Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/207

 10 S. XL FEB. 27, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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ordinate. " I shall subjoin," he observes, me to collect." After quoting, apparently verbatim, what he presently defines as " the declamation of Oldisworth," he gives various biographical details drawn, he explains, from conversation with Gilbert Walmsley, whom he proceeds to eulogize in terms that prompt the famous allusion to the death of Garrick. He says comparatively little of Smith's literary achievement, although ho contends against Addison that the ' Phaedra ' was probably as well received as its merits deserved. Of the author's rant apart from Oldisworth' s references ; and all he says of the ' Longinus ' is that ^' he intended to accompany it with some illustrations, and had selected his instances of the false Sublime from the works of Black- rnore."
 * ' such little memorials as accident has enabled
 * Pindar ' he declares himself entirely igno-

When editing The Spectator for " Every- man's Library," Prof. Gregory Smith seems to have failed to notice the two distinct sections in Johnson's chapter on Smith. Unhesitatingly and without comment, he assigns to the later and the distinguished critic the opinions expressed by his com- paratively obscure predecessor. Annotating Steele's assertion, in the second number of The Spectator, that Aristotle and Longinus were familiar to his Member of the Inner Temple, he says : " At the time of this paper, Edmund Smith's translation, which Johnson has praised highly, was in MS."

Again, prompted by Addison' s complaint, in No. 18, regarding the popular enthusiasm for the opera " at a time when an author lived that was able to write the Phaedra and Hippolitus," Mr. Gregory Smith ob- serves in an appended note : " Addison' s friend Edmund Smith produced ' Phaedra and Hippolitus ' in 1709, ' a consummate tragedy ' excelling the Greek and Latin son." Like the praise accorded to the version of Longinus, this encomium is drawn from the section of Johnson's memoir which is completed by the unqualified " declama- tion of Oldisworth." The play, resting on a mythological basis, seemed to Johnson unlikely to appeal to the ignorant or to be appreciated on the stage by the learned. " It is a scholar's play," he concludes, " such as may please the reader rather than the spectator ; the work of a vigorous and elegant mind, accustomed to please itself with its own conceptions, but of little acquaintance with the course of life."
 * Phaedra ' and ' the French one,' says John-

THOMAS BAYNE.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

PUNCH : THE BEVERAGE. When this word was under discussion in ' N. & Q.' in 1905-6 MB. ED WARD HERON- ALLEN wrote (10 S. v. 72) of his family as having " prided themselves as punch-makers for many generations," and as having " always understood that the word was derived from the Persian or Urdu word pan/, five." Will MB. HEBON-ALLEN be so good as to say to what date, precisely or approximately, these " many generations " go back ? and also what evidence he has that his ancestors always so understood the derivation of " punch" ? Were any of these ancestors on service in the East Indies, and in what years ? As we are collecting materials for the history of the word " punch," we should be glad of particulars as to both statements. Does the evidence go back before the date of Fryer, who, so far as we know, was the first to propound the derivation in question ? (If answered privately, kindly address " Sir James Murray, Oxford.")

J. A. H. MUBBAY.

LIZARDS AND Music. The archaeologist Welcker, in his ' Alte Denkmaler,' vol. i. 1849, p. 412, quotes the opinion of " An Englishman " on the love of lizards for music in a book entitled ' On the Habits and Customs of Animals,' London, 1839, but omits to give his name. This English- man, who seems to have been a naturalist, says, according to Welcker, that lizards, common in Southern Italy and Malta, are fond of music and also of whistling. ; when he was returning from his herborizing excur- sions, he often amused himself by whistling, in order to see the lizards creeping out of their holes and listening to him. He adds that this experiment was also made in Brazil.

Who was this author ? and has the same observation been made by others ? There is nothing surprising in the fact, for serpents are known to be charmed by music, and lizards are also reptiles. H. GAIDOZ.

22, Rue Servandoni, Paris (VP).

GOETHE'S CONVEBSATIONS. A new edi- tion of the late Baron von Biedermann's standard collection of all known conversa- tions of Goethe is now being prepared with the active encouragement of the leading Goethe scholars. Every effort is being made