Notes and Queries, Number 179, April 2, 1853.. Various
who cannot get to London this spring, some particulars with regards to his last appearances. Dr. Young has a fine thought to this purpose, that every friend who goes before us to the other side of the river of death, makes the passage to us the easier. Were our club all removed to a future world but one or two, they, one should think, would incline to follow. By all means let me be on your list of subscribers to Mr. Morrell's Prometheus. You have enlivened the town, I see, with a musical piece. The prologue is admirably fancied arripere populum tributim; though, to be sure, Foote's remark applies to it, that your prologues have a culinary turn, and that therefore the motto to your collection of them should be, Animus jamdudum in Patinis. A player upon words might answer him, "Any Patinis rather than your Piety in Pattens." I wonder the wags have not been quoting upon you, "Whose erudition is a Christmas tale." But Mr. Johnson is ready to bruise any one who calls in question your classical knowledge and your happy application of it. I hope Mr. Johnson has given you an entertaining account of his Northern Tour. He is certainly to favour the world with some of his remarks. Pray do not fail to quicken him by word as I do by letter. Posterity will be the more obliged to his friends the more that they can prevail with him to write. With best compliments to Mrs. Garrick, and hoping that you will not punish me by being long silent, I remain faithfully yours,
To David Garrick, Esq.,
Adelphi, London.
Minor Notes
White Roses.—In an old newspaper, The Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer, of Saturday, June 15, 1723, I find the following paragraph:
"Monday being the anniversary of the White Roses, some persons who had a mind to boast that they had bid defiance to the government, put them on early in the morning; but the mob not liking such doings, gathered about them, and demolished the wearers; which so terrified the crew, that not one of them afterwards would touch a white rose."
Can you, or any of your correspondents, explain this curious allusion? Is it to the emblem of the House of York, or the badge of the Pretender?
Fifeshire Pronunciation.—I have observed, in various parts of Fifeshire, a singular peculiarity in the pronunciation of certain words, of which the following are specimens:
This strange mode is not altogether confined to the most illiterate portion of the people. My query is, Does this peculiarity obtain in any other portion of Scotland?
Paisley.
Original Letter.—The following letter, written by the French general at Guadaloupe, when it was taken in 1810, to his conqueror, is an exquisite specimen of something more than that national politeness which does not desert a Frenchman even in misfortune. I possess the original:
A son Excellence
Le Général Beckwith, Commandant en chef les forces de sa Majesté Britannique aux isles du Vent.
Monsieur le Général,
J'ai été prévenu que Votre Excellence se proposait de venir au Parc demain dans la matinée. J'ose espérer qu'elle voudra bien me faire l'honneur d'accepter le diner que lui offre un Général malheureux et vaincu, mais qu'il présente de tout cœur.
Daignez, Monsieur le Général, agréer l'assurance de la haute considération avec laquelle
Erroneous Forms of Speech.—Since you allow your correspondents to correct such words as teetotal, I hope you will allow me to call the attention of your agricultural readers to the corruption in the word mangold, as they now write it. The word is in German mangel wurzel, root of scarcity. It is wrong to use even such a name as this, in my opinion, while we have the English name beet, which has the additional advantage of being derived from the botanical name Beta. But if a new name must be used, let it, at any rate, be the pure German mangel, and not the mongrel mangold. Indeed, those who spell the word in the latter way, ought in common consistency to write reddishes, sparrowgrass, and cowcumbers for radishes, asparagus, and cucumbers.
QUERIES
EUSTACHE DE SAINT PIERRE
(Vol. vii., p. 10.)
Mr. King's inquiry reminds me of two Queries on the same subject which I sent you as far back as the end of 1851, or beginning of 1852. Those Queries have not appeared in "N. & Q.," and I was led to suppose, either that you had laid them aside for some future occasion, or had found something objectionable in the form in which they were presented. The following is a literal copy.
"There are two circumstances connected with this event (the surrender of Calais), respecting which I am desirous of obtaining information. The first has reference to the individuals who offered themselves as victims to appease the exasperation of Edward III., after the obstinate siege of that town in 1347. They are represented as six of the principal citizens; Eustache de Saint Pierre was at their head, and the names of three others have come down to us, as Jean d'Aire, Jacques de Wissant, and Pierre de Wissant. Who were the other two?
"The second point relates to the character of that occurrence. Some historians are of opinion that the devotedness of Saint Pierre and his associates was prompted by the most exalted sentiments of patriotism; while others assert that it was all a 'sham,' that Saint-Pierre was secretly attached to the cause of the English monarch, and that he was subsequently employed by him in some confidential negociations. To which of these opinions should the historical inquirer give his assent?"
I may add, in reply to Mr. King, that "the light thrown on the subject, through M. de Bréquigny's labours," has been noticed in the Biographie Universelle, sub voce Saint-Pierre (Eustache de); and it was the remarks in that work that first drew my attention to it. The circumstances disclosed by Bréquigny are also commented upon by Lévesque in his La France sous les Valois.
St. Lucia.
PASSAGE IN COLERIDGE
De Quincy, in his "Suspiria de Profundis," Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1845, p. 748., speaking of the spectre of the Brocken, and of the conditions under which that striking phenomenon is manifested, observes that
"Coleridge ascended the Brocken on the Whitsunday of 1799 with a party of English students from Goettingen, but failed to see the phantom; afterwards in England (and under the same three conditions) he saw a much rarer phenomenon, which he described in the following eight lines. I give them from a corrected copy. The apostrophe in the beginning must be understood as addressed to an ideal conception:
"'And art thou nothing? Such thou art as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head:
This shade he worships for its golden hues,
And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues.'"
These lines are from "Constancy to an ideal Object;" but in the usual editions of Coleridge's Poems, the last two lines are printed thus:
"The enamour'd rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows he makes the shadow he pursues."
Query: