Forster, in his 'Life of Charles Dickens,' says: 66 In a psalterium I have (Antwerp, Plantin, 1683) the first verse reads, Deus, quis similis erit tibi ? ne taceas, neque compescaris Deus." J. DE BERNIERE SMITH. Mr. Tonson was a small part in the comedy, entrusted with much appropriateness to Mr. Charles Knight, whose 'Autobiography' has this allusion to the first performance, which, as Mr. Pepys says, is "pretty to observe." "The actors and the audience were so close together THE FIFTH PETITION IN THE LORD'S that as Mr. Jacob Tonson sat in Wills's Coffee- PRAYER (12 S. ix. 508; x. 11). The queshouse he could have touched with his clouded tion still remains, Why did Tyndale, or cane the Duke of Wellington." whoever first put the Lord's Prayer into English, use the word "trespasses " ? Reference to St. Luke xi. 4, seems to suggest the answer. The Greek word St. Elmo, Sidmouth. T. W. TYRRELL. C. A. COOK. Sullingstead, Hascombe, Godalming. PSALM LXXXIII. (12 S. x. 8).—The Vulgate, there is ȧpaprías, the Latin peccata. following the Septuagint, begins this psalm with the words "Deus, quis similis erit tibi,” accordingly it so begins in the breviaries, | where the psalm occurs in Friday matins. Hence it was commonly known as the "Deus, quis similis." But as these words do not occur in the Hebrew, they were rejected in the sixteenth century as apocryphal," so do not appear in English in our Prayer Books and Bibles. I can no longer consult the earlier English versions in primers and Bibles, but some other correspondent may be able to tell us how the verse stands in them. Winterton, Lines. J. T. F. COL. CHESTER'S EXTRACTS FROM PARISH REGISTERS (11 S. vi. 90; 12 S. ix. 389, 473, 517).-G. E. C.'s set of these transcripts was distributed by one of his executors who cannot remember where they went, but I still believe that most of the volumes were presented to public libraries connected with the parishes mentioned. I understand that the other set is still complete in the College of Arms. C. OF A. 66 "SUNT OCULOS CLARI QUI CERNIS SIDERA The heading of this psalm in the Prayer the query on the authorship of this line TANQUAM" (12 S. x. 8).-The answer to Book should not be called a mistake, as must be, I am afraid, Anon., anon., sir." these Latin words are not translations, rough The puzzle is given among a batch of or otherwise, of an English version, but Grammaticorum illae cruces vulgatae, taken from the opening of the corresponding ob constructionis difficultatem, aut vocum psalms in the Vulgate. In this case Psalm ambiguitatem nobis quoque pueris agitatae lxxxii. in the Vulgate (=lxxxiii. in the Eng in Scholis," in the Sylvula Logogriphorum' lish) begins, Deus, quis similis erit tibi ? at the end of the second part of Nicolas ne taceas, neque compescaris Deus." Reusner's Aenigmatographia' (Frankfurt, 1602), p. 159. As Reusner was born in 1545, the line, to be known to him at school, must be as old as the middle of the to how many sixteenth century. And previous generations of schoolboys may it not have been familiar! 66 EDWARD BENSLY. Reference to the Vulgate affords some answer to this query. Psalm lxxxiii, in our English versions is the equivalent of Psalm lxxxii. in the Vulgate. Of this latter the Deus, quis similis erit tibi ? first verse runs, ne taceas, neque compescaris Deus." Our Psalm lxxxiii., alike in the Authorized Version and the Prayer Book, ignores the first interrogative clause found in the Vulgate and in the Septuagint, and begins our translations at "Ne taceas." K. S. In W. Binder's Flores Aenigmatum The Rev. J. M. Neale, in his Commentary on the Psalms,' says, regarding verse 1, latinorum' (Stuttgart, 1857), p. 94, the "The first clause of this verse runs, in most of line "Sunt oculos clari," &c., has the the older translations (LXX. Vulg. Aethiop., following line attached to it :— Syr., Arab.), O God, who shall be like unto Thee ?" " Dico grammaticum, versum qui construit istum. 