Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/153

 s. in. FEB. is, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

121

LQXDOX, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY IS, 190$.

CONTENTS.-No. 60.

NOTES : Omar's Prosody Shakespeare and Agincourt. 121 Clocks stopped at Death, 124 " Wilie-beguilies "Com- missary Court of Westminster, 125 "Oriel" "Had better have been " " Thrub Chandler," 126.

QUERIES : " Once so merrily hopt she "Milton Portrait 'Burton Abbey Cartulary " Algarva " Sir Abraham Sbipman Hippomanes Molly Lepel's Descent Sir Walter Raleigh's 'Historic of the World,' 127 " Most moving first line in English poetry " Authors of Quota- tions Wanted Anchorites' Dens ' Moser's Vestiges ' Delafosse, Winchester Commoner ' The Forte Frigate' Small Parishes ' Kebecca,' a Novel, 128 -Saxton Family, 129.

EPLIE8 : Englishmen under Foreign Governments, 129 Charles I. in Spain Bibliographical Notes on Dickens and Thackerav, 131 "Broken heart" The Lyceum Theatre, 132 Ser.ieantson Family of Hanlith London Cemeteries in I860 Tyrrell Family Ainsty' Paradise Lost' of 1751, 133 Spelling Reform Verse on a Cook- Clergyman as City Councillor The Nail and the Clove Coutances, Winchester, and the Channel Islands, 134 English Burial-ground at Lisbon Sir T. Cornwallis Samuel Wilderspin Extraordinary Tide in the Thames, 135 Police Uniforms : Omnibuses, 136 Danish Surnames William III. at the Boyne 'The Northampton Mer- cury ' " Snowte " : Weir and Fishery, 137.

NOTES OX BOOKS : Barnabe Barnes's ' Devil's Charter' and 'Ben Jonson's Dramen ' FitzGerald's Translation of Omar' Intermediate ' ' Folk-lore.'

Booksellers' Catalogues. Obituary : Mr. H. H. Drake. Notices to Correspondents.

OMAR'S PROSODY.

IT is curious that amid all the mass of literature which has been written around Omar and FitzGerald, there is nowhere any popular account of what a niljai is, metrically, or how it is recited in the original by Persians. Of course there are treatises on Oriental prosody, but they would be caviare to the general reader, and it is of him that I am thinking.

Surely there must be many who only know Omar in translation, especially among students of Latin verse, who would be glad to learn just what a rubdi is, prosodically. Unfortunately, there is a notion abroad that the line of ten syllables, employed by Fitz- Gerald and most of his successors, is, as one of them expresses it, " a beautiful echo of the old Persian music." Even Whinfield, who should have known better, declares that it very clearly suggests it. Never was there a more patent error. With the best will in the world, I am unable to detect in the deca- syllabic line the slightest movement of the Persian. Indeed, it is difficult to see how a line of five regular feet could suggest one of four feet, which are never all alike, and frequently all differ. Let us take the first

line of what Mr. Swinburne has called the " crowning stanza" of all FitzGerald wrote :

Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make ! In the Persian it runs as follows :

Ai Vakif e asrar e zamir e hama kas !

This is a typical rubai line, and will repay study. Expressed in longs and shorts, its paradigm would be :

' _ | ^, ' v^ | s^ ' ^ I ^ '

Like every mbdi line, it contains four feefc, and consequently four accents :

I. A foot of three syllables, stressed on the central one.

2 and 3. Two feet of four syllables each, stressed on the ante-penultimate.

4. A foot of two syllables, stressed like an iambus.

It will be perceived that this differs entirely from FitzGerald's line. Whinfield employed the same line as FitzGerald, but his transla- tion is more literal :

Oh, Thou ! who know'sfr the secret thoughts of all ! Unaltered I cannot accept this as an echo of the Persian, but perhaps the following might pass as such :

Oh, Thou ! who dost know the secret thoughts of each and all !

As I have hinted, it is one difference between the English line and the Persian that the former is ahvays regular, whereas the latter may be varied in no fewer than twenty-four different ways, and may consist of as many as thirteen, or as few as ten syllables. It may not be unwelcome if, to complete this necessarily short sketch, I give some idea of how the changes are rung.

1. The first foot admits of only two forms : the anti-bacchius, as in the specimen above, and the molossus ( ' ).

2 and 3. The second and third feet are very irregular and variously stressed. If, as is more usual, they have four syllables, they are stressed on the ante-penultimate, as in the specimen above. (One meets with ^ ' ^ ^ ' >-' and ^ ' .)

4. The last foot may consist of one or two syllables : one if the final of the preceding foot is long, but an iambus (as above) if it is short. In either case the fourth ictus is upon the last syllable of the whole line.

JAMES PLATT, Jun.

SHAKESPEARE AND AGIXCOURT. AT first sight one is inclined to deride the passage in ' Henry V.' (IV. viii. 80-112) which contrasts the small number of the dead upon the English side with the vast losses of the French, as the merest exaggeration of local