Anagrams.The publication of two anagrams in your Number for May 7, calls to my mind a few that were made some years ago by myself and some friends, as an experiment upon the anagrammatic resources of words and phrases. A subject was chosen, and each one of the party made an anagram, good, bad, or indifferent, out of the component letters. The following may serve as a specimen of the best of the budget that we made.
1. French Revolution.
Violence, run forth!
2. Swedish Nightingale.
Sing high! sweet Linda. (q. d. di Chamouni.)
3. Spanish Marriages.
Rash games in Paris; or, Ah! in a miser's grasp.
4. Paradise Lost.
Reap sad toils.
5. Paradise Regained.
Dead respire again.
Birmingham.
Family CaulChild's Caul.The will of Sir John Offley, Knight, of Madeley Manor, Staffordshire (grandson of Sir Thomas Offley, Lord Mayor of London temp. Eliz.), proved at Doctors' Commons 20th May, 1658, contains the following singular bequest:
"Item, I will and devise one Jewell done all in Gold enammelled, wherein there is a Caul that covered my face and shoulders when I first came into the world, the use thereof to my loving Daughter the Lady Elizabeth Jenny, so long as she shall live; and after her decease the use likewise thereof to her Son, Offley Jenny, during his natural life; and after his decease to my own right heirs male for ever; and so from Heir to Heir, to be left so long as it shall please God of his Goodness to continue any Heir Male of my name, desiring the same Jewell be not concealed nor sold by any of them."
Cestriensis.Numerous Progeny.The London Journal of Oct. 26, 1734, contains the following paragraph:
"Letters from Holderness, in Yorkshire, mention the following remarkable inscription on a tombstone newly erected in the churchyard of Heydon, viz. 'Here lieth the body of William Strutton, of Padrington, buried the 18th of May, 1734, aged 97, who had by his first wife 28 children, and by a second wife 17; own father to 45, grandfather to 86, great-grandfather to 97, and great-great-grandfather to 23; in all 251.'"
T. B. H.Queries
SMITH, YOUNG, AND SCRYMGEOUR MSS
Thomas Smith, in his Vitæ Illustrium, gives extracts from a so-called Ephemeris of Sir Peter Young, but which Sir Peter compiled during the latter years of his life. Thomas Hearne says, in a note to the Appendix to Leland's Collectanea, that he had had the use of some of Smith's MSS. This Ephemeris of Sir Peter Young may be worth the publishing if it can be found: can any of your readers say whether it is among Smith's or Hearne's MSS., or if it be preserved elsewhere? Peter Young, and his brother Alexander, were pupils of Theodore Beza, having been educated chiefly at the expense of their maternal uncle Henry Scrymgeour, to whose valuable library Peter succeeded. It was brought to Scotland by Alexander about the year 1573 or 1574, and was landed at Dundee. It was especially rich in Greek MSS.; and Dr. Irvine, in his "Dissertation on the Literary History of Scotland," prefixed to his Lives of the Scottish Poets, says of these MSS. and library, "and the man who is so fortunate as to redeem them from obscurity, shall assuredly be thought to have merited well from the republic of letters." It is much to be feared, however, that as to the MSS. this good fortune awaits no man; for Sir Peter Young seems to have given them to his fifth son, Patrick Young, the eminent Greek scholar, who was librarian to Prince Henry, and, after his death, to the king, and to Charles I. Patrick Young's house was unfortunately burned, and in it perished many MSS. belonging to himself and to others. If Scrymgeour's MSS. escaped the fire, they are to be sought for in the remnant of Patrick Young's collection, wherever that went, or in the King's Library, of which a considerable part was preserved. Young's house was burned in 1636, and he is supposed to have carried off a large number of MSS. from the royal library, after the king's death in 1649. If therefore Scrymgeour's MSS. were among these, it is possible that they may yet be traced, for they would be sold with Young's own, after his death in 1652. This occurred on the 7th of September, rather suddenly, and he left no will, and probably gave no directions about his MSS. and library, which were sold sub hastâ, probably within a few months after his death, and with them any of the MSS. which he may have taken from the King's Library, or may have had in his possession belonging to others. Smith says that he had seen a large catalogue of MSS. written in Young's own hand. Is this catalogue extant? Patrick Young left two daughters, co-heiresses: the elder married to John Atwood, Esq.; the younger, to Sir Samuel Bowes, Kt. A daughter of the former gave to a church in Essex a Bible which had belonged to Charles I.; but she knew so little of her grandfather's history that she described him as Patrick Young, Esq., library keeper to the king, quite unconscious that he had been rector of two livings, and a canon and treasurer of St. Paul's. Perhaps, after all, the designation was not so incorrect, for though he held so many preferments, he never was in priest's orders, and sometimes was not altogether free from suspicion of not being a member of the Church of England at all, except as a recipient of its dues, and of course, a deacon in its orders.
But it may be worthy of note, as affording another clue by which, perchance, to trace some of Scrymgeour's MSS., that Sir Thomas Bowes, Kt., who was Sir Symonds D'Ewes's literary executor, employed Patrick Young to value a collection of coins, &c., among which he recognised a number that had belonged to the king's cabinet, and which Sir Symonds had purchased from Hugh Peters, by whom they had been purloined. Young taxed Peters with having taken books, and MSS. also, which the other denied, with the exception of two or three, but was not believed. I do not know what relation Sir Thomas Bowes was to Sir Samuel, who married Young's second daughter, nor to Paul Bowes, who edited D'Ewes's Journals
Various
Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Notes
CORRECTIONS ADOPTED BY POPE FROM THE DUNCES
In Pope's "Letter to the Honourable James Craggs," dated June 15, 1711, after making some observations on Dennis's remarks on the Essay on Criticism, he says
"Yet, to give this man his due, he has objected to one or two lines with reason; and I will alter them in case of another edition: I will make my enemy do me a kindness where he meant an injury, and so serve instead of a friend."