66 (12 S. ix. was father-in-law of Jan Steen (1626-1679). He is represented by at least five works in the Louvre, and by many pictures in Holland, especially in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam. Samuel Maunder's 'Biographical Treasury' quaintly observes : He possessed great facility and freedom; his works are consequently more general throughout Europe than those of any other master, but such as are finished and remain undamaged are highly JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. valued. A WALKING DICTIONARY 99 527).-There can be no doubt that the origin of such expressions as "a walking dictionary" and "a living dictionary" is to be found in a passage of Eunapius's Life of Porphyry,' in which he speaks of Longinus as "a living library and a walking museum (or, rather, university)": Book Tis ἔμψυχος καὶ περιπατοῦν μουσεῖον. With this has been compared the statement of the scholiast on Juvenal, iv. 77, that Pegasus, the jurisconsult, was commonly called a book, Van-Goyen (John), a landscape painter and not a man. The phrase Living Library aqua tinta engraver, born at Leyden in 1596. was familiarized by the title of John Molle's He was the disciple of William Geeritz and Isaiah translation of Philip Camerarius's 'Horae Van den Velde. His compositions generally Subcisivae sive Meditationes Historicae,' or peasants returning on the water from market, represent rivers with boats and fishing-barks, which appeared in 1621 under the title of and in the back-ground villages or small towns. The Living Librarie,' &c. It is curious Some of his engravings from his own designs that in one of the British Museum copies are very rare, and bear a high price. He died of this first edition (that in the Grenville at The Hague in 1656.—' Biog Univ.' Library) the title is printed as The Walking So writes Gorton in his General BioLibrarie.' Robert Burton is referring to graphical Dictionary' (London, 1833). A the same passage of Eunapius when he pleasing specimen of his painting, a copy writes, in the introduction to his Anatomy of which hangs before me as I write, is to of Melancholy,' be found in the National Gallery at Dublin. HERBERT W. GREENE. All those of whom we read such hyperbolical eulogiums, as of Aristotle, that he was wisdom itself in the abstract, a miracle of nature, breathing libraries, as Eunapius of Longinus. EDWARD BENSLY. CARDINAL NEWMAN AND WALES (12 S. IR. 354, 438).—In reply to his question whether Cardinal Newman and his brother F. W. Newman had family or other ties with Wales, MR. WILLIAMS may be referred to 11 8. vii. 385, where he will find an extract from The Adelaide Advertiser communicated by the late SIR J. LANGDON BONYTHON. An account is there given by "a minister now resident in Adelaide," based on a conversation that took place "in the seventies," of the visit of a Baptist minister to Llandudno, where the landlady of his lodgings told him of a Mr. (Charles) Newman living in her house, and showed him letters written to her by his brothers F. W. and J. H. Newman. 666 6 xi. 449, 494, 536). I have a caricature, "HEADS' AS THE PIEMAN SAYS" (12 S. 13in. by 9in., by T. Rowlandson, dated 1785, entitled Too many for a Jew.' The scene is a village green, under a tree. Half a dozen children stand round a Shylocklooking pieman who is looking upward at two coins which have been thrown into the air by a boy standing in front of him. Meanwhile two other boys standing behind have each put a hand under the pieman's arms and are helping themselves to pies from the open basket suspended from the pieman's shoulder. This seems to carry back the toss-up custom to pre-Pickwickian days. Portland Place, W. SIDNEY SPOKES. of G. E. J. POWELL (12 S. ix. 529). -George Ernest John Powell, born Feb. 10, 1842, was the only son of William Thomas Roland Powell, Esq., of Nant-Eos, Co. Cardigan, EDWARD BENSLY. and Cheltenham, Co. Gloucester, J.P., and VanGOYEN, A DUTCH PAINTER (12 S. x. Edwyna, his wife, eldest daughter 8-Jan van Goyen was born at Leyden William George Cherry, Esq., of Buckland, in 1596 and died at The Hague in 1656. Co. Hereford. He was educated at Eton Except for a short period in his youth, and at Brasenose College, Oxford. He spent in France, he dwelt all his life in his matriculated at Oxford, May 23, 1861, and native country, and painted Dutch land- left in 1862. He was High