Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/85

 10 s. xi. JAN. 23, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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On the back cover of Punch for 24 June, 1908, is a petition from the soap-makers of London, 1650, which includes the name of " Edm. Halley," the astronomer's father.

EUGENE F. McPiKE. 1, Park Row, Chicago.

BURTON'S ' ANATOMY ' : PRESENTATION COPY. (See 10 S. viii. 326.) On reading the essay on Robert Burton in Mr. Charles Whibley's 'Literary Portraits' (1904) I find that I was anticipated by him in point- ing out that the copy of the first edition of the ' Anatomy of Melancholy ' presented by the author to Christ Church is now in the British Museum. I regret not to have read Mr. Whibley' s essay earlier. His treatment of Burton is so scholarly, and at the same time so sympathetic so different from that dealt out by the late T. E. Brown in his curiously perverse ' Causerie ' in The New Review (vol. xiii.) that it may seem un- gracious to indicate a few inaccuracies. In view, however, of Burton's usual fate, one may perhaps be excused for an anxiety to secure exactness in all points.

In a note on p. 261 Mr. Whibley speaks of " the famous title-page engraved by C. Le Blond." So Mr. A. H. Bullen styled the engraver in his introduction to Shilleto's edition. The engraver's name, however, appears on the title-page as C. Le Blon. In another place, a propos of the story of the drunken men who think the room is a ship, for which Burton refers his reader to Caelius [Rhodiginus], 1. 17, cap. 2 (the passage first appears in the third edition of the 'Anatomy'), Mr. Whibley notes that "the same story may be found in Athenaeus." This comment, which looks as though it were based on Shilleto's (vol. i. p. 429), is misleading. The humanist from Rovigo is in no sense a parallel authority to the Greek writer. He owed the story, of course, to the latter. Mr. Whibley says that " the Passionate Lord's song in Fletcher's ' Nice

Valour ' is evidently suggested by the

abstract of Melancholy wherewith Burton prefaced his book." Some difficulties in the way of this view were pointed out at 10 S. vi. 464.

Again, the statement is made that Burton's "readiness seems the more remarkable, when you remember that he never scored a single volume in his library, and that he must have carried the literature of the whole world in his head, if he had not recourse to commonplace books." More than one of Burton's books in the Bodleian show what appear to be marks of his pen against passages or phrases that

figure in the ' Anatomy.' Burton's methods- in composition really call for a special in- vestigation. Sometimes he writes from re- collection. Sometimes it is hard to believe that he had not his authority lying open before him. In his preface he speaks of writing "in an extemporean style.... out of a confused company of notes."

EDWARD BENSLY. University College, Aberystwyth.

" CUMMERBUND." This is derived, as- every one knows, from the Persian cummer, waist, and bund, a band or bond. Binding the loins implies a journey, whereas tearing open the waist-belt implies grief. A Persian epigram, which was sent me recently, brings in these aspects of the " cummerbund " so- neatly that I cannot refrain from quoting it here :

Tu azm e safar kardi, va rafti zi bare ma.

Basti kamar e khesh, shikasti kamar e ma !

which may be translated :

You are going to take a journey, bind our cummer- bund you must ;

But with grief at your departure, our cummer you have bust."

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

ESSEX MARTYRS' MEMORIAL. The. Daily- Mail of 25 September last recorded that on, the previous day Mr. R. Whitehead, M.P, for South-East Essex, unveiled at Rayleigh a " memorial to martyrs who were burnt in that village in the sixteenth century. The memorial, consisting of an obelisk and frmntain, cost 100A, and is inscribed with the names of Thomas Causton, John Ardley, Robert Drakes, and William Timms, who were burnt at the stake 1555-6." This is, I think, of sufficient interest for a place in ' N. & Q.'

W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY.

Westminster,

" RAISED HAMLET ON THEM." This is an expression which I have never heard except from the members of families bred and born in Derbyshire. When things have gone wrong in household affairs, the mistress " raises Hamlet on them " (the offending persons) ; and when she tells her particular neighbour about it, she says, " I raised Hamlet on them ! " That the expression comes from the ghost in ' Hamlet ' there need be no doubt. It would be interesting to know how the ghost came to be part of a folk-expression. I have also heard men say in fits of temper, " I '11 raise hell and Hamlet." The first expres- sion is of the womenkind.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.