Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/475

 n s. i. JUNE 11, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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FIELD -MARSHAL LORD STRATHNAIRN. For historical purposes I should much like to be put in communication with the representatives of the late Field-Marshal Lord Strathnairn.

DAVID Ross McCoRD, K.C.

Temple Grove, Montreal.

"MAKE" OR "MAR" IN GOLDSMITH. Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ; A breath can make them, as a breath has made.

These two lines from ' The Deserted Village l make sense as they stand. But is it certain that the first "make"' is what Goldsmith wrote ? We expect a contrast between the predicates of the comparative clauses. In old English poetry we frequently come across the collocation " make or mar,' 1 which in former pronunciation rimed. Is the MS. of ' The Deserted Village ? still extant ?

Bartlett in his ' Familiar Quotations * gives two earlier parallels for the above couplet :

C'est un verre qui luit,

Qu'un souffle peut detruire, et qu'un souffle a produit.

De Caux (comparing the world to his hour-glass)

Who pants for glory finds but short repose ; A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.

Pope, translation of Horace, Ep. I., Book II.

Either of them may have served as a model, and both present contrast : detruire pro- duire, where it is even in the prefix ; revive overthrow.

The colourless repetition of the verb in Goldsmith is certainly not an improvement.

G. KRUEGER.

Berlin.

GEORGE COLMAN'S ' MAN OF THE PEOPLE,' ABERDEEN, 1782. " Finding that I could tag rhymes,'* writes George Colman the younger in his amusing ' Random Records, ' " I sat down, immediately on my return from Laurencekirk [to Old Aberdeen], to write a poem ; but I had the same want as a great genius, not then, I believe, born, and since dead I wanted a hero. The first at hand I found him in the last newspaper, lying on my table, which had arrived from London was the renown'd Orator and Statesman, Charles Fox, who was then term'd in all Whig publications the ' Man of the People.' I accordingly gave the same title t my Poem ; knowing little more of politicks, and the Man of the People, than of the Man in the Moon ! In one particular of my work, I follow'd the example of a Poet whose style was somewhat different from my own ; I allude to one John Milton. Milton has, in most people's opinion, taken Satan for the Hero of his ' Paradise Lost ' ; I, therefore, made my hero as diabolical as need be, blackening the Right Honourable Charles James till I made him (only in his politicks

remember) as black as the Devil himself ; and, to mend the matter, I praised to the skies Lord North, who had lost us America ! This notable effusion I published (but suppress'd my name) at Aberdeen,* in a small Edition, ' for the Author,' the Bookseller there (I believe the only one in the Town) wisely declining to purchase the copy- right ; of course, he only sold the work by com- mission, leaving me responsible for the expense of printing. A new Poem publish'd in this corner of the Kingdom was an extraordinary event, and excited some curiosity there. It was thought to contain some smart lines, and was in everybody's hands ; but, alas ! not at all to the author's profit ; the Aberdeenites were in general like Rory Macleod, great economists ; the prodigal few who had bought my production lent it to their frugal neighbours ; who lent it again to others, and the others to others, ad infinitum ; so that about one hundred copies were thumb'd through the town, while all the rest remain'd clean and uncut upon the shelf of the bibliopolist. He sent me his account, some time afterwards, enclosing the Printer's Bill, by which it appear'd that I was several pounds debtor for the publica- tion ; but, then, I became sole Proprietor of all the unsold copies, which were return'd to me ; all of which I put into the fire, save one, which happen'd to turn up a few days ago, in looking over old papers. I found it to be downright schoolboy trash, and consign'd it to the fate of its predecessors. I hope that there is now no trace of this puerile stuff extant."

Has any copy been preserved of this Aberdeen production ? It is not to be found in the " local " collections of the Aberdeen University Library and Public Library ; nor yet in the Advocates 1 Library, Bodleian, or British Museum. It is not mentioned in Mr. A. W. Robertson's * Hand List,' or in Mr. Kellas Johnstone's ' Local Bibliography ' (Scottish N. & Q., vii. 135). A second edition, published in London, is noted by Halkett and Laing

P. J. ANDERSON.

University Library, Aberdeen.

THUNDERING DAWN IN KIPLING AND FRANCIS THOMPSON. Almost everybody who reads is familiar with the line in Mr. Kipling's ' Mandalay,'

An' the dawn conies up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay !

and most readers have probably explained it to themselves as referring to some apparent suddenness in the phenomenon of sunrise in that part of the globe. But is there not some other explanation ? some myth or superstition of the country, which Tommy Atkins may