Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/75

 10 s. VIL JAN. 19, 190?:] NOTES AND QUERIES.

59

Evelyn. Minikin has an interesting history. Under Minion, minister, &c., is much historical information. Minuet first occurs in Dryden. Minx, a pet dog, a pert girl, is of obscure origin. An article on the prefix mi*- deserves close study.

A Last Ramble in the Classics. By Hugh E. P.

Platt, M.A. (Oxford, Blackwell.) AT 10 S. iv. 238 we inserted a long review of Mr, Platt's previous volume, ' Byways in the Classics,' and we are glad to notice in his present classical "olla podrida" abundant evidence that he has profited by our comments and additions. In par- ticular, he has now added much of interest from Boswell's ' Johnson ' and Tennyson's ' Life ' by his son, which we mentioned as capital source's of classical quotation and comment.

Mr. Platt talks of prosaic names derived from numerals, but we do not think that such names, where their meaning is not readily recognized i.e., generally are felt to be prosaic in modern times, as in the cases of Septimus Tennyson and Decima Moore. The Greeks and Latins, we doubt not, differed from us in their views of euphony and its opposite, and we do not think that Matthew Arnold is quite fair when he exclaims, in his ' Essay on the Function of Criticism,' at the touch of grossness in our race shown by " the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names as Higginbottom, Stiggins, Biigg ! In Ionia and Attica they were luckier in this respect than ' the best race in the world ' ; by the Ilissus there was no Wragg, poor thing ! There were probably equally ugly names in Greece ; but we do not realize their ugliness, nor did Matthew Arnold.

Mr. Platt speaks of the doubt whether Lucan was a poet. He may be interested to know that Shelley preferred him to Virgil. To us he is little more than an inspired rhetorician, and his lapses in taste are hardly balanced by his fine praise of Pompey.

To the list of proverbial phrases might be added from the ' Cena Trimalchionis ' " Omnium tex- torum dicta" for "swearing like a trooper" or " a bargee," the weavers of Rome having, ap- parently, this evil pre-eminence.

Some of the classical "mottoes" i.e., modern applications of classical lines and phrases seem to us rather far-fetched. This sort of thing de- generates into pedantry and boredom unless the point strikes one at once as apt. Mr. E. H. Blakeney has done well in applying the Homeric " devisers of the War Cry" to the Salvation Army, and we cannot resist mention of a Shakespearian allusion to the same energetic evangelists, which is, we believe, new. In ' 1 Henry IV.,' III. i., we find " 'Tis the next way to turn tailor or be red-breast teacher." What description could be more vivid? A pleasant form of jesting is the use of canine Latin by scholars. Thus we have heard of a note being thrown across at a meeting where two men were disagreeing with the line

Non est multus amor perditus inter eos. The great Shilleto, when a boy, heard Dr. Butler (the grandfather of the author of ' Erewhon ') say, " If the men will let the boys have the boats, I will have them up before the magistrates." As these words fell gradually from the Doctor's lips, Shilleto wrote on a scrap of paper : Quando velint homines pueris eonducere cymbas, Ante magistratus Butler habebit eos.

rlaving done so, he slid the paper on to Dr. Butler's desk. " Psha, boy, psha ! " was all the answer made him; "but," said Shilleto, "the Doctor folded the paper carefully up and put it in his pocket."

This, with much other classical allusion, is taken
 * rom a neglected book, 'The Life and Letters of

Samuel Butler,' by his brilliant grandson (Murray, 1896). We give from memory Shilleto's epigram on jladstone, which we have never seen in print, though it has doubtless appeared somewhere :

Unde mini lapidem peterem quo laetus eum cui Inditur a Iteto nomen et a lapide.

Gray's ' Letters,' which should be read in the excellent edition of Mr. Duncan Tovey, afford, as might be expected, much insight into the delights of classical learning imbibed at leisure. In vol. ii., for instance, is a waggish perversion in a letter to Mason of 6 October, 1759 : " Your friend Dr. Plumptre has lately sat for his picture to Wilson. The motto, in large letters (the measure of which he himself proscribed), is, Non magna loquimur, sed vivimus," i.e., "We don't say much, but we hold good livings."

The same volume quotes two references to Juvenal x. 41 by Walpole : " Servus curru portatur eodem," when Bob, formerly a waiter at White's, was returned for Parliament (p. 9) ; and p. 151 offers the perversion :

et .ibi Countess Ne placeat, ma'amselle curru portatur eodem.

Mr. Platt invents an odd reason for the love of Horace in the English people, if, indeed, such love still exists. It seems fairly obvious that Horace represents to perfection the comfortable views of the man of the world to take the golden mean, be careful of the man and the occasion when you talk, not to overtax your digestion, &c. It is the very opposite of the doctrines of chivalry, which expect a man to seek danger for its own sake and do quixotic things.

Trollope is fairly veracious in his detail, and we may therefore regard the following passage in the ' Last Chronicle of Barset,' new " Library Edition " (i. 39), as a testimony to the present decay of in- terest and knowledge in Greek. Mr. Crawley, the scholar and parson, who is at his wits' end for enough to live on, "had translated into Greek irregular verse the very noble ballad of Lord Bate- man, maintaining the rhythm and the rhyme, and had repeated it with uncouth glee till his daughter knew it all by heart. And when there had come to him a five-pound note from some admiring maga- zine editor as the price of the same, still through the dean's hands, he had brightened up his heart, and had thought for an hour or two that even yet the world would smile on him."

The modern magazine editor would certainly smile at such a misguided attempt to get money out of him. He does not bother about Greek, and if he had to do so, it is probable that he would employ some one to read it for him. Greek and Latin gods and heroes figure now chiefly in advertisements of soap and patent foods !

We end our notice, as on a former occasion, with an Oxford jest. It is recorded by the late Grant Duff, and is certainly ben trovato. When Arch- deacon Denison was standing for a fellowship at Oriel, his next neighbour, an elderly candidate for matriculation at the same college, said to him,