Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/225

 10<" S. I. MARCH 5, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

181

LONDOX, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 190.',.

CONTENTS. -No. 10.

NOTES : Dantoiana, 181 "Silly Billy." 183 Bibliography of Publishing and Bookselling, 184 Robert Boyle on the Bible, 18H Japanese Names Genealogy : New Sources " Auncell " Hockday : Pottage called Hok Mrs. Qaskell's ' Sylvia's Lovers," 187.

QUERIES : Latin Quotations Paolo Avitabile, 188 Charles the Bold Admiral Byug Miss Lewen and Wesley

Schoolmasters Thomas Goodwin, D.D. Verses on Women "Bridge": Us Derivation CuplahiUs "Old Eugimid" Thackeray Quotation, 189 Webster's 'Basque Legends ' Harepath Quotations Peun's ' Fruits of Solitude,' 190.

BEPLIBS : -Tideswelland Tideslow, 190 Earl of Egremont, 192 Glowworm or Firefly' Merry Thoughts in a Sad Place'" My Lord the Sun" Fellows of the Clover Leaf ' The Oxford English Dictionary ' Fictitious Latin Plurals " King of Patterdale " Football on Shrove Tuesday Sleeping King Arthur" Quice," 194 Honour of Tutbury Milestones Breaking Glass at Jewish Wed- dings "Travailler pour le Rui de Prusse" " Cockshut time," 195 Torch and Taper Epitaph at Doncaster, 196 Son of Napoleon I. Raleigh's Head " Coup de Jarnac " Hundred Courts, 197 Chauceriana Guide to Manor Bolls A. <\ Swinburne Court Posts under Stuart Kings

Book Collectors Records of Mount Grace William Hartley Foscarinus, 198.

NOTES ON BOOKS : -Hakluyt's ' Navigations' Solon's 'Old English Porcelain' Treasure's 'Breton Grammar' Wheatley's 'Gerrard Street and Its Neighbourhood' ' William Savory of Brightwalton.'

Notices to Correspondents.

Sri**.

DANTEIANA. 1. 'lNF.,'xiv. 96:

Sotto il cui rege fu gia il niondo casto. Why Mr. Tozer (' English Commentary,' p. 78) has rendered casto as "innocent" is not easy to say. I note the rendering in no supercilious spirit, but because it appears to rue to be as farfetched as it is inaccurate. To be "chaste" is of course to be "inno- cent " of its opposite vice, but it by no means implies innocency in every other form. Dante's thought was less restricted, and evi- dently followed Juvenal's phrase (Satire vi.) : Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam In terris,

which Dryden correctly englished

In Saturn's reign, at Nature's early birth, There was a thing call'd chastity on earth.

And Gary translates Dante's line fairly cor- rectly as

Under whose monarch, in old times, the world Lived pure and chaste.

Scartazzini also has " Rege : Saturno. Casto : puro, senza vizj," and refers to the ' ^Eneid,' viii. 319 seq., where we read that Saturn

Genus indocile, ac dispersura montibus altis, Composuit, legesque dedit,

and

Sic placida populos in pace regebat. I am aware that, as Bianchi says, " Casto pub preudersi anche nel senso di integro, innocente, come talvolta presso i Latini " ; but, as Lombardi remarks, "Saturno, fu il mondo pudico.'' Precisely. Saturn was the symbol, not of an innocent world generally, but of a pure one in particular. His age was the age of gold.

2. Ibid., 126 :

Pur a sinistra giu calando al fondo.

This line is animadverted upon simply because, as Mr. Tozer well observes, " the passage is an important one as bearing on the leftward course of the poets through Hell," since, as he remarks on 'Inf.,' ix. 132, " its allegorical significance is that the forms of sin which present themselves to one who descends through the Circles of Hell proceed from worse to worse."

For manuscript variants of the line the student should read Dr. Moore's exhaustive examination of the rival claims of Pur and Piu ('Textual Criticism,' p. 307). Piu has 160 supports, while Pur reckons only 59. But there can be no hesitation as to the correct reading, despite Witte's curious advocacy of Piu. The latter, as Dr. Moore rightly says, " has little or no point at all, when looked into, though the expression seems so plain in itself. It would also miss the undoubted symbolical signi- ficance of the fact here mentioned, which is that assigned to it by Buti, 'non si puo scendere nell' inferno se non si va a sinistra, cioe per la via del vizi significata per la sinistra.' "

Other variants worth noting are : Pur da sinistra in MS. 85 (Batines, 318), in Turin University Library, of the fifteenth century, of which " the text generally is a very poor one " ; a man sinistra in F MS., Bodleian, fifteenth century (Batines, 495), " full of bold and original, not to say audacious, changes," and in a MS. British Museum (Batines, 482), "a beautifully executed MS. on vellum," probably of the second half of the fifteenth century. "Alia man destra" occurs 'Inf.,' ix. 132, which may possibly have misled the copyist. MS. 25 (Batines, 139) has Per via sinistra, in the Biblioteca Puccardiana at Florence, "a folio MS. on vellum, the earlier part of which is very clearly and well written, and looks like late fourteenth century." Tu a sinistra is given by MS. 54 (Batines, 329), a Vatican MS. of "latish fourteenth cen- tury," and MS. 106 (Batines, 439) in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, "a very inferior text, full of peculiar readings and blunders, about the middle of the fifteenth century."