Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/44

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. JULY 9, iw*.

Missals of Canterbury, Tournay, York, Here- ford, Olmutz, and Auxerre, and of another sequence by Adam of St. Victor ; and of six other ancient hymns in his honour.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

In Spain churches were dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, shortly after his death, both in Salamanca and Zamora, and, as I mentioned about a year ago, a chapel in the cathedral church of Sigiienza. There is said to exist at the Escorial a collection of mediaeval poetry written in his honour in Spain. It ought, of course, to be published without delay. In the Exhibition at Paris in 1889 there was a good collection of specimens of Limoges enamelling, from the period following the martyrdom, and giving pictures of it. In these it is noticeable that the wounding of the head tallies with the scar on the remarkable skull of the skeleton dug up in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral some fifteen years ago, about which some interesting pamphlets were published in that city because it was supposed that the skeleton was that of the blissful archbishop, saved by a pious fraud from the fury of Henry VIIL, whose bone-fire fed on some substituted relics of less value to the clergy of that place. E. S. DODGSON.

"GO ANYWHERE AND DO ANYTHING" (10 th

S. ii. 8). The editorial note might have added the famous speech of George Augustus Sala, which confirms the ascription of the phrase to the Iron Duke. Sala was proposing the toast of the army at a moment when he had a private quarrel with it, and did so as follows, with a strong accentuation on the word "do": " Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the British army, an army of which its greatest commander said that it could go anywhere and do anything or, I may add, anybody." D.

WHO HAS " IMPROVED " SlR EDWARD

DYER? (10 th S. i. 487.) It is peculiarly gratifying to find MR. G. J. HOLYOAKE, despite his eighty-seven years, writing with all the vigour and vivacity that characterized the work of his pen in days when his name was more frequently before the public than is now the case. MR. HOLYOAKE says he lately used the stanza which he reprints in 'N. & Q.' from a "poem ascribed to Sir Edward Dyer," and published with other selections in a journal he edited fifty-seven years ago, as " the best description I knew of the intellectual contentment of Herbert Spencer in his last days." As an intimate friend of the author of a ' System of Synthetic

hilosophy,' and to a considerable extent in Sympathy with Spencer's standpoint as a thinker, MR. HOLYOAKE gives a noteworthy description, though some may question the appropriateness of the lines to Spencer's mental attitude. MR. HOLYOAKE asks, " Did Dyer write as I quoted him in 1847 1 " and as Drinted in 4 N. & Q.' under above heading. [ find that the version in Chambers's ' Cyclo- paedia of Literature ' is more akin to that of Eenry Morley, derided by MR. HOLYOAKE, bhan to the lines MR. HOLYOAKE claims as Dyer's. Palgrave, Henley, and Mr. Quiller Jouch do not include Dyer in their respective anthologies. In Hain Friswell's 'Familiar Words ' the stanza appears, with the excep- tion of "and" instead of "or" in the last line, exactly as given by MR. HOLYOAKE, with " Percy, from Byrd's * Psalmes, Sonnets,' &c., 1588,"' cited as 'authority ; and in Dalbiac's ' Dictionary of Quotations (English),' the stanza, except in the matter of archaic pelling, is identical with Friswell's, "Old ballad" being given as source. "In 1872," according to Chambers's ' Cyclopaedia/ " Dr. Grosart did his best to identify and edit all Dyer's extant work a dozen pieces in all. ' My Mind to Me a Kingdom is,' set to music- by Byrd in 1 588, is almost certainly his, and is by far the best known." The first of its eight stanzas in the ' Cyclopaedia ' is as follows :

My mynde to me a kyngdome is, Such preasent joyes therein I fynde,

That it excells all other blisse That earth affords or growes by kynde.

Thoughe muche Iwantewhich moste would have,

Yet still my mynde forbiddes to crave. I share MR. HOLYOAKE'S view concerning the fourth line, that it needs an interpreter.

J. GRIGOR.

105, Choumert Road, Peckham. Dyer's well-known poem on contentment is to be found in Kawl. MS. Poet. 85, and there the first verse runs as follows : My mind to me a kingdom is.

Such present joys therein 1 find, That it excels all other bliss That earth affords or grows by kind.

I think it may reasonably be assumed that this was the original form of the text. When the poem was set to music in 1588, in William Byrd's 'Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs,' the verse in question was given thus : My mind to me a kingdom is ;

Such perfect joy therein I find, As far exceeds all earthly bliss That God and Nature hath assigned.

I doubt if it is known when, or by whom, these alterations in the text were made. MR. G. J. HOLYOAKE is misinformed as to