Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853

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Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they
are listed at the end of the text.

{565}

NOTES AND QUERIES:

A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES,
GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

* * * * *

"When found, make a note of."--CAPTAIN CUTTLE.

* * * * *

No. 189.]
Saturday, June 11, 1853.
[Price Fourpence. Stamped Edition 5d.

* * * * *

CONTENTS.

NOTES:-- Page
Tom Moore's First! 565
Notes on several Misunderstood Words, by the Rev.
W. R. Arrowsmith 566
Verney Papers: the Capuchin Friars, &c., by Thompson
Cooper 568
Early Satirical Poem 568
The Letters of Atticus, by William Cramp 569

MINOR NOTES:--Irish Bishops as English Suffragans--
Pope and Buchanan--Scarce MSS. in the British
Museum--The Royal Garden at Holyrood Palace--
The Old Ship "Royal Escape" 569

QUERIES:--
"The Light of Brittaine" 570

MINOR QUERIES:--Thirteen an unlucky Number--
Quotations--"Other-some" and "Unneath"--
Newx, &c.--"A Joabi Alloquio"--Illuminations--
Heraldic Queries--John's Spoils from Peterborough
and Crowland--"Elementa sex." &c.--Jack and Gill:
Sir Hubbard de Hoy--Humphrey Hawarden--"Populus
vult decipi"--Sheriffs of Huntingdonshire and
Cambridgeshire--Harris 571

REPLIES:--
Bishop Butler, by J. H. Markland, &c. 572
Mitigation of Capital Punishment to Forgers 573
Mythe _versus_ Myth, by Charles Thiriold 575
"Inquiry into the State of the Union, by the Wednesday
Club in Friday Street," by James Crossley 576
Unpublished Epigram by Sir Walter Scott, by William
Williams, &c. 576
Church Catechism 577
Jacob Bobart, &c., by Dr. E. F. Rimbault 578
"Its," by W. B. Rye 578
Bohn's Edition of Hoveden, by Henry T. Riley 579
Books of Emblems, by J. B. Yates, &c. 579

PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE:--Mr. Pollock's Directions
for obtaining Positive Photographs upon
albumenised Paper--Test for Lenses--Washing Collodion
Pictures 581

REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES:--Cremonas--James Chaloner
--Irish Convocation--St. Paul's Epistle to Seneca
--Captain Ayloff--Plan of London--Syriac Scriptures
--Meaning of "Worth"--Khond Fable--Collar of S3.
--Chaucer's Knowledge of Italian--Pic Nic--Canker
or Brier Rose--Door-head Inscriptions--"Time and
I"--Lowbell--Overseers of Wills--Detached Belfry
Towers--Vincent Family, &c. 582

MISCELLANEOUS:--
Books and Odd Volumes wanted 586
Notices to Correspondents 586
Advertisements 587

* * * * *

Notes.

TOM MOORE'S FIRST!

It is now generally understood that the first poetic effusion of Thomas
Moore was entrusted to a publication entitled _Anthologia Hibernica_, which
held its monthly existence from Jan. 1793 to December 1794, and is now a
repertorium of the spirited efforts made in Ireland in that day to
establish periodical literature. The set is complete in four volumes: and
being anxious to see if I could trace the "fine Roman" hand of him whom his
noble poetic satirist, and after fast friend, Byron, styled the "young
Catullus of his day," I went to the volumes, and give you the result.

No trace of Moore appears in the volume containing the first six months of
the publication; but in the "List of Subscribers" in the second, we see
"_Master_ Thomas Moore;" and as we find this designation changed in the
fourth volume to "_Mr._ Thomas Moore, Trinity College, Dublin!" (a boy with
a black ribband in his collar, being as a collegian an "_ex officio_
man!"), we may take it for ascertained that we have arrived at the
well-spring of those effusions which have since flowed in such sparkling
volumes among the poetry of the day.

Moore's first contribution is easily identified; for it is prefaced by a
note, dated "Aungier Street, Sept. 11, 1793," which contains the usual
request of insertion for "_the attempts of a youthful muse_," &c., and is
signed in the semi-incognito style, "Th-m-s M--re;" the writer fearing,
doubtless, lest his fond mamma should fail to recognise in _his own copy_
of the periodical the performance of her little precocious Apollo.

