Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Number 136 June 5 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men Artists Antiquaries Genealogists etc. by Various

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ROBERT DRURY.

It becomes, therefore, a serious question to ascertain whether Drury was a real or a fictitious character, and his book what it pretends to be, or the speculation of some clever writer, envious of the fame and profit derived by Defoe from the publication of a similar work. I would not take the subject out of such good hands as those of MR. CROSSLEY, who has evidently something to offer us thereon; but would merely observe, by way of interesting your readers generally in the matter, that Drury, by the old octavo of 1729, now before me, did not flinch from inquiry, as he announces the book for sale "by the Author, at Old Tom's Coffee House in Birchin Lane," where, he says, "I am every day to be spoken with, and where I shall be ready to gratify any Gentleman with a further Account of any Thing herein contained; to stand the strictest Examination, or to confirm those Things which to some may seem doubtful."

"Old Tom's" is still a right good chop-house in the locality named; and it would be interesting to know if there is any contemporaneous note existing of an evening with Robert Drury there. But for the misfortune of living a century and a quarter too late, I should doubtless often have found myself in the same box with the mysterious man, with his piles of books, and his maps of Madagascar, invitingly displayed for the examination of the curious, and the satisfaction of the sceptical.

J. O.

FOLK LORE.

G. E. G.

Oxford.

W. A. J.

W. A. J.

Minor Notes.

J. S. WARDEN.

JAMES CROSSLEY.

BALLIOLENSIS.

Queries.

MR. HALLIWELL'S ANNOTATED SHAKSPEARE FOLIO.

"It will not be admissible in any case where good sense can be satisfactorily made of the passage as it stands in the original, even although the correction may appear to give greater force or harmony to the passage."

A. E. B.

Leeds.

RESTIVE.

J. R.

Brompton.

REASON AND UNDERSTANDING ACCORDING TO COLERIDGE.

There is a remarkable discrepancy in the statements of Coleridge respecting reason and understanding.

"That many animals possess a share of understanding perfectly distinguishable from mere instinct we all allow. Few persons have a favourite dog, without making instances of its intelligence an occasional topic of conversation. They call for our admiration of the individual animal, and not with exclusive reference to the wisdom in nature, as in the case of , or maternal instinct: or of the hexangular cells of the bees.... We hear little or nothing of the instincts of the 'half-reasoning elephant,' and as little of the understanding of caterpillars and butterflies."

Does Coleridge mean to tell us that bees and ants have the same faculty as dogs and elephants?

"For a moment's steady self-reflection will show us that, in the simple determination 'black is not white,' or 'that two straight lines cannot include a space,' all the powers are implied that distinguish man from animals; first, the power of reflection; second, of comparison; third, and therefore suspension of the mind; fourth, therefore of a controlling will, and the power of acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting appetites; from motives, and not from mere dark instinct."

And after relating a story about a dog who appeared to have employed the disjunctive syllogism , Coleridge remarks,--

"So awful and almost miraculous does the simple act of concluding 'take three from four, and there remains one,' appear to us, when attributed to one of the most sagacious of all brute animals."

"Understanding is the faculty of reflection, reason of contemplation." And p. 176.--"The understanding, then, considered exclusively as an organ of human intelligence, is the faculty by which we reflect and generalise.... The whole process may be reduced to three acts, all depending on, and supposing a previous impression on, the senses: first, the appropriation of our attention; second , abstraction, or the voluntary withholding of the attention; and, third, generalisation; and these are the proper functions of the understanding."

"So far, and no further, could the understanding carry us; and so far as this, 'the faculty judging according to sense' conducts many of the inferior animals, if not in the same, yet in instances analogous and fully equivalent."

Does Coleridge, then, mean us to understand him as saying, that many of the brutes can reflect, abstract, and generalise?

"Reason! best and holiest gift of God, and bond of union with the Giver; the high title by which the majesty of man claims precedence above all other living creatures--mysterious faculty, the mother of conscience, of language...."

Does Coleridge mean that the inferior animals may have language?

Who, of your many able correspondents, will assist me in unravelling this complicated tissue?

C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.

Minor Queries.

TEWARS.

Can any of your readers inform me from what source Brand derived this idea?

E. A. H. L.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

UNICORN.

"Swan-like, in dying Famous old Chaucer Sang his last song."

Who is the author of the above lines?

ELIZA.

CYRUS REDDING.

LLEWELLYN.

HENRY G. TOMKINS.

Weston super Mare.

R. S.

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