An interesting paper might be drawn up from the instances, for they are rather numerous, in which Pope followed out this very sensible rule. I do not remember seeing the following one noted. One of the heroes of the Dunciad, Thomas Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, was the editor of a periodical published in monthly numbers, in 8vo., of which nine only appeared, under the title of The Comedian, or Philosophical Inquirer, the first number being for April, and the last for December, 1732. It contains some curious matter, and amongst other papers is, in No. 2., "A Letter in Prose to Mr. Alexander Pope, occasioned by his Epistle in Verse to the Earl of Burlington." It is very abusive, and was most probably written either by Cooke or Theobald. After quoting the following lines as they then stood:
"He buys for Topham drawings and designs,
For Fountain statues, and for Curio coins,
Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,
And books for Mead, and rarities for Sloane,"
the letter-writer thus unceremoniously addresses himself to the author:
"Rarities! how could'st thou be so silly as not to be particular in the rarities of Sloane, as in those of the other five persons? What knowledge, what meaning is conveyed in the word rarities? Are not some drawings, some statues, some coins, all monkish manuscripts, and some books, rarities? Could'st thou not find a trisyllable to express some parts of nature for a collection of which that learned and worthy physician is eminent? Fy, fy! correct and write
'Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,
And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.'
"Sir Hans Sloane is known to have the finest collection of butterflies in England, and perhaps in the world; and if rare monkish manuscripts are for Hearne only, how can rarities be for Sloane, unless thou specifyest what sort of rarities? O thou numskull!"No. 2., pp. 1516.
The correction was evidently an improvement, and therefore Pope wisely accepted the benefit, and was the channel through which it was conveyed; and the passage accordingly now stands as altered by the letter-writer.
James Crossley.NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS
(Continued from p. 522.)Dare, to lurk, or cause to lurk; used both transitively and intransitively. Apparently the root of dark and dearn.
"Here, quod he, it ought ynough suffice,
Five houres for to slepe upon a night:
But it were for an olde appalled wight,
As ben thise wedded men, that lie and dare,
As in a fourme sitteth a wery hare."
Tyrwhitt's utterly unwarranted adoption of Speght's interpretation is "Dare, v. Sax. to stare." The reader should always be cautious how he takes upon trust a glossarist's sly fetch to win a cheap repute for learning, and over-ride inquiry by the mysterious letters Sax. or Ang.-Sax. tacked on to his exposition of an obscure word. There is no such Saxon vocable as dare, to stare. Again, what more frequent blunder than to confound a secondary and derivative sense of a word with its radical and primaryindeed, sometimes to allow the former to usurp the precedence, and at length altogether oust the latter: hence it comes to pass, that we find dare is one while said to imply peeping and prying, another while trembling or crouching; moods and actions merely consequent or attendant upon the elementary signification of the word:
"I haue an hoby can make larkys to dare."
on which line that able, but therein mistaken editor's note is, "to dare, i. e. to be terrified, to tremble" (he however also adds, it means to lurk, to lie hid, and remits his reader to a note at p. 379., where some most pertinent examples of its true and only sense are given), to which add these next:
" · · let his grace go forward,
And dare vs with his cap, like larkes."
"Thay questun, thay quellun,
By frythun by fellun,
The dere in the dellun,
Thay droupun and daren".
"She sprinkled vs with bitter juice of vncouth herbs, and strake
The awke end of hir charmed rod vpon our heades, and spake
Words to the former contrarie. The more she charm'd, the more
Arose we vpward from the ground on which we darde before."
"Sothely it dareth hem weillynge this thing; that heuenes weren before," &c.
And again, a little further on:
"Forsothe yee moste dere, one thing dare you nougt (or be not unknowen): for one day anentis God as a thousande yeeris, and a thousande yeer as one day."Cm 3m Petre 2., Wycliffe's translation:
in the Latin Vulgate, latet and lateat respectively; in the original, λανθνει and λανθαντω. Now the book is before me, I beg to furnish Mr. Collier with the references to his usage of terre, mentioned in Todd's Dictionary, but not given (Collier's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 65., note), namely, 6th cap. of Epistle to Ephesians, prop. init.; and 3rd of that to Colossians, prop. fin.
Die and live.This hysteron proteron is by no means uncommon: its meaning is, of course, the same as live and die, i. e. subsist from the cradle to the grave:
" · · · Will you sterner be.
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?"
All manner of whimsical and farfetched constructions have been put by the commentators upon this very homely sentence. As long as the question was, whether their wits should have licence to go a-woolgathering or no, one could feel no great concern to interfere: but it appears high time to come to Shakspeare's rescue, when Mr. Collier's "clever" old commentator, with some little variation in the letters, and not much less in the sense, reads "kills" for dies; but then, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 3., the same "clever" authority changes "cride-game (cride I ame), said I well?" into "curds and cream, said I well?"an alteration certainly not at odds with the host's ensuing question, "said I well?" saving that that, to liquorish palate, might seem a rather superfluous inquiry.