portion of the letter he has sent to us inserted. He writes with reference to the communications from Mr. Hickson and Mr. Singer in our 68th number, p. 119., in reply to Mr. C.'s Article, which, although it had been in our hands a considerable time, was not inserted until out 65th Number, p. 66.; a delay which gave to that article the appearance of an attempt to revive a discussion, whereas it really was written only in continuance of one.]

To Mr. Hickson I suggest, that whether the notion of "drinking up a river," or "eating a crocodile," be the more "unmeaning" or "out of place," must after all be a mere matter of opinion, as the latter must remain a question of taste; since it seems to be his settled conviction that it is not "impossible," but only "extravagant." Archdeacon Nares thought it quite the reverse; and I beg to remind your readers that Shakspearian crocodiles are never served à la Soyer, but swallowed au naturel and entire.

Mr. Hickson is dissatisfied with my terms "mere verbiage" and "extravagant rant." I recommend a careful consideration of the scene over the grave of Ophelia; and then let any one say whether or not the "wag" of tongue between Laertes and Hamlet be not fairly described by the expressions I have used,—a paraphrase indeed, of Hamlet's concluding lines:

"Nay, an thou'lt mouth,I'll rant as well as thou."

Doubtless Shakspeare had a purpose in everything he wrote, and his purpose at this time was to work up the scene to the most effective conclusion, and to display the excitement of Hamlet in a series of beautiful images, which, nevertheless, the queen his mother immediately pronounced to be "mere madness," and which one must be as mad as Hamlet himself to adopt as feats literally to be performed.

The offence is rank in the eyes of Mr. Singer that I should have styled Mr. Hickson his friend. The amenities of literature, I now perceive, do not extend to the case, and a new canon is required, to the effect that "when one gentleman is found bolstering up the argument of another, he is not, ever for the nonce, to be taken for his friend." I think the denial to be expressed in rather strong language; but I hasten to make the amende suitable to the occasion, by withdrawing the "falsehood and unfounded insinuation."

Mr. Singer has further charged me with "want of truth," in stating that the question remains "substantially where Steevens and Malone had left it." Wherein, I ask, substantially consists the difference?

Mr. Singer has merely substituted his "wormwood wine" for Malone's vinegar; and before he can make it as palatable to common sense, and Shakspeare's "logical correctness and nicety of expression," as it was to Creed and Shepley, he must get over the "stalking-horse," the drink UP, which stands in his way precisely as it did in that of Malone's more legitimate proposition. Mr. Singer overleaps the difficulty by a bare assertion that "to drink UP was commonly used for simply to drink." He has not produced any parallel case of proof, with the exception of one from Mr. Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes. I adopt his citation, and shall employ it against him.

Drink UP can only be grammatically applied to a determinate total, whether it be the river Yssell or Mr. Hickson's dose of physic. Shakespeare seems to have been well acquainted with, and to have observed, the grammatical rule which Mr. Singer professes not to comprehend. Thus:

"I will drink,Potions of eysell."Shaksp. Sonnet cxi.

and

"Give me to drink mandragora," Ant. and Cleop., Act I. Sc. 5.

are parallel passages, and imply quantity indeterminate, inasmuch as they admit of more or less.

Now Mr. Singer's obliging quotation from the Nursery Rhymes,—

"Eat UP your cake, Jenny,Drink UP YOUR wine"—

certainly implies quite the reverse; for it can be taken to mean neither more nor less than the identical glass of wine that Jenny had standing before her. A parallel passage will be found in Shakspeare's sonnet (CXIV.):

"Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery:"

and in this category, on the rule exponed, since it cannot positively appertain to the other, must, I think, be placed the line of Hamlet,—

"Woo't drink up eisell?"

as a noun implying absolute entirety; which might be a river, but could not be grammatically applied to any unexpressed quantity.

Now what is the amount and value of Mr. Singer's proposition? He says:

"In Thomas's Italian Dictionary, 1562, we have 'Assenzio, Eysell'4; and Florio renders that word [Assenzio, not Eysell?] by 'wormwood.' What is meant, however, is wormwood wine, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use."

When pressed by Lord Braybrooke ("Notes and Queries," Vol. ii., p. 286.), who proved, by an extract from Pepys's Diary, that wormwood wine, so far from bearing out Mr. Singer's description, was, in fact, a fashionable luxury, probably not more nauseous than the pale ale so much in repute at the present day, Mr. Singer very adroitly produced a "corroborative note" from "old Langham" ("Notes and Queries," Vol. ii., p. 315.), which, curiously enough, is castrated of all that Langham wrote pertaining to the question in issue. Treating of the many virtues of the prevailing tonic as an appetiser, and restorer "of a good color" to them that be "leane and evil colored," Langham says: