Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/109

 s. ii. JULY 30, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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me, has been, for many weeks past, in so declining a way, and has suffered so many attacks of the most excruciating pain, that I have hardly been able to keep alive the faintest hopes of her recovery, know, that our God heareth prayer, and I know that He hath opened mine, and many hearts amongst this people, to pray for her. Here lies my chiei support, without which I should look upon myseli as already deprived of her. Again, when I con- sider the great meetness to which the Lord has wrought her for the inheritance in light ; her most exemplary patience under the sharpest sufferings ; her truly Christian humility and resignation ; I am more than ever inclined to believe that her hour has come. Let me engage your prayers for her, and for me. You know what I have most need of, upon an occasion like this. Pray that I may receive it at His hands, from whom every good and perfect gift cometh. She is the chief of blessings I have met with, in my journey, since the Lord was pleased to call me, and I hope the influence of her edifying and excellent example, will never leave me. Her illness has been a sharp trial to me. Oh ! that it may hava a sanctified effect, that I may rejoice to surrender up to the Lord, my dearest comforts, the moment He shall require them. Oh ! for no will, but the will of my Heavenly Father !

I return you thanks for the verses you sent me, which speak sweetly the language of a Christian soul. I wish I could pay you in kind ; but must be contented to pay you in the best kind I can. I began to compose them yesterday morning before daybreak, but fell asleep at the end of the two first lines:* when I awaked again, the third and fourth were whispered to my heart in a way which I have often experienced :

Oh for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame,

A light to shine upon the road, That leads me to the Lamb.

Where is the blessedness I knew,

When first I saw the Lord ? Where is the soul-refreshing view

Of Jesus inf His word ?

W T hat peaceful hours I then enjoyed,

How sweet their memory still ! But they have left an aching void,

The world can never fill. Return, oh holy Dove, return,

Sweet messenger of rest ; I hate the sins that made Thee mourn,

And drove Thee from my breast. The dearest idol I have known,

Whate'er that idol be, Help me to tear it from Thy throne,

And worship only Thee. Then shall my walk be close with God,

Calm and serene my frame ; Then purer light shall mark the road,

That leads me to the Lamb.

I am yours, my dear Aunt, in the bands of that Love which cannot be quenched. etc. etc.

JOHN E. B. MAYOR.

(To be continued.)


 * Mrs. Cowper's note: "Stanzas."

t In the 'Olney Hymns,' No. 1, this verse runs : "Of Jesus and his word," which is a manifest corruption.

" PEEK-BO." In Ben Jonson's * Every Man. out of his Humour/ p. 138 (folio, 1616), near the beginning of Act IV., the following pas- sage occurs :

"Fallace. Hey-da ! this is excellent ! He lay my life this is my husband's dotage. I thought so ; nay, neuer play peeke-boe with me, I know, you doe nothing but studie how to anger me, sir."

This play was produced in 1599 and printed in quarto in 1600. Gifford, followed by Cun- ningham, reads "bo-peep" for " peeke-boe," although he professedly follows the folio. Mr. Bradley, of the ' New English Dictionary/ referred me to the parallel *' keek-bo," which may be found in Jamieson's 'Scottish Dic- tionary.' Since my writing to him (he had no example), I have come across the following passage in 'The School of the Woods/ by Charles Copeland (Boston, 1903), p. 29 : "Fear and wonder and questionings dancing in their soft eyes as they turned them back at me like a mischievous child playing at peek- aboo." So that the term is living in America. The same writer uses " peek " several times, of animals, for peer, peep, or pry about ; in which sense it is not uncommon in Eliza- bethan English as in the "peaking cprnuto, her husband," in ' Merry Wives of Windsor/ where it is peculiarly well suited to a " horned beast." H. C. HART.

[Peeke-bo is still said by mothers and nurses to children. We have often heard it.]

"REQUIEM," A SHARK. The French word for " shark ' is requin, admittedly a popular corruption of requiem ; Littre says, " a cause qu'il n'y a plus a dire qu'un requiem pour celui qu'un requin saisit." It seems to have hitherto escaped notice that the full form requiem is found in this sense in several Eng- lish seventeenth-century books. No doubt the 'N.E.D.' will presently give us the his- tory of this odd application of the term. Meanwhile, the following extract from a rare work, * The History of the Caribby Islands/ by John Davies, of Kidwelly, 1666, p. 103, may be deemed worth quoting here, because it gives reasons for the name rather at variance with that accepted by the great French lexicographer :

' Some nations call this monster Tiburon and Tut'i ron ; but the French andPortuguez commonly call it Requiem, that is to say, rest, haply, because le is wont to appear in fair weather, as the tortoises also do, or rather because he soon puts to rest whatever he can take."

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

"WORDS THAT BURN." A recent corre- spondent of the Standard thus expresses limself about Bishop Goodrich, of Ely, who was somewhat of a time-server at