Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Number 58 December 7 1850 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men Artists Antiquaries Genealogists etc. by Various Bell George Editor

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NOTES:-- Page Further Notes on the Hippopotamus 457 Parallel Passages: Coleridge, Hooker, Butler, by J. E. B. Mayor 458 Shakspeare and the old English Actors in Germany, by Albert Cohn 459 Ten Children at a Birth 459 George Herbert and Bemerton Church, by H. T. Ellacombe 460 Minor Notes:--Lord Mayor's Show in 1701--Sir Thomas Phillipps's MSS.--Translation from Owen, &c.--Epigram on the late Bull--Bailie Nicol Jarvie--Hogs not Pigs--The Baptized Turk 460

QUERIES:-- Gray--Dryden--Playing Cards 462 Minor Queries:--Pretended Reprint of Ancient Poetry--The Jews' Spring Gardens--Cardinal Allen's Admonition to the Nobility--"Clarum et venerabile Nomen"--Whipping by Women--Laerig--MS. History of Winchester School--Benedicite--The Church History Society--Pope Ganganelli--Sir George Downing--Solemnization of Matrimony--Passage in Bishop Butler--The Duke of Wharton's Poetical Works--Titus Oates--Translations of Erasmus' Colloquies and Apuleius' Golden Ass, &c. 463

REPLIES:-- Holme MSS.--The Cradocks 465 Antiquity of Smoking 465 Antiquitas Saeculi Juventus Mundi 466 Albemarle, Title of, by Lord Braybrooke 466 Replies to Minor Queries:--Cromwell Poisoned--"Never did Cardinal bring Good to England"--Gloves not worn in the Presence of Royalty--Nonjurors' Oratories in London--"Filthy Gingran"--Michael Scott--The Widow of the Wood--Modum Promissionis--End of Easter--First Earl of Roscommon--Dryden's "Absolom and Achitophel"--Cabalistic Author--Becket--A?rostation--Kilt--Bacon Family, &c. 467

Miscellaneous:-- Notes on Books, Sales, Catalogues, &c. 470 Books and Odd Volumes Wanted 470 Notices to Correspondents 470

NOTES.

FURTHER NOTES ON THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.

Calpurnius is generally referred to the time of Carus and Numerian, about 283 A.D.; but his date is not determined by any satisfactory proof.

There is no trace of a live hippopotamus having been brought to Europe between the time specified in the last of these testimonies and the middle of the sixteenth century. When Belon visited Constantinople, he saw there a living hippopotamus, which had been brought from the Nile:

Belon returned to Paris from the Levant in the year 1550. In his work on fishes, p. 17., he speaks of another Frenchman, lately returned from Constantinople, who had seen the same animal. P. Gillius likewise, who visited Constantinople in 1550, saw there the same hippopotamus, as he states in his description of the elephant, Hamburg, 114.

In the mosaic of Palestrina , the hippopotamus appears three times in the lower part of the composition, at the left-hand corner. Two entire figures are represented, and one head of an animal sinking into the river. Men in a boat are throwing darts at them, some of which are sticking in their backs. Diodorus describes the hippopotamus as being harpooned, and caught in a manner similar to the whale. Barthelemy properly rejects the supposition that the mosaic of Palestrina is the one alluded to by Pliny as having been constructed by Sylla. He places it in the time of Hadrian, and supposes it to represent a district of Upper Egypt, with which the introduction of the hippopotamus well accords. The true form of the hippopotamus was unknown in Italy in the time of Sylla.

PARALLEL PASSAGES: COLERIDGE, HOOKER, BUTLER.

I do not remember to have seen the following parallels pointed out.

"The nightingale-- 'Most musical, most melancholy' bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, . . . . he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain."

Plato Phaedo, ? 77. :

"Men, because they fear death themselves, slander the swans, and say that they sing from pain lamenting their death, and do not consider that no bird sings when hungry, or cold, or suffering any other pain; no, not even the nightingale, and the swallow, and the hoopoe, which you know are said to sing for grief," &c.

"All things therefore coveting as much as may be to be like unto God in being ever, that which cannot hereunto attain personally doth seek to continue itself another way, that is, by offspring and propagation."

"And though the soul could cast spiritual seed, Yet would she not, because she never dies; For mortal things desire their like to breed, That so they may their kind immortalise."