This contribution consists of two pieces, of which we have room but for the
first: which is a striking exemplification (in subject at least) of
Wordsworth's aphorism, that "the child is father to the man." It is a
sonnet addressed to "Zelia," "_On her charging the author with writing too
much on Love!_" Who _Zelia_ was--whether a lineal ancestress of Dickens's
"Mrs. Harris," or some actual grown up young lady, who was teased by, and
tried to check the chirpings of the little {566} precocious singing
bird--does not appear: but we suspect the former, for this sonnet is
immediately followed by "A Pastoral Ballad!" calling upon some _Celia_
unknown to "pity his tears and complaint," &c., in the usual namby-pamby
style of these compositions. To any one who considers the smart,
_espiegle_, highly artificial style of "Tom Moore's" after compositions,
his "Pastoral Ballad" will be what Coleridge called his Vision, a
"psychological curiosity."

Passing on through the volumes, in the Number for February 1794 we find a
paraphrase of the Fifth Ode of Anacreon, by "Thomas Moore;" another short
poem in June 1794, "To the Memory of Francis Perry, Esq.," signed "T. M.,"
and dated "Aungier Street." These are all which can be identified by
outward and visible signs, without danger of mistake: but there are a
number of others scattered through the volumes which I conjecture may be
his; they are under different signatures, generally T. L., which may be
taken to stand for the _alias_ "Thomas Little," by which Moore afterwards
made himself so well known. There is an "Ode to Morning," in the Number for
March 1794, above the ordinary run of magazine poetry. And in the Number
for May following are "Imitations from the Greek" and Italian, all under
this same signature. And this last being derived from some words in
Petrarch's will, bequeathing his lute to a friend, is the more curious; and
may the more probably be supposed Moore's, as it contains a thought which
is not unlikely to have suggested in after years the idea of his celebrated
melody, entitled the "Bard's Legacy." The Number for Nov. 1794, last but
one in the fourth volume, contains a little piece on "Variety," which
independent of a T. M. signature, I would _almost swear_, from internal
evidence, to be Moore's; it is the last in the series, and indicates such
progress as two years might be supposed to give the youthful poet, from the
lack-a-daisical style of his first attempts, towards that light, brilliant,
sportive vein of humour in which he afterwards wrote "What the Bee is to
the Flowret," &c., and other similar compositions. I now give Moore's first
sonnet, including its footnote, reminding us of the child's usual
explanatory addition to his first drawing of some amorphous animal--"This
is a horse!" or "a bear!" as the case may be. Neither the _metre_ nor the
_matter_ would prepare us for the height to which the writer afterwards
scaled "the mountain's height of Parnassus:"

"TO ZELIA.

(_On her charging the Author with writing too much on Love._)

'Tis true my Muse to love inclines,
And wreaths of Cypria's myrtle twines;
Quits all aspiring, lofty views,
And chaunts what Nature's gifts infuse:
Timid to try the mountain's* height,
Beneath she strays, retir'd from sight,
Careless, culling amorous flowers;
Or quaffing mirth in Bacchus' bowers.
When first she raised her simplest lays
In Cupid's never-ceasing praise,
The God a faithful promise gave--
That never should she feel Love's stings,
Never to burning passion be a slave,
But feel the purer joy _thy_ friendship brings.

* Parnassus!"

If you think this fruit of a research into a now almost forgotten work,
which however contains many matters of interest (among the rest, "The
Baviad of Gifford"), worth insertion, please put it among "N. & Q.;" it may
incite others to look more closely, and perhaps trace other "disjecta
membra poetae."

A. B. R.

Belmont.

* * * * *

NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS.

(_Continued from_ p. 544.)

Let no one say that a tithe of these instances would have sufficed. Whoever
thinks so, little understands the vitality of error. Most things die when
the brains are out: error has no brains, though it has more heads than the
hydra. Who could have believed it possible that after Steevens's heaped-up
proofs in support of the authentic reading, "_carded_ his state" (_King
Henry IV._, Act III. Scene 2.), Warburton's corruption, _'scarded_, i. e.
_discarded_, was again to be foisted into the text on the authority of some
nameless and apocryphal commentator? Let me be pardoned if I prefer
Shakspeare's genuine text, backed by the masterly illustrations of his
ablest glossarist, before the wishy-washy adulterations of Nobody: and as a
small contribution to his abundant avouchment of the original reading, the
underwritten passage may be flung in, by way of make-weight:

"_Carded_ his state (says King Henry),
_Mingled_ his royaltie with carping fooles."