Sheriff for scapes and seascapes. Among the more Cardigan, and in 1881 married Dinah T. eminent of his masters were Isack Claesz Harries of Goodwick, Co. Pembroke, and van Swanenburgh, who died in 1614, and died without issue many years ago. Esaias van de Velde (c. 1590-1630). He JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. The late Mr. George E. J. Powell of Nant-Eos, near Aberystwyth, a Welsh squire of literary and artistic tastes, and unconventional character in other ways, was an intimate friend, and contemporary, of Swinburne's. He was a benefactor of the University College of Wales, to which he gave books, pictures by Rossetti, Simeon Solomon, Leighton, and Herkomer, and a series of letters from Swinburne. He is, it may be presumed, the "M. Powel sketched in Guy de Maupassant's amusing, if not always accurate, Notes sur Algernon Charles Swinburne,' which introduced Gabriel Mourey's translation of Poems and Ballads (Paris, 1891). Maupassant was spending the summer of 1870 at Etretat when Swinburne was staying there chez un autre Anglais M. Powel, propriétaire d'un petit chalet qu'il avait baptisé Chaumière Dolmancé.' The Frenchman was a guest at this petit chalet on more than ' one occasion and gives a vivacious account of his experiences. 66 EDWARD BENSLY. ARTEMUS WARD" (12 S. ix. 310, 375, 477).--Mr. Don C. Seitz, in his biography of Artemus Ward published in 1919 by Harper and Brothers, gives a different origin of Mr. Browne's pen-name from MR. MORGAN in your issue of December 10. Mr. Seitz says (pp. 24 and 25) :— The nom de plume, though variously accounted for, in one instance as the misspelling of the cognomen of the Revolutionary general, Artemas Ward, was really a home product. Waterford, 1 his native town, was a land-grant given to pay claims rising out of Sir William Phipps's expedítion against the French of Canada in 1690. The Province of Massachusetts Bay, having failed to collect enough from the spoil of the Acadians to pay the bills, gave away much land. Some of this lay in New Hampshire, and the grants were disallowed by that colony in 1739. Maine, being then part of the Bay State, was drawn upon to make good in 1774 to the heirs of past creditors, and Waterford was a slice given to Seth Rice, Stephen Maynard, and John Gardner, " and Artemus Ward is joined " reads the record. Jabez Brown, Artemus Ward's great-grandfather, surveyed the tract in 1783. His grandfather was agent for the Massachusetts owners of the unsettled lands. His father, a surveyor, had much to do with them, so of course their names were familiar to the family. It is easy to conclude, therefore, that in picking a pen-name the young Yankee, chuckling at his shaky work-table in The Plain Dealer office, by idle chance was moved. to select that of the ancient Boston proprietor. C. E. S. 6 "TIME WITH A GIFT OF TEARS (v.s. AUTHORS WANTED,' 12 S x. 18).—The humorous suggestion mentioned by C. C. B. is a good example of the cicoethes of trying to spoil poetry by reducing it to the lowest terms of the obvious and commonplace. Of course Swinburne wrote the lines as they stand, and if he had not, "the less Swinburne he." "Time with a gift of tears," if it is too brutally analysed, expresses the melancholy fact that none can live long without experiencing sorrow; "Grief with a glass that ran," that most human grief, however apparently deep, is really short-lived. The first sentiment is melancholy, the second cynical." and both suggest Montaigne. Again, putting this explanation aside entirely, I should credit a really educated poet like Swinburne with the intention to delight the fit reader (1) by the chiasmus of sense, and (2) by the slight thrill of surprise with which one hails a slap in the face at the obvious. Thirdly, to come closer still to Poetry, it should be pointed out that the correct text alliterates more subtly than the humorous perversion would t gt g g as compared with g g t t g. This point might be turned against me, as Swinburne rather preferred the hammer-stroke style of alliteration to the pendulum: but I am sure it would not have occurred to the humorist, so I make him a present of it. A precisely similar instance in Shelley, P.U., Act I. (Mercury to the Furies), Back to your towers of iron, And gnash beside your streams of fire, and wail Your foodless teeth will doubtless some day, incite, probably. This may possibly throw a little light on has already incited, some idiot to transpose "T.'s" query-but he does not state the "gnash" and “wail.