Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/471

 ii s. i. JUNE 11, 1910.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

463

rently, had no kinship with the Dudley family, being grandson of Sir Bysshe Shelley by his earlier marriage with Mary Michell. T. L. Peacock considered Leis- man's portrait of himself a truer likeness of Shelley than Miss Curran's meritorious effort. The resemblance lay, I suppose, rather in vivacity of expression and in the depth and brilliancy of the eyes than in the general contour of the features.

In The Century Magazine for October, 1905, is an article by N. P. Dunn upon two unknown pictures of Shelley. William Ed- ward West, a Kentucky artist, painted a well-known portrait of Lord Byron at Leghorn in the summer of 1822. During one sitting Shelley called upon Byron ; where- upon West took a surreptitious pencil sketch of the visitor, which Byron declared afterwards to be an excellent likeness. West, after seeing Shelley a^ain in Leghorn, ' ' determined to paint a picture of him while his image was fresh in my memory." Both the original sketch and the finished portrait are in the possession of Mrs. John Dunn, and are reproduced in the article. I confess I can see little or no resemblance in the sketch, as there given, either to the later portrait or to any other likeness of Shelley. West's portrait, however, save for the shape of the nose, has various features in common with Miss Curran's. The hair, eyes, and eyebrows are not unlike ; but the mouth and chin more nearly resemble those in the Montpensier miniature. West's por- trait is a more conventional rendering than that of Miss Curran. This neat and sober presentment of Shelley contrasts with the same painter's image of Byron. But the careful disarray of Childe Harold, the elaborate carelessness displayed in the pose of the cloak and the flying linen, are repro- duced in the pencil sketch of Shelley. In- deed, it would hardly surprise one to learn that the latter was a rough drawing of Byron rather than of Shelley.

In the Picture Gallery of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford-on-Avon are some dozen portraits presented by Mr. E. Marlett Boddy, F.R.C.S. This collection, prodigal in great names, is more curious than con- vincing. There is an alleged Shelley at the age of nine by George Romney. Dr. Richard Garnett held that, if this is a Romney, it is not Shelley ; and if Shelley, it is not a Romney. Unless my memory betrays me, the hair of the youthful sitter is a bright auburn inclining to red ; the nose tip-tilted. It is true that in a letter of August, 1819, to Peacock, Shelley, describing

Mr. Gisborne's prodigious nose, says, "I, you know, have a little turn-up nose " ; but this statement will scarcely authenticate the supposed Romney. To me the most interesting piece among the dozen is the chalk drawing of Byron at Harrow by T. W., 1801. This life-sized head of a beautiful boy of thirteen in full face bears a strong likeness to Byron's portrait by Saunders, painted six years later. But who was T. W.? A. R. BAYLEY.

KING'S 'CLASSICAL AND FOREIGN

QUOTATIONS.' (See 10 S. ii. 231, 351 ; iii. 447 ; vii. 24 ;

ix. 107, 284, 333 ; x. 126, 507 ; xi. 247 ;

xii. 127.)

No. 83, "A Pimpossible nul n'est tenu,' r quoted from P. M. Quitard's * Diet, des Proverbes,' Paris, 1842, p. 463. The original source is Latin. See Johannes Nevizanus'& ' Sylva Nuptialis,' lib. i. 122, " Ad impossibile nemo tenetur. 1. impossibilium. ff. de regul r iur. & 1. impossibilis. if. de verborum obliga." The passages in the ' Digest ' to which Nevizanus refers are lib. 50, tit. xvii. ( ' De diversis regulis iuris antiqui '), cap. clxxxv. r "Idem [=Celsus] libro viii. Digestorum, Impossibilium nulla obliga tio est," and lib. 45, tit. i. (' De verborum obligationibus '), cap. vii., "Idem [ = TJlpianus] libro vi. ad Sabinum. Impossibilis condicio cum in faciendum concipitur, stipulationibus ob- stat.' 1 Binder, 'Nov. Thesaurus Adag. Lat.,' gives " Ad impossibile nemo obligatur" as a legal maxim. See also Matthseus Gribaldus ' De Ratione Studendi,' p. 10 (ed. 1544). Fumagalli, ' Chi 1'ha detto ? ' (ed. 4, 1904) has " Ultra posse nemo obligatur " (No. 570). No. 108, " Amicus est Socrates, magister meus, sed magis est arnica veritas, ap. Rog. Bacon, Opus Maj. i. cap. vii." King quotes Ammonius, ' Aristotelis Vita ' (ed Westermann, p. 399), </Aos plv 2w/fpaTr?9, dA.Aa <iATpa ij d\r)0ia, and Plat., 'Phaedo,' p. 91 ; and the form " Amicus Plato, sed magis arnica veritas" ("Dinah was my aunt, but Truth is my sister," in the elder Shandy's rendering), from 'Don Quixote, 5 " Pt. II. chap. Ii. But there are still earlier instances of the introduction of Plato's name into the proverb. Prof. Moore Smith on 11. 170-71 of Abraham Fraunce's Latin comedy ' Victoria - quotes from that writer's 'The Lawiers Logike ' (1588) "so sayde Aristotle of his owne mayster Plato, Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, magis arnica veritas. " Gribaldus, ' De Ratione Studendi,' p. 221