Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/182

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vn. FEB. -23, 1907.

without relation to him ; besides making the pitiful-hearted object one thing and the melting one another, " which is absurd," as Euclid was wont to remark. And equally it leaves Titan not even a myth. The truth is the passage is meaningless under any theory yet suggested ; but one guess attains half-way to a rational solution, and I will complete it. If not the true one, at least it is one, and none other ever has been even that. The allusion must be to some classical story of a being who melted in the sun : who did so ? Only one person, Icarus or his wings did ; but Phaeton was sun-struck and dazed and burnt up. It is plain to me that " Titan " is a mishearing of " Phaeton," which Shakespeare wrote, and that Shake- speare himself either confounded Phaeton with Icarus, or used " melted " for the sake of the play on the resemblance between the sack running down Falstaff's fat jowl and the dripping of melting butter in the sun. It is true that when Phaeton kisses the butter, it is the latter that melts, not he ; but the conceit means simply " Did you never see Phaeton melting butter with his kisses, just as he too with his soft heart melted under the sun's warm confidences ? "

FORREST MORGAN.

'HAMLET,' I. ii. 131-2 (10 S. vi. 505). I much doubt whether Shakespeare, if he was aware of the quotation from the Apo- crypha as given by the querist, had the same in view in this instance. It seems far more probable that he was vaguely dreaming of the Sixth Commandment and its implications, as has been supposed. The word " canon is used again in ' King John,' II. i. 180, by the Lady Constance in allusion to the Second Commandment ; see Bishop Wordsworth's book ' Shakespeare's Knowledge of the Bible, 1892, p. 149. N. W. HILL.

FEBRUARY 30. In looking through a friend's collection of menus I found one dated February 30, 1904. I thought, naturally, that it was a printer's error, but found that I was mistaken and that the date was perfectly correct. It occurred in the following curious manner. The dinner was on board the Pacific Mail Company's ship Siberia, crossing the Pacific from Yokohama to San Francisco. A day was thus gained and happening as it did at the end o. February, 1904 (leap year), another day was added to the month. The date, therefore although unconventional, is quite legitimate This seems to me to be curious enough to b< putjon record. FRANK SCHLOESSER.

15, Grosvenor Road, Westminster.

COLERIDGE'S POEM ox CHRISTMAS DAY.

n the late Mr. Dykes Campbell's edition of

Coleridge's ' Poetical Works ' (Macmillaii,

893, in one volume) there is a poem of two

quatrains entitled ' Homeless.' It is marked

as printed from MS. ; is assigned, with a

query, to the year 1810 ; and is marked in


 * he index with an asterisk as *' now first

Drinted, or first collected." This little poem

was, however, printed eighty years ago.

.n The Literary Magnet for January, 1827,

. 71 there appears

Ax IMPROMPTU ox CHRISTMAS DAY. O, Christmas Day! O, happy day !

A foretaste from above, To him who hath a happy home.

And love returned for love ! O, Christmas Day ! O, gloomy day !

The V>arb in Memory's dart. To him who walks alone through li t'e.

The desolate in heart ! S. T. C.

This is practically identical with Dykes "Campbell's version, except that he makes }he second verse a comment on the first. This he does by putting in brackets the words " On the above " between the two verses The title, however, is different. Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge has a paper in the new part of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature (Second Series, xxvii. pp. 69- 122) on ' Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the American Botanist William Bartram.' In. this he mentions a copy of Bartram's Travels ' with the inscription : " S. T. Coleridge, Highgate, April, 1818." There are no marginalia, but

"on the fly-leaf scrawled in pencil by a female hand, are these pathetic lines, which, slight as they are, can surely have been written by no other thaii S. T. C."

Then follow the two verses already quoted, with the variant

And love returned from love. The Literary Magnet is not mentioned in Haney's ' Coleridge Bibliography.' The editor must have been an admirer' of Cole- ridge, for he gives the ' Dialogue ' (" How seldom, friend ") in the number for July, 1827, but without mentioning its previous appearance in The Morning Post in 1802 ; he gives in the same volume the ' Epi- gram ' ("Charles, grave or merry") from the same source ; he gives * A * Dialogue written on a blank page of Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church,' but quotes it from The Standard ; he quotes ' Youth and Age ' (" Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying") from 'The Literary Souvenir,' and ' The Wanderings of Cain ' from ' The Bijou.'