Plato Sympos. ?32. :

"Which , according to a very ancient observation, the most abandoned would choose to obtain by innocent means, if they there as easy, and as effectual to their end."

"Quis est enim, aut quis unquam fuit aut avariti? tam ardenti, aut tam effrenatis cupiditatibus, ut eamdem illam rem, quam adipisci scelere quovis velit, non multis partibus malit ad sese, etiam omni impunitate proposita, sine facinore, quam illo modo pervenire?"

J. E. B. MAYOR.

Marlborough College.

SHAKSPEARE AND THE OLD ENGLISH ACTORS IN GERMANY.

My studies on the first appearance of Shakspeare on the German stage, by means of the so-called "English Comedians" who from the end of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century visited Germany and the Netherlands, led me to the following passage of a Dutch author:

Undoubtedly one of your numerous readers can furnish me with the title of the work in which such a description occurs, or with the name of some other foreign traveller who may have visited England at the period alluded to, and in whose works I may find the description mentioned above.

ALBERT COHN.

Berlin, Nov. 19. 1850.

TEN CHILDREN AT A BIRTH.

N. D.

GEORGE HERBERT AND BEMERTON CHURCH.

It is gratifying to see that some of your correspondents are taking, an interest in the "worthy, lowly, and lovely" Mr. George Herbert . It may tend to increase that interest, if I send you a note I made a few years ago, when I visited Bemerton, and had the pleasure of officiating within the walls of that celebrated little church. The rector kindly showed me the whole Parsonage House; the parts rebuilt by Herbert were traceable; but the inscription set up by him on that occasion is not there, nor had it been found, viz.:

"TO MY SUCCESSOR.

"If thou chance for to find, A new house to thy mind, And built without thy cost; Be good to the poor, As God gives the store, And then my labour's not lost."

It may truly be said to stand near the chapel , being distant only the width of the road, thirty-four feet, which in Herbert's time was forty feet, as the building shows. On the south is a grass-plat sloping down to the river, whence is a beautiful view of Sarum Cathedral in the distance. A very aged fig-tree grows against the end of the house, and a medlar in the garden, both, traditionally, planted by Herbert.

"Note, it was a saying of his 'That his time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his soul, and was his heaven upon earth.'"--WALTON.

The doorway is Jacobean, as is the chest or parish coffer, and also the pulpit canopy; the old sittings had long been removed. The font is circular, of early English date, lined with lead, seventeen inches diameter, by ten inches deep. The walls were very dilapidated.

It cannot but be a surprise to every admirer of George Herbert and to all visitors to this highly favoured spot, to find no monument whatever to the memory of that bright example of an English parish priest. This fact need surely only to be made known to insure ample funds for rebuilding the little church, and "beautifying" it in all things as Herbert would desire , retaining, if I may be allowed to suggest, the decorated windows, with the font and bell, which, from my Notes and Recollections, seem to be all that remains of what he must have so often looked upon and cherished.

From the register I was permitted to extract this entry:

"Mr. George Herbert, Esq., Parson, of Ffoughlston and Bemerton, was buried 3 day of March, 1632."

"He lived and died like a saint, unspotted from the world, full of alms deeds, full of humility, and all the examples of a virtuous life. 'I wish that I may be so happy as to die like him.'"

H. T. ELLACOMBE.

Clyst St. George, Nov. 25. 1850.

MINOR NOTES.

"The Maiden Queen who rid on the Lord Mayor's day in the pageant, in imitation of the Patroness of the Mercer's Company, had a fine suit of cloaths given her, valued at ninety guineas, a present of fifty guineas, four guineas for a smock, and a guinea for a pair of gloves."

Y. S.

"Oxoniae salsus more vetusto Wintoniaeque piperatus eram. Si quid inest nostro piperisve salisve libello, Oxoniense sal est, Wintoniense piper."

"When fresh at Oxon I a salting got; At Winton I'd been pepper'd piping hot; If aught herein you find that's sharp and nice, 'Tis Oxon's seasoning, and Winton's spice."

I subjoin also an epitaph from the chapel of Our Ladye in Gloucester Cathedral, translated by the same hand.

"Conjugis effigiem sculpsisti in marmore conjux Sic me immortalem te statuisse putas; Sed Christus fuerat viventi spesque fidesque Sic me mortalem non sinit esse Deus."

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