Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851. Various
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the very images sweat, and he adds, are moved and utter oracles. It is probable Milton had this in recollection when, in his noble Nativity Ode, he sings of the approach of the true Deity, at whose coming
"… the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat."
MINOR NOTES
Gaudentio di Lucca.—Sir James Mackinstosh, in his Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, adverts to the belief that Bishop Berkeley was the author of Gaudentio di Lucca, but without adopting it.
"A romance," he says, "of which a journey to an Utopia, in the centre of Africa, forms the chief part, called The Adventures of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca, has been commonly ascribed to him; probably on no other ground than its union of pleasing invention with benevolence and elegance."—Works, vol. i. p. 132. ed. 1846.
Sir J. Mackintosh, like most other modern writers who mention the book, seems not to have been aware of the decisive denial of this report, by Bishop Berkeley's son, inserted in the third volume of Kippis's Biographia Britannica.
George Wither, the Poet, a Printer (Vol. ii., p. 390.).—In addition to DR. RIMBAULT'S extract from Wither's Britain's Remembrancer, showing that he printed (or rather composed) every sheet thereof with his own hand, I find, in a note to Mr. R.A. Willmott's volume of the Lives of the English Sacred Poets, in that interesting one of George Wither, the following corroboration of this singular labour of his: the poem, independent of the address to the King and the præmonition, consisting of between nine and ten thousand lines, many of which, I doubt not, were the production of his brain while he stood at the printing-case. A MS. note of Mr. Park's, in one of the many volumes of Wither which I possess, confirms me in this opinion.
"Ben Jonson, in Time Vindicated, has satirized the custom, then very prevalent among the pamphleteers of the day, of providing themselves with a portable press, which they moved from one hiding-place to another with great facility. He insinuates that Chronomastix, under whom he intended to represent Wither, employed one of these presses. Thus, upon the entrance of the Mutes,—
"Fame. What are this pair?
Eyes. The ragged rascals?
Fame. Yes.
Eyes. These rogues; you'd think them rogues,
But they are friends;
One is his printer in disguise, and keeps
His press in a hollow tree."
From this extract it should seem that Wither not only composed the poem at case (the printer's phrase), but worked it off at press with his own hands.
Worcester.
"Preached as a dying Man to dying Men" (Vol. i., p. 415.; Vol. ii., p. 28.).—Some time ago there appeared in this series (Vol. i., p. 415.) a question respecting a pulpit-phrase which has occasionally been used by preachers, delivering their messages as "dying men to dying men." This was rightly traced (Vol. ii., p. 28.) to a couplet of the celebrated Richard Baxter, who, in one of his latest works, speaking of his ministerial exercises, says,—
"I preach'd as never sure to preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men."
The passage occurs in one of his "Poetical Fragments," entitled "Love breathing Thanks and Praise."
This small volume of devotional verse is further entitled, Heart Imployment with GOD and Itself; the concordant Discord of a Broken-healed Heart; Sorrowing, Rejoicing, Fearing, Hoping, Dying, Living: published for the Use of the Afflicted. The Introduction is dated "London: at the Door of Eternity, Aug. 7. 1681."
He yet survived ten years, in the course of which he was twice imprisoned and fined under the profligate and persecuting reigns of Charles II. and James II. for his zeal and piety.
Hallamshire.
Authors of Anonymous Works.—On the title-page of the first volume of my copy of The Monthly Intelligencer for 1728 and 1729, which was published anonymously, is written in MS., "By the Rev. Mr. Kimber."
This book belonged to, and is marked with the autograph of D. Hughes, 1730; but the MS. note was written by another hand.
Umbrellas (Vol. ii., pp. 491. 523., &c.).—I have talked with an old lady who remembered the first umbrella used in Oxford, and with another who described the surprise elicited by the first in Birmingham. An aunt of mine, born 1754, could not remember when the house was without one, though in her youth they were little used. May not the word umbrella have been applied to various sorts of impluvia? Swift, in his "Description of a City Shower," says:—
"Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the dangled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides."
This might be applied to an oiled cape, but I think the passage quoted by MR. CORNEY (Vol. ii., p. 523.) signifies something carried over the head.
By the way, the "Description of a City Shower" contains one of the latest examples of ache as a dissyllable:—
"A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage."
U.U. Club, Jan.
QUERIES
SONNET (QUERY, BY MILTON) ON THE LIBRARY AT CAMBRIDGE
In a Collection of Recente and Witty Pieces by several eminente hands, London, printed by W.S. for Simon Waterfou, 1628, p. 109., is the following sonnet, far the best thing in the book:—
"In that great maze of books I sighed and said,—
It is a grave-yard, and each tome a tombe;
Shrouded in hempen rags, behold the dead,
Coffined and ranged in crypts of dismal gloom,
Food for the worm and redolent of mold,
Traced with brief epitaph in tarnished gold—
Ah, golden lettered hope!—ah, dolorous doom!
Yet mid the common death, where all is cold,
And mildewed pride in desolation dwells,
A few great immortalities of old
Stand brightly forth—not tombes but living shrines,
Where from high sainte or martyr virtue wells,
Which on the living yet work miracles,
Spreading a relic wealth richer than golden mines.
Attached to it, it will be seen, are the initials J.M. and the date 1627. Is it possible that this may be an early and neglected sonnet of Milton? and yet, could Milton have seriously perpetrated the pun in the second line?