“ subject of the picture. H. K. ST. J. S. ERGHUM OF ERGHUM, YORKSHIRE. (12 S. (MRS.) MURIEL HAMILTON SCOTT. Relation of State an x. 9). MR. BRUCE ANGIER will find a BLESSED OLIVER PLUNKET (12 S. ix. reference to some earlier members of this 529).-Luttrell, in his Brief Historical Affairs,' gives family in Poulson's History of Holderness,' vol. i., p. 175 (1840). The spelling there given is Ergham, Argun or Arram, a hamlet and manor near Hornsea, E. Yorks. In my boyhood Arram Hall belonged to Thomas Bainton, Esq., who apparently is the same as the Thomas Bainton mentioned as a subscriber to the book named. Repre: sentatives of this latter family were resident in Bewholme, a neighbouring village, about 20 years ago. A. G. GIBSON. ST. PETER THE PROUD, LONDON (12 S. ix. 509).—No such church appears to have existed in 1600 or at any other time. No Thomas Taylor appears to have been vicar or rector of any church dedicated to St. Peter in the City of London in that year. The rector of St. Peter-le-Poer from Dec. 4, 1583, to his death in August, 1615, was Richard Judson. The entry in the parish register of Much Hormead would seem to mean that Thomas Taylor, the vicar of Much Hormead, married the two Brand sisters to their respective husbands in the church of St. Peter-le-Poer, and not to imply that he was vicar of St. Peter the JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. Proud. FULLOLOVE SURNAME (12 S. vi. 68, 115, 196).-T. Warton, in his ' History of English Poetry,' alludes (1870 ed., pp. 100-02) to the French poem Roman d'Alexandre, written about the year 1200, and remarks :— It is voluminous; and in the Bodleian library at Oxford is a vast folio MS. of it on vellum, which is of great antiquity, richly decorated, and in high preservation (MSS. Bodl., B. 264 fol.). ... At the end we read this hexameter, which points out the name of the scribe : Nomen scriptoris est THOMAS PLENUS AMORIS. Then follows the date of the year in which the transcript was completed, viz., 1338. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. VILLEBOIS, PAINTER (12 S. ix. 529). Some years ago, when acting as private secretary to Mr. R. Caton Woodville, the battle artist and illustrator, I frequently heard him called "Villebois' by his intimates, and he was referred to by this name in papers such as The Pink 'Un, The Pelican, &c. under July 1, 1681, of the execution of Mr. Plunket and Mr. nine in the morning. Oliver Plunket lay at Fitzharris, who were to be executed about Newgate. "They were both put in a sledge and drawn to Tyburn, where Plunket got excusing himself, &c. into the cart and began a long harangue, After a little time the executioner did his office, and theire quarters were delivered to theire friends, according to an order the sheriffs had for that purpose.' Wood's Athenae Oxoniensis says that Plunket was hang'd, drawn, and quarter'd, 6 ARCHIBALD SPARKE. 2 DISRAELI QUERIES (12 S. x. 8).-1. Allibone's Dictionary of English Literature' states that Ixion in Heaven' was published in 1847. I am unable to trace the date when The Infernal Marriage was published in book form. The British Museum does not give either work separately. of the following works by his father in 1881 2. Benjamin Disraeli published editions according to the British Museum Catalogue, although no date is given on the title pages of the books themselves: Calamities and of FREEDOM OF A CITY (12 S. ix. 489).