Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/98

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. v. JAN. 27, igo&

SELLING ONESELF TO THE DEVIL (10 th S. v. 29). What this phrase signified to our fore- fathers is to be gathered from Marlowe's 'Faustus.' The terms of part of the docu- ment which Faustus signs with his blood are worth quoting here :

"I, John Faustus, of Wittenberg, Doctor, by these presents, do give both body and soul to Lucifer, prince of the East, and his minister Mephistophilis, and furthermore grant unto them, four-and-twenty years being expired, and these articles above written being inviolate, full power to fetch or carry the said John Faustus, body and soul, flesh and blood, into their habitation where- soever."

For the same consideration as that for which Faustus sold himself, " to live in all voluptuousness," a similar bargain was made by a French magician, Urbain Grandier, in the early seventeenth century. The pact made by him with Satan used to be preserved in the archives of Poitiers. Its text is tran- scribed, in both Latin and French, in Collin de Plaricy's * Dictionnaire Infernal, 5 1826, and as it is even more explicit than the English one above I append the French version :

" Monsieur et Maitre Lucifer, je vous reconnais pour mon Dieu et mon Prince, et promets de vous servir et obeir tant que je pourrai vivre. Et je renonce a mon autre Dieu, ainsi qu'a Jesus-Christ, aux autres saints et saintes, et a 1'Eglise Apos- tolique Romaine, a tous ses sacremens et a toutes les oraisons et prieres par lesquelles les fidelespour- raient interceder pour moi ; et je vous promets que je ferai tout le mal que je pourrai ; que j'attirerai tous autres au mal. Je renonce au chreme, au bapteme, a tons les me'rites de Jesus-Christ et de ses saints ; et si je manque a vous servir et a vous adorer, et si je ne vous fais pas hommage trois fois par jour, je vous donne ma vie comme votre bien."

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

FRANCIS PRIOR : ANNABELLA BEAUMONT (10 th S. v. 8). In the registers of St. Paul's Cathedral the following entry occurs :

"Francis Prior of St. Dunstan's in ye West, Linnen Draper, Batchelour, & Annabella Beaumont of Great Dunmow in ye County of Essex, Spinster, were married by a License from the Arch Bp's office in this Cathedral Church ye 10 of Feb. 1708 ; by Thos. Beaumont, Junr."

These registers were printed by the Harleian Society in 1899. CHAS. A. BERNAU.

The licence for this marriage was obtained at the Faculty Office, 9 February, 1708/9.

LEO C.

BORN WITH TEETH (10 th S. v. 8). In an editorial note to this query, reference is made to the statement that Richard III. was so endowed at birth, I suppose upon the authority of Shakespeare. After reading

Mr. Legge's work 'The Unpopular King, 7 i.e., Richard III, I think, and other readers will be inclined to think, that Shakespeare was characterizing some other personage than Richard in his play. I have met with the suggestion that this characterization applied to the Earl of Salisbury.

EDWARD A. PETHERICK. Streatham.

See Camden's 'Remains concerning Britain/ chapter entitled 'Wise Speeches ; :

" King Richard the third, whose monstrous birth foreshewed his monstrous proceedings (for he was born with all his teeth and hair to his shoulders), albeit he lived wickedly, yet made good Laws,"&c.

CHAS. A. BERNAU.

AFFERY FLINTWINCH IN 'LITTLE DORRIT (10 th S. iv. 466; v. 32). Affery Jeffery's memorial in Folkestone Churchyard is dated 18 April, 1841. I understand that Dickens was in Folkestone, at 3, Albion Villas, in the summer of 1855. The name Aphra occurs frequently in neighbouring parish registers ; and Aphra Behn, the novelist, was a native of Wye, Kent. R. J. FYNMORE.

Sandgate.

One thinks at once of the notorious Mrs. Aphra, Aphara, Afra, or Ayfara Behn. This curious Christian name is no doubt to be referred to one or other of the St. Afras, of whom there are three in the calendar, under dates 24 May, 14 June, and 5 August. The account given by the Bollandists of the last one, under the heading * De Afra Mar tyre/ runs to over forty columns of print. But what is the particular link between St. Afra and Kent? JAS. PLATT, Jun.

JOHNSON'S 'VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES r (10 th S. v. 29). The originator of the prose parody on Johnson's lines is apparently Coleridge, who uses it in his sixth lecture on 'Shakspeare and Milton ' (Bohn's ed., p. 72), and presumably this is the writer from whom De Quincey copied it.

EDWARD- M. LAYTON.

I have read that Wordsworth condemned these lines, whilst he commended Bryden's translation. But I cannot remember that the paraphrase quoted is Wordsworth's, though it may have been his.

E. YARDLEY.

The phrase " from China to Peru " evidently suggested by 1. 3 of Boileau's eighth, satire (1607) :

De Paris au Perou, etu Japon jusqu'a Rome. E. E. STREET; Chichester.