Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850. Various
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seed,
Yet would she not, because she never dies;
For mortal things desire their like to breed,
That so they may their kind immortalise."
Plato Sympos. §32. (p. 207. D. Steph.):
"Mortal natures seek to attain, suffer as they can, to immortality; but they can attain to it by this generation only; for thus they ever leave a new behind them to supply the place of the old." Compare § 31. "Generation immortalises the mortal, so for as it can be immortalised."—Plato Leg. iv. (p. 721. G.), vi. § 17. (p. 773. E.); Ocell. Lucan. iv. § 2.
Butler, Serm. I. on Human Nature (p. 12. Oxford, 1844):
"Which [external goods], according to a very ancient observation, the most abandoned would choose to obtain by innocent means, if they there as easy, and as effectual to their end."
Dr. Whewell has not, I think, in his edition, pointed out the passage alluded to, Cic. de Fin. III., c. 11. § 36.:
"Quis est enim, aut quis unquam fuit aut avaritiâ tam ardenti, aut tam effrenatis cupiditatibus, ut eamdem illam rem, quam adipisci scelere quovis velit, non multis partibus malit ad sese, etiam omni impunitate proposita, sine facinore, quam illo modo pervenire?"
Marlborough College.
SHAKSPEARE AND THE OLD ENGLISH ACTORS IN GERMANY
My studies on the first appearance of Shakspeare on the German stage, by means of the so-called "English Comedians" who from the end of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century visited Germany and the Netherlands, led me to the following passage of a Dutch author:
"In the Voyages of Vincent le Blanc through England, I met with a description of the representation of a most absurd tragedy, which I recognised to be the Titus Andronicus of Shakspeare."
I have examined the Voyages of Vincent le Blanc without having been able to discover the passage alluded to; and as the Dutch author says that some time had elapsed between his first reading those Voyages and the composition of his treatise, and as he seems to quote only from memory, I am led to believe his having confounded Vincent le Blanc with some other traveller of the same period.
Undoubtedly one of your numerous readers can furnish me with the title of the work in which such a description occurs, or with the name of some other foreign traveller who may have visited England at the period alluded to, and in whose works I may find the description mentioned above.
Berlin, Nov. 19. 1850.
TEN CHILDREN AT A BIRTH
The following circumstance, although perhaps hardly coming within the ordinary scope of the "Notes and Queries," appears to me too curious to allow a slight doubt to prevent the attempt to place it on permanent and accessible record. Chancing, the other day, to overhear an ancient gossip say that there was living in her neighbourhood a woman who was one of ten children born at the same time, I laughed at her for her credulity,—as well I might! As, however, she mentioned a name and place where I might satisfy myself, I called the next day at a small greengrocer's shop in this town, the mistress of which, a good-looking, respectable woman, aged seventy, at once assured me that her mother, whose name was Birch, and came from Derby, had been delivered of ten children; my informant having been the only one that lived, "the other nine," she added, "being in bottle in the Museum in London!" On mentioning the matter to a respectable professional gentleman of this place, he said "he had a recollection of the existence of a glass jar, which was alleged to contain some such preparation, in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, as mentioned when he was a pupil in London." Of the question, or the fact, of so marvellous a gestation and survivorship in the history of human nature should strike the editor of "Notes and Queries" as forcibly as his correspondent, the former, should he publish this article, may perhaps be kind enough to accompany it with the result of at least an inquiry, as to whether or not the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons does contain anything like corroborative evidence of so strange, and, if true, surely so unprecedented a phenomenon.
[We are enabled by the courtesy of Professor Owen to state that there exists no corroboration of this remarkable statement in the Museum of the College of Surgeons. The largest number at a birth, of which any authentic record appears, is five, and the Museum contains, in case No. 3681, five children, of about five months, all females, which were born at the same time. Three were still-born, two were born alive, and survived their birth but a short time. The mother, Margaret Waddington, aged twenty-one, was a poor woman of the township of Lower Darling, near Blackburn in Lancashire. This remarkable birth took place on the 24th April, 1786, and was the subject of a communication to the Royal Society, which contained also the result of an investigation into similar cases which could be well authenticated, and which may be seen in a note in the admirable Catalogue of the College Museum, vol. v. pp. 177-185. As the remarkable birth described by our correspondent N. D. took place five years previously to these inquiries, and is not mentioned, it is scarcely possible to doubt that his informant must be labouring under some great mistake. If such a birth took place, it is probable that the parish register will contain some record of the fact. Our correspondent will, perhaps, take the trouble to make some further investigations, so as to trace the source of the error, for error there must be, in the statement of his informant.]
GEORGE HERBERT AND BEMERTON CHURCH
It is gratifying to see that some of your correspondents are taking, an interest in the "worthy, lowly, and lovely" (as Isaac Walton called him) Mr. George Herbert (Vol. ii., pp. 103. 414.). It may tend to increase that interest, if I send you a note I made a few years ago, when I visited Bemerton, and had the pleasure of officiating within the walls of that celebrated little church. The rector kindly showed me the whole Parsonage House; the parts rebuilt by Herbert were traceable; but the inscription set up by him on that occasion is not there, nor had it been found, viz.:
"TO MY SUCCESSOR.
"If thou chance for to find,
A new house to thy mind,
And built without thy cost;
Be good to the poor,
As God gives the store,
And then my labour's not lost."
It may truly be said to stand near the chapel (as his biographer calls it), being distant only the width of the road, thirty-four feet, which in Herbert's time was forty feet, as the building shows. On the south is a grass-plat sloping down to the river, whence is a beautiful view of Sarum Cathedral in the distance. A very aged fig-tree grows against the end of the house, and a medlar in the garden, both, traditionally, planted by Herbert.
The whole length and breadth of the church is forty-five feet by eighteen. The south and west windows are of the date called Decorated, say 1300. They are two-light windows, and worthy of imitation. The east window is modern. The walls have much new brickwork and brick buttresses, after the manner recommended in certain Hints to Churchwardens, Lond. 1825. A little square western turret contains an ancient bell of the fourteenth century (diameter, twenty-four inches), the daily sound of which used to charm the ploughmen from their work, that they "might offer their devotions to God with him."
"Note, it was a saying of his 'That his time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his soul, and was his heaven upon earth.'"—Walton.
The doorway is Jacobean, as is the chest or parish coffer, and also the pulpit canopy; the old sittings had long been removed. The font is circular, of early English date, lined with lead, seventeen inches diameter, by ten inches deep. The walls were (1841) very dilapidated.
It cannot but be a surprise to every admirer of George Herbert and to all visitors to this highly favoured spot, to find no monument whatever to the memory of that bright example of an English parish priest. This fact need surely only to be made known to insure ample funds for rebuilding the little church, and "beautifying" it in all things