Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/617

 10 s. x. DEC. 26, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

511

"HE WHICH DRINKETH WELL," &cO - 1

wish to know where the following is to be found :'

He which drinketh well sleepeth well ; He which sleepeth well thinketh no harm ; He which thinketh no harm is a good man ; Therefore the drunkard is a good man.

It is quoted in ' Fixed Stars,' by " G. Beau- mont, minister of the gospel," printed at Norwich, 1814. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

THE TENTH WAVE.

(10 S. x. 445.)

DISCUSSING- the slow, if steady progress of Christianity, in his essay on ' The Pagan Oracles,' De Quincey says that " the prema- ture effort of Constantine ought to be re- garded as a mere ftuctus decumanus in the continuous advance of the new religion." This prompts one of those discursive and entertaining notes in which the author was fond of indulging when he came to read his papers over for final publication. The tenth wave, he explains, had long interested himself, one of the poorest of naturalists, " and thejate Prof. Wilson, among the very best." Several times they tried to bring the matter to the proof on the sands at Portobello, near Edinburgh, and their final experiment is thus characteristically de- scribed :'

" The total result was small and purely negative. In the latter trial we waited and watched from an early stage of a spring tide ; but the answer was none. We began by watching for a wave that should seem conspicuously larger than its fellows, and then counted onwards to the 10th, the 20th, the 30th, and so on to the 100th dated from that. But we never could detect any overruling principle involving itself in the successive swells ; and the wind continually disturbed any tendency that we had fancied to a recurrent law. Southey's brother, Tom, a lieutenant in the navy, whom I had once asked for his opinion upon the question, laughed, and said that such a notion must have come from the log of the ship Argo, thus raising the Professor, who really had a good deal of nautical skill, and my ignorant self, that had none at all, to the rank of Argonauts. We, however, fancying that the pheno- menon might possibly belong to tideless waters, subsequently tried the English lakes, some of which throw up very respectable waves when they rise into angry moods. The Cumberland lakes of Bassenthwaite and Derwentwater fell to my share ; Windermere, Coniston, and Ulleswater to Professor Wilson. But the issue of all was emptiness and aerial mockeries."

The note, with several indispensable sub- notes, is extended over six pages of the volume in which it occurs, the writer's

manifest enjoyment of his narrative and discussion being one of the features that cannot fail to prove attractive to the dis- criminating reader. One regrets that the scene on Portobello beach does not live in an adequate pictorial illustration. Christo- pher North and the English Opium-Eater jointly and zealously struggling to verify the tradition of the ftuctus decumanus would have provided a worthy artist with an uncommonly fine theme for the exercise of his best quality. As it is, there is the pleasantly devious and illuminating note, which, it may be added, quaintly supple- ments a sound and suggestive disquisition. THOMAS BAYNE.

The oldest and best-known tradition cer- tainly gives the tenth wave credit for being bigger and stronger than the preceding nine, although there are other theories known. Sir Thomas Browne descants upon the subject in his ' Vulgar Errors,' and de- clares that the notion is evidently false ; " nor can it be made out," he continues, " by observation, either upon the shore, or the ocean ; as we have with diligence explored both." Other diligent observers have come to a contrary conclusion. Per- haps the oddest example of the prevalence of this old belief is to be found in the bur- lesque inventory of the " properties " of Christopher Rich, manager of Drury Lane Theatre, which appears in an early number of Steele's Tatler. Among the very miscel- laneous assortment of " props " catalogued there appear the following : " Three bottles and a half of lightning. ... A sea consisting of a dozen large waves, the tenth bigger than ordinary, and a little damaged." Steele evidently credited Rich with a sharp eye for stage realism.

The idea of a great tenth wave crops up in unexpected places. Burke, in his 'Letters on a Regicide Peace,' says : " Until at length, tumbling from the Gallic coast, the victorious tenth wave shall ride like the bore over all the rest."

The late Mr. Bell Scott credits the literal wave with a magic protecting power. He says :'

Would you be free of a salt-sea grave, Drink from your palm of the high tenth wave, Then you need fear no salt-sea harm.

Most coast folk have theories of their own concerning the recurrence of larger waves than ordinary. At one place a weather- beaten observer will tell you that two small waves will be followed by a larger breaker. Somewhere else you may be told that three