Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851. Various
little gales that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisp'rings stirr'd,
As loath to waken any singing bird."
"See! yonder hill where he was wont to sit,
A cloud doth keep the golden sun from it,
And for his seat, (as teaching us) hath made
A mourning covering with a scowling shade.
The dew in every flower, this morn, hath lain,
Longer than it was wont, this side the plain,
Belike they mean, since my best friend must die,
To shed their silver drops as he goes by.
Not all this day here, nor in coming hither,
Heard I the sweet birds tune their songs together,
Except one nightingale in yonder dell
Sigh'd a sad elegy for Philocel.
Near whom a wood-dove kept no small ado,
To bid me, in her language, 'Do so too'—
The wether's bell, that leads our flock around,
Yields, as methinks, this day a deader sound.
The little sparrows which in hedges creep,
Ere I was up did seem to bid me weep.
If these do so, can I have feeling less,
That am more apt to take and to express?
No—let my own tunes be the mandrake's groan,
If now they tend to mirth when all have none."
Both these passages may have been quoted by some of Campbell's predecessors. This might justify him in not repeating them, but not in writing the criticism to which I have ventured to object. His work holds a high rank in English literature—it is taken as a text-book by the generality of readers; for which reasons I think that every dictum it lays down ought to be examined with more than usual care and attention.
Compare with different parts of the "Lament:"
"And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
Dewy with nature's tear drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave,—alas!
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass," &c.
"The morning of the day on which the farmer was to be buried, was rendered remarkable by the uncommon denseness of an autumnal fog. To Mrs. Mason's eye, it threw a gloom over the face of nature; nor, when it gradually yielded to the influence of the sun, and slowly retiring from the valley, hung, as if rolled into masses, mid-way upon the mountains, did the changes thus produced excite any admiration. Still, wherever she looked, all seemed to wear the aspect of sadness. As she passed from Morrison's to the house of mourning, the shocks of yellow corn, spangled with dewdrops, appeared to her to stand as mementos of the vanity of human hopes, and the inutility of human labours. The cattle, as they went forth to pasture, lowing as they went, seemed as if lamenting that the hand which fed them was at rest; and even the Robin-red-breast, whose cheerful notes she had so often listened to with pleasure, now seemed to send forth a song of sorrow, expressive of dejection and woe."—Miss Hamilton's Cottagers of Glenburnie, chap. xii.
Temple.
Minor Notes
"In the Sweat of thy Brow" (Vol. ii., p. 374.).—To the scriptural misquotation referred to, you may add another:
"In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread."
The true text reads,—
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."—Gen. iii. 19.
The misquotation is so common, that a reference to a concordance is necessary for proving to many persons that it is not a scripture phrase.
[In the Wickliffite Bible lately published by the University of Oxford, the words are, "swoot of thi cheer or face," and in some MSS. "cheer ether bodi."]
Anecdotes of Old Times (Vol. iii., p. 143.).—A friend of mine has furnished me with the following particulars, which may, perhaps, be interesting to A. A.
When the aunt of my friend married and began housekeeping, there were only two tea-kettles besides her own in the town of Knighton, Radnorshire. The clergyman of the parish forbad the use of tea in his family; but his sister kept a small tea service in the drawer of the table by which she sat at work in the afternoon, and secretly made herself a cup of tea at four o'clock, gently closing the drawer if she heard her brother approach. This clergyman's daughter died, at an advanced age, in 1850.
My friend's mother (who was born a year or two before the battle of Culloden), having occasion to visit London while living at Ludlow, went by the waggon, at that time the only public conveyance on that road. A friend of her's wished to place her daughter at a school in Worcester, and as she kept no carriage, and was unable to ride on horseback, then the usual mode of travelling, she walked from her residence in Knighton to Ludlow, and thence to Worcester, accompanied by her daughter, who rode at a gentle pace beside her.
Foreign English.—The following handbill is a specimen of German English, and is stuck up among other notices in the inn at Rastadt:
"The underwritten has the honour of informing the public that he has made the acquisition of the hotel to the Savage, well situated in the middle of this city. He shall endeavour to do all duties which gentlemen travellers can justly expect; and invites them to please to convince themselves of it by their kind lodgings at his house.
Britannicus.—I gather the following anecdote from the chapter "Paper Wars of the Civil Wars" in Disraeli's Quarrels of Authors. Sir John (Birkenhead) is the representative of the Mercurius Aulicus, the Court Gazette; Needham, of a Parliamentary Diurnal.
"Sir John never condescends formally to reply to Needham, for which he gives this singular reason: 'As for this libeller, we are still resolved to take no notice, till we find him able to spell his own name, which to this hour Britannicus never did.' In the next number of Needham, who had always written it Brittanicus, the correction was silently adopted."
A similar error occurs on the shilling and six-penny pieces of George III., circa 1817 (those most frequently met with in the present circulation), whilst the cotemporary crowns and half-crowns have the correct orthography.
Honeymoon.—Among my memoranda I find that, on January 31, 1845, an accomplished Welsh lady said to me, that the common expression "Honeymoon" was "probably derived from the old practice in Wales of drinking methèglin for thirty days after the marriage of a bride and bridegroom. A methèglin jollification for thirty days among the relatives and friends of the newly married pair." The methèglin is a fermented liquor, of some potency, made from honey. The lady asked me, at the same time, if honey was used by the ancient Greeks or Romans in the preparation of a fermented liquor. I said that I recollected no such use of honey among them, but that the ancient Greeks seemed to have brewed a beer of some kind from barley or other grain, as allusion was made to it by Aristophanes. Perhaps this notice of the "honeymoon" may draw forth some information from your correspondents who are learned in "folk lore." In the Old Testament there are many passages alluding to the use of honey, but none of them appear to indicate its having been employed in making a fermented beverage. Lucretius alludes to