Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/407

 10 s. XIL OCT. 23, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

335

the Spanish American authorities. The sale of a copy is recorded in ' Book- Price" Current,' 1894, No. 1,370. S. L. PETTY.

[MR. H. J. B. CLEMENTS and MR. W. H. PEET also refer to Lowndes.]

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10 S xii. 268). The following may help to answer V. H. C.'s questions : 1, " Equal to either fate " is probably a translation of "in utrumque paratus " (Virgil, ' ^En.' ii. 61) 2, " Sits in permanence " of " sedet seter numque sedebit " (' Mn.' vi. 617) ; 3, " Sing history " of " regum facta canit " (Horace 'Serm.' I. x. 42); 4, "Sting of truth" of preserved in Nonius Marcellus, 493, 14).
 * ' vis veritatis atque acritas " (Lucius Attius

The REV. E. C. E. OWEN'S quotation, As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would.

is from Tennyson's ' The Passing of Arthur, 11. 14, 15. JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT.

" Equal to either fate," or rather " equal to either fortune," is from Eugene Aram's speech on the occasion of his trial, but possibly he may have borrowed it from some earlier author. J. TALBOT.

V. H. C.'s fifth quotation, Pays all his debts with the roll of his drum,

is a line in a comic song popular about 1840.

I forget the title, but the first lines were : How happy the soldier who lives on his pay, And spends half-a-crowii out of sixpence a day !

Formerly, as has been more than once recorded in ' N. & Q.,' when a regiment took up its quarters in a town, a sergeant went through the streets and read at the corners a warning to the inhabitants not to give credit to the soldiers, as they were not liable for debt. A drummer went with the sergeant, and before each reading rolled his drum to call attention to the warning.

M. N. G.

See Wordsworth's * Intimations of Im- mortality,' ix., for

Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence.

THOMAS BAYNE.

The lines about which MR. RESTALL inquires, ante, p. 288,

Praise is devotion fit for mighty minds,.

The diff'ring world's agreeing sacrifice, are by Sir W. Davenant, and will be found in 'The Oxford Book of English Verse/ p. 309. LAWRENCE PHILLIPS.

[Several other correspondents thanked for replies.]

COWPER : BOWLING : THEIR PRONUNCIA- TION (10 S. xii. 265). The poet certainly pronounced his name Cooper. My mother in her youth was a frequent visitor at Lady Throckmorton's, and is probably now the sole survivor of those who were acquainted with any friend of the poet's. My mother has often told me (and the other day, being now in her eighty-seventh year, told me again) that nothing enraged the old lady more than to hear the name pronounced " with a cow." Any one who so pronounced it received no second invitation to the house of the lady who had so often entertained Cowper at .Weston Underwood. Lady Throckmorton retired in her old age (as was then the custom of the dowagers of the county and the neighbourhood) to North- ampton, where my grandfather, William Drake, was chaplain of St. John's Hospital.

JOHN SARGEAUNT. Reform Club.

A variation in spelling, such as the names Cooper and Cowper present, appears to be a survival of independent attempts to express an identical vocable by means, or in terms, of a somewhat imperfect literal medium. If the English alphabet included both an omlcron and an omega, we could write or spell such words as " door," " floor," or " window," in a shorter and more certain manner, and probably the sound of the poet's name would never have become a subject of dispute.

In solving difficulties consequent upon iteral inadequacies, the historic method, whereby we trace back the name or word to its origin, or root idea, seems by far the better ; but this process implies a correct valuation of the modifications which possibly or actually have occurred.

In this respect analogy is helpful. To the

nd, therefore, of assisting those desirous of

settling the true pronunciation of tha nama

Cowper, I venture to submit an illustration,

3y restating the variations in the spelling of

ny own patronymic which I have noted


 * vhile searching historical records. The first,

,aken from the Journal of the House

Commons, Ireland (1666), is the simplest

orm, " Doling." The short o, as sounded in

' doll," might easily be uttered here as the

nterpretation of the sign for the intended

ong vowel sound ; and for this reason the

name so spelt but seldom appears. Such a

et-back, however, to the prerogative of

was not to be tamely accepted. A spirited

ttempt to enforce it is found in " Dooling."

3ut since the double vowel is not pronounced