-— The Honorary Freedom of Boroughs Act, 1885, would, I think, be the origin which would allow a Borough Council from time to time to admit persons distinction to be Honorary Freeman. The honour confers no benefit on the recipient. The Act (48, 49 Vict. ch. 29) states that "the admission of persons to be Freeman shall not confer the right of voting for any Borough in Parliamentary or other elections, or of sharing in the benefit of any heriditaments, common lands, or public stock of such borough, or the Council thereof, or fifteenth century onward. the D. L. G. NICHOLAS GRIMALD (12 S. ix. 409, 498). I understand that there is in the Briti Museum Library a copy of the genealogy the Grimaldi family from the time th the year 1824, compiled by Stacey Grimal quitted Genoa and settled in England F.S.A., and edited by A. B. Grimal M.A., who, in 1907, resided at 27, Guerns Grove, Herne Hill, S.E. The work may give MR. L. R. MERRIL the information he desires. JAMES SETON-ANDERSON. DANTE'S BEARD (12 S. ix. 271, 315, 378, 39, Carlisle Road, Hove, Sussex. 436). It is not at all clear why St. Swithin RUDGE FAMILY (12 S. ix. 311, 395, 435). assumes that Dante cut off the beard, which The Rev. James Rudge, D.D., F.R.S., fo he had allowed to grow when he was mourn- twenty-four years the esteemed and piou ing for Beatrice. It has been inferred from rector of the parish of Hawkchurch, Dorse the well-known pa sage in the 'Purgatorio' shire, died suddenly on July 1, 1852, i that the poet had a beard some time between his 69th year. He was the son of Jame 1310 and 1318. Now he died in 1321; why Rudge, of Heath End House, Cromhal then should be have shaved if off? Surely and nephew of Thomas Rudge, Archdeaco it is going a little far to suppose that Dante, of Gloucester. His family was a branch o when he was eating the salt food of exile the Rudges of Evesham, in Worcester and testing the steepness of another's stairs, shire, but had been settled for some tim was obedient to the frivolous dictates of in- in Gloucestershire. constant Fashion. Villani says that he was indifferent to graces, and this remark may perhaps have referred to his personal appearance. Where there is so much obscurity it is justifiable to argue a little from general considerations. Now the beard has constantly been regarded as a sign of wisdom. Bacchus, wandering over the earth in a car drawn by tigers, and enamoured of Ariadne, is rightly represented with a smooth chin, but Dionysus, the cultivator of the vine, the lawgiver and the father of civilization, appears in Greek sculpture as a man with a beard. Is there any Byzantine JAMES SETON-ANDERSON. 39, Carlisle Road, Hove, Sussex. SCHOOL HOLIDAYS (12 S. ix. 528).Seventy years or more ago school boys and girls expected holidays of six weeks from about June 18, and of four or five from shortly before Christmas. Maundy Thursday sometimes released one for a few days if not for a whole week. It seems to me that holidays have greatly increased nowa. days, when people are always resting from work that they have often shirked: but I am not here referring to schools. ST. SWITHIN. A. K. Cook's About Winchester College, published by Macmillan and Co. in 1917, if he can get hold of the book. or medieval artist who would have dared to represent the Creator of the universe as MR. R. E. THOMAS will find, I think, much beardless? The beard, then, is often an to interest him in chap. xxxiv. of Mr. outward and visible sign of wisdom in the man who wears it, and a perception of this truth, as well as a certain artistic sense of what was right and fitting, may well have kept the encyclopædic genius of the Middle Ages from cutting off the beard that adorned his face so appropriately. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. THE ABYSSINIAN CROSS (12 S. x. 9). I am informed on good authority that this was presented to Westminster Abbey in 1902 by Ras Makunan, Envoy from the King of Abyssinia at the Coronation of King Edward VII., as a votive offering for the recovery of the latter from his serious illness in the summer. It was placed before the "Unknown Warrior's" grave, in which position a photograph of it may be obtained. It is now at the north side of the High ALEX. MORING. Altar. WALTER E. GAWTHORP. The Authors' Club, Whitehall, S.W. GENTLEMAN OF THE POULTRY (12 S. ix. 272). The office of King's Poulterer was hereditary in the family of Napier of Merchiston. Whether this continued on the accession of James VI. to the throne of England I do not know, but it might offer a clue to MR. BURY. |