"Since which it hath been and is his daily practice, either to broach
doctrinas novas et peregrinas, new imaginations never heard of before,
or to revive the old and new dress them. And these--for that by
themselves they will not utter--_to mingle and to card_ with the
Apostles' doctrine, &c., that at the least yet he may so vent
them."--One of the Sermons upon the Second Commandment, preached in the
Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on the Ninth of January, A.D.
MDXCII.: Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 55. _Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol._

* * * * *

_Trash_, to shred or lop.--So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with
it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of
{567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man
of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist
Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously
small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a
horizontal course. _Overrun_, _overshoot_, _overslip_, are terms in
hunting, _overtop_ never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild
huntsman of the Alps. _Trash_ occurs as a verb in the sense above given,
Act I. Sc. 2. of the _Tempest_: "Who t'aduance, and who to _trash_ for
over-topping." I have never met with the _verb_ in that sense elsewhere,
but overtop is evermore the appropriate term in arboriculture. To quote
examples of that is needless. Of it metaphorically applied, just as in
Shakspeare, take the following example:

"Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in a manner doth
overtop the rest, and like a foregrown member depriveth the other of
their proportion of growth."--Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., _Lib.
Ang.-Cath. Theol._

Have we not the substantive _trash_ in the sense of shreddings, at p. 542.
book iii. of a _Discourse of Forest Trees_, by John Evelyn? The extract
that contains the word is this:

"Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one
stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to
prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and
ends with _trash_ and short sticks, which had been omitted in the
former statute."

Possibly some of the statutes referred to by Evelyn may contain examples of
the verb. In the meantime it will not be impertinent to remark, that what
appears to be nothing more than a dialectic variety of the word, namely
_trouse_, is of every-day use in this county of Hereford for trimmings of
hedges; that it is given by Grose as a verb in use in Warwickshire for
trimming off the superfluous branches; and lastly, that it is employed as a
substantive to signify shreddings by Philemon Holland, who, if I rightly
remember, was many years head master of Coventry Grammar School:

"Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with stone; and for want
thereof, laid with green willow bastons, and for default of them, with
vine cuttings, or such _trousse_, so that they lie halfe a foot
thicke."--The Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's _Naturall History_, chap.
xi. p. 513.: London, 1634.

_Trash_ no one denies to be a kennel term for hampering a dog, but it does
not presently follow that the word bore no other signification; indeed,
there is no more fruitful mother of confusion than homonomy.

* * * * *

_Clamor_, to curb, restrain (the tongue):

"_Clamor_ your tongues, and not a word more."
_The Winter's Tale_, Act IV. Sc. 4.

Most judiciously does NARES reject Gifford's corruption of this word into
_charm_, nor will the suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one jot
contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe
discipline of many years' study, and the daily access of accumulating
knowledge, have schooled into a wholesome sense of their extreme
fallibility in such matters. Without adding any comment, I now quote, for
the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts:

"For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he _chaumbreed_
his tongue in season, ther should ere l[=o]g bee one oxe the fewer for
hym."--_Apoptheymis of Erasmus_, translated by Nicolas Vdall,
MCCCCCXLII, the First Booke, p. 10.

"From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he refrein or _chaumbre_ the
tauntying of his tongue."--_Id._, p. 76.

After so many Notes, one Query. In the second folio edition of Shakspeare
(my first folio wants the whole play), I find in _Cymbeline_, Act V. Sc.
3., the next beautiful passage:

"_Post._ Still going? This is a lord: Oh noble misery
To be ith' field, and aske what newes of me:
To-day how many would have given their honors
To have sav'd their carkasses? Tooke heele to doo't,
And yet dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd,
Could not find death, where I did heare him groane,
Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly monster,
'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds,
Sweet words; or hath moe ministers then we
That draw his knives ith' war. Well I will finde him:
For being now a favourer to the Britaine,
No more a Britaine, I have resum'd againe
The part I came in."

