Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/476

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. xn. NOV. 13, 1900.

heard him speak were : " The way to heaven is as near by sea as by land."

J. WILLCOCK. Lerwick.

[MR. T. BAYXE also refers to Anaxagoras.]

" TACKLE-HOUSE " : " TACKLE-PORTER " (10 S. xii. 307, 350). There is a very satis- factory definition of a " tackle-porter " in Dodsley's ' London and its Environs,' 1761, s.v. ' Porters ' :

" Tackle-porters are such of the Ticket porters as are furnished with weights, scales, &c., and their business is to w r eigh goods."

Ergo, it is reasonable to conclude that tackle-houses were so called from the circum- stance of their having housed the weighing- tackle used in assessing the gravity of all goods and merchandise, whether export or import, leaving or entering the port of London. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

Wroxton Grange, Folkestone.

JUAN FERNANDEZ : AN EABLY CRUSOE (10 S. xii. 285). It is quite true, as stated by Basil Ringrose, that a man spent some years alone on the island of Juan Fernandez long previous to the time of Alexander Selkirk. The man was a native of the Mosquito Coast called " William," who had been one of the crew of Capt. Bar- tholomew Sharp, a notorious freebooter of the seventeenth century. In January, 1681, Sharp was engaged in depredations along the west coast of South America, and during his cruise called at the above island. When there, he was surprised by the sudden appearance of three Spanish ships of war, and he prudently retired, leaving behind him the unfortunate " William."

Dampier says that " William " remained alone on the island for over three years, and that he was taken off in April, 1684. Dampier also gives a short account of William's mode of life on the island.

Capt. Sharp was a terror to the Spaniards, and some account of him and o the sudden departure from Juan Fernandez is given in Alsedo y Herrera's book * Piraterias y Agresiones de los Ingleses y de otros Pueblos de Europa en la America Espanola desde el Siglo XVI. al XVII.,' published at Madrid in 1883.

Basil Ringrose, one of Sharp's com- panions, got home in March, 1682. The doings of the buccaneers were then interest- ing the people of London, who had been reading Exquemeling's account of Morgan's exploits, as given in ' The Buccaneers of America,' published by one William Crooke.

Some of the freebooters were then living in London and had become respectable. They did not like Exquemeling's book, and a new edition was brought out. This edition was watered down.

In 1685 William Crooke obtained a de- tailed account from Ringrose of the doings of Sharp, and he published that account as the second volume, or part iv., of the ' Buccaneers of America.'

WM. C. COOKE, F.R.G.S.

Vailima, Bishopstown, Cork.

TOMMY SHORT ON ARISTOTLE (10 S. xii. 70). The passage in question was probably from ' Rhetoric,' lib. II. xii. This chapter begins :

Tot <$ rj#?7 Trotoi rives. Kara TO, TrdOrj KOI ras eeis KCU ras fjkiKias KOLL ras

/zero, ravra. . . /HAi/acu <$

MR. PICKFORD will relish this extract all the more when he is told that the copy from which it is quoted has on its fly-leaf the autograph " William Bright, 1841," and that it is full of the neatly writtefl and lucid notes of the late Oxford Professor of Ecclesi- astical History. His summary of the chapter now in question may be welcome to others than my venerable friend :

"In youth we expect not so much virtuous Habit as vTrtp/SoA?) of impulse. In manhood we may expect virtuous Habit, or at least Habits good or evil. In old age we may expect a second outbreak of passion, or else the other bad extreme of t'AXti^ts. The faults of manhood will be those of deliberate badness, not from impulse, but from principle. In old age we may either expect an outbreak of bad or of good impulses. Feeling wakes, sleeps, and reawakes for good or evil."

CECIL DEEDES.

Chichester.

Having at hand only Buckley's transla- tion of ' Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric ' (Bohn), I can give but the English version of the passage referred to :

"But the body is in its prime from the age of thirty to five-and-thirty ; and the mind about the age of forty-nine." Book ii. chap. xiv.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

The reference is to Aristotle's ' Rhetoric,' chap. xiv. Most of us like to think, as Short did, that in these temperate climates we retain our full mental vigour after forty - nine. Surely we do.

J. FOSTER PALMER. 8, Royal Avenue, S.W. [MR. R. FREEMAN BULLEN also thanked for reply.]