Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/111

 10 s. vii. FEB. 2, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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<c call " as that could only affect, of course, an actual emigrant, but it might be effective in rooting an old belief, with its old names, in the alien soil. J. P. OWEN.

MILTONIANA. It is perhaps worth while recording certain parallels to, if not actual sources of, the following passages in Milton. As far as I know, they have not been noticed before. ' Paradise Lost,' vi. 238 :

Each on himself relied, As only in his arm the moment lay Of victory.

Compare Xenophon, 'Hell,'ii. 4, 16: OVTM ^prj OTTWS CKacrros Ti? eavTw cnweicrercu T?S

atrtcoraros wv. ' Paradise Lost,' vi. 769 :

And twenty thousand I their number heard Chariots of God.

The Angel explains that he knew the exact number of the heavenly host, just as the messenger explains that he knew the exact number of the Persian ships at Salamis,

us, ' Persae,' 340 : 7e/)>7 Se, /cat yap ofou, )(iAias /*" 'I", K.T.A. ' Paradise Lost,' xi. 399 :

Mombaza and Quiloa and Melind, And Sofala, thought Ophir.

While most of the place-names in this famous catalogue occur in Camoens, three of the above-quoted occur in one line (' Lusiads,' i. 54) :

Quiloa, de Mombaca e de .Sofala. Did Milton know of Camoens's work ? Camoens does not identify Ophir with Sofala, but in x. 124 he mentions the belief (" alguns imaginaram ") that Ophir was situated in the Golden Chersonese, a place also mentioned in this pasasge of Milton.

In ' Paradise Regained,' iv. 458, storms and convulsions of nature are said to be to the universe

as inconsiderable

And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze To man's less universe.

The germ of this idea is to be found in Lucretius, vi. 648 et sqq., where the poet, after having described various natural dis- turbances, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, &c., says :

Numquis enim nostrum miratur, si quis in artus

Accepit calido febrim feryore coortam

Aut alium quern vis morbi per membra dolorem ?

C. W. BRODRIBB.

GEORGE III. AND " WHAT." (See 10 S. vi. 516.) My grandfather, who was born in 1764 and died in 1843, lived at Staines from November, 1799, to April, 1801. One

day when walking near Windsor he saw a stout elderly gentleman on horseback. As he rode carelessly, the horse stumbled, and the rider was on the point of falling, when my grandfather ran to his assistance, and helped him to recover his seat. The gentle- man then said : " Thank you, thank you, thank you ! Who are you, who are you, who are you ? " But my grandfather had barely time to recognize that it was the king before he rode away, and he heard no more of it. W. C. B.

HABIB ULLAH : ITS PRONUNCIATION. In M.A.P. for 19 January there are some amusing lines commencing as follows :

Hail ! Happy Habib Ullah, With your friend the cra/.y Mullah That reverend gent of " cullah," That spiritual Peer.

One must not be too critical with humorous verse, but there are many readers who like to know the correct pronunciation of any name figuring prominently in the papers, so I venture to say that the above gives quite a wrong idea of the scansion of the name Habib Ullah. The stress should fall upon the last syllable of each of its two elements. Habib rimes with glebe or grebe ; Ullah rimes with Shah. The meaning of the name is " Beloved of God."

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

LINK WITH CHARLES I.'s EXECUTION. I append an extract from The Derby Daily Telegraph of 17 January, which may be worthy of record in the always interesting pages of ' N. & Q.' :

" An interesting Derbyshire ' Link with the past' is recalled by Mr. J. H. Sharpley, of Hatfield College, Doncaster, in a letter to The Sheffield Tele- graph. He says : ' In 1872, when a boy, 'staying at Hulland Ward, Derbyshire, I called on an old lady, Elizabeth Durose, then 97, widow of a farmer, who told me that her grandmother, when a girl, had known a man a distant relative who had wit- nessed the execution of Charles I. The old lady then took out of a corner cupboard an old prayer- book, bound in black leather, which was, I fancy, of the time of Queen Anne, for I remember it had a frontispiece picturing a parson in gown and bands, and wearing a long wig, saying prayers in a ' three- decker.' Opening it at the form of service for the 30th January, she showed me a piece of coarse linen, of the colour of a dead leaf, which she said was a portion of a handkerchief which had been dipped in the King's blood, and was given to her grandmother by the above eye-witness. When it first passed into her possession it was nearly entire, but her children had played with it, and this was all that she had managed to preserve.' "

Hulland Ward is a picturesque vil five miles from Ashbourne.

MARMADUKE E. BUCKLE.