In the antepenultimate line, Britaine was more than a century ago changed
by Hanmer into Roman, therefore retained by Warburton, again rejected by
Steevens and Johnson, once more replaced by Knight and Collier, with one of
his usual happy notes by the former of the two, without comment by the
latter, finally left unnoticed by Dyce. My Query then is this. What amount
of obtuseness will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tinkering and
cobbling the noblest passages of thought that ever issued from mortal
brain, while at the same time he stumbles and bungles in sentences of that
simplicity and grammatical clearness, as not to tax the powers of a
third-form schoolboy to explain?[1] If editors, commentators, {568}
critics, and all the countless throng who are ambitious to daub with their
un-tempered mortar, or scribble their names upon the most majestic edifice
of genius that the world ever saw, lack the little discernment necessary to
interpret aright the above extract from _Cymbeline_, for the last hundred
years racked and tortured in vain, let them at length learn henceforth to
distrust their judgment altogether.

W. R. ARROWSMITH.

P.S.--In article of No. 180. p. 353., a rather important misprint occurs,
viz. date of 4to. _King Richard II._ with unusual title-page, which should
be 1608, not 1605. Other little errors the reader may silently amend for
himself.

[Footnote 1: In a passage from L. L. L., lately winnowed in the pages of
"N. & Q.," divers attempts at elucidation (whereof not one, in my judgment,
was successful) having been made, it was gravely, almost magisterially
proposed by one of the disputants, to corrupt the concluding lines (MR.
COLLIER having already once before corrupted the preceding ones by
substituting a plural for a singular verb, in which lay the true key to the
right construction) by altering "their" the pronoun into "there" the
adverb, because (shade of Murray!) the commentator could not discover of
what noun "their" could possibly be the pronoun in these lines following:

"When great things labouring perish in their birth,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth."

And it was left to MR. KEIGHTLEY to bless the world with the information
that it was "things."]

* * * * *

VERNEY PAPERS--THE CAPUCHIN FRIARS, ETC.

In the appendix to _Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament_, by Sir
Ralph Verney, edited by Mr. Bruce for the Camden Society in 1845, are
"Notes written in a Cipher," which Mr. Bruce gives in the hope that the
ingenuity of some reader will discover their meaning. I venture thus to
decypher the same:

"The Capuchin's house to be dissolued.
No extracts of letters to be aloued in this house.
The prince is now come to Greenhich three lette.
Three greate ships staied in France.
Gersea a letter from Lord S^t Albones.
L11 per diem Hull.
The king's answert to our petition about the militia.
If a king offer to kil himselfe, wee must not only advise but wrest the
weapon from.
A similitude of a depilat.
Consciences corrupted."

I ought to state that in one or two instances the wrong cypher has
evidently been used by mistake, and this has of course increased the
difficulty of decyphering the notes.

With reference to the note "The Capuchins' House to be dissolued," may I be
allowed to refer to the following votes in the House of Commons, of the
date 26th February, 1641-2:

"Ordered, That Mr. Peard, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Pideaux, Mr.
Selden, Mr. Young, Mr. Hill, do presently withdraw, to peruse the
statutes now in force against priests and Jesuits.

"Ordered, That Mr. Whittacre, Mr. Morley, do presently go to Denmarke
House.

"Resolved, That the Capuchines shall be forthwith apprehended and taken
into safe custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms attending on this house; and
there kept till this house take farther order."

The Capuchins were under the protection of the Queen Henrietta Maria;
Denmark House was the name by which Somerset House was at the period known.

Under date 2nd March, 1641-2, are the following entries in the Commons'
Journal:

"Mr. Holles brings this answer from the French Ambassador, That the
Capuchins being sent hither by Articles of Treaty between the Two
Crowns, he durst not of himself send them without Order from the King
his Master, or the King and Queen here: And said farther, That the
Queen had left an express Command for their stay here; and that he
would be ever ready to do any good Office for this House, and to keep a
good Correspondency between the Two Crowns; and if this House pleased,
he would undertake to keep them safe Prisoners at Somersett House; and
that the chapel there shall have the doors locked, and no Mass be said
there.

"Ordered, That Mr. Hollis do acquaint the French Ambassador, that this
House doth accept of his Offer in securing the Persons of the
Capuchins, till this House take farther Order: and that the Doors be
locked, and made fast, at the Chapel at Somersett House; and that no
Mass be said there.

"Ordered, That the Lord Cramborne and Mr. Hollis shall acquaint the
French Ambassador with the desires of this House, that the Capuchins be
forthwith sent away; and to know if he will undertake to send them
away; and, if he will, that then they be forthwith delivered unto him.

"That Mr. Hollis do go up to the Lords, to acquaint them with the
Resolutions of this House, concerning the Capuchins, and desire their
Lordships' concurrence therein."

Some particulars of the proceedings of the parliament against the Capuchins
may be found in "Memoirs of the Mission in England of the Capuchin Friars
of the Province of Paris by Father Cyprian Gamache," in _The Court and
Times of Charles I._, vol. ii. pp. 344. 354.

THOMPSON COOPER.

Cambridge.

* * * * *

EARLY SATIRICAL POEM.

On the turning over the pages of an old printed copy of Durand's _Rationale
Divinorum Officiorus_, edited by Bonetus de locatellis bergomensis, and
printed at Lyons in 1506, by Natalis Brabam, for Jaques Huguetan, I found
the following copy of verses written on the fly-leaf. They are written in a
hand which I am inclined to assign to a date {569} not much later than that
of the book. There is no clue to the author. If they are thought worthy of
insertion in "N. & Q.," I beg to inquire, through the medium of your
columns, whether they are to be found in any collection of early English
poems? and whether the author is known?

The ungallant sentiment of the first three stanzas is obvious. The fourth
is not so plain; nor is its connexion with the others evident, though it is
written without anything to mark separation; and the word "finis" is placed
below it, as if to apply to the whole. I should be obliged if some one of
your readers would give some explanation of it.

W. H. G.

Winchester.

"Wen [_sic_] nettylles in wynter bryngythe forthe rosses red,
And a thorne bryngythe figges naturally,
And grase berrythe appulles in every mede,
And lorrel cherrys on his crope so hye,
And okkys berrythe datys plentyusly,
And kykkys gyvythe hony in superfluans,
The put in women yower trust and confydenc.

"When whythynges walke forrestys hartyse for to chase,
And herrings in parkkys the hornnys boldly bloc,
And marlyons[2] ... hernys in morrys doo unbrace,
And gomards shut ryllyons owght of a crose boow,
And goslyngs goo a howntyng the wolf to overthrow,
And sparlyns bere sperrys and arms for defenc,
Then put yn women yower trust and confydenc.

"When sparrowes byld chorchys and styppyllys of a hyght,
And corlewys carry tymber yn howsys for to dyght,
Wrennys bere sakkys to the myll,
And symgis[3] bryng butter to the market to sell,
And wodcokkys were wodknyffys the crane for to kyll,
And gryffyns to goslynges doo obedienc,
Then put in women yower trust and confydenc.

"O ye imps of Chynner, ye Lydgatys pene,
With the spryght of bookkas ye goodly inspyrryd,
Ye Ynglyshe poet, excydyng other men,
With musyk wyne yower tong yn syrryd,
Ye roll in yower rellatyvys as a horse immyrryd,
With Ovyddes penner ye are gretly in favor,
Ye bere boys incorne, God dyld yow for yower labor.
Finis."

[Footnote 2: Merlin's hawks.]

[Footnote 3: Doubtful; but perhaps for syngies, an old name for the finch.]

* * * * *

THE LETTERS OF ATTICUS.

The editor of the _Grenville Papers_ has alluded to some "very judicious
and pertinent remarks in the 'N. & Q.'" respecting the Letters of Atticus,
and as most of your readers will probably agree with him that the
authenticity of these letters is "a curious and interesting question, and
one that deserves _very particular attention_," I beg to correct an error
into which he and others have fallen, as to the date when Junius ceased to
write under the signature Atticus. The Atticus forwarded by Junius to
George Grenville on the 19th October, 1768, was, there is every reason to
believe, the _last_ from the pen of that writer, who was then preparing to
come before the public in a more prominent character. When another
correspondent adopted the signature Atticus, Woodfall gave his readers
warning by inserting the following notice into the _Public Advertiser_:

"The Address to the Freeholders of the county of Middlesex, signed
_Atticus_, in our next. The Printer thinks it his duty to acquaint his
readers that this letter is not by the same hand as some letters in
this paper a little time since, under the signature _Atticus_."--_Pub.
Ad._, March 19, 1769.

The printer took the like course when writers attempted to "impose upon the
public" by using the signatures Lucius and C., and then freely inserted
their letters; but when the same trick was tried with Junius, the printer
did not scruple to alter the signature, or reject the contribution as
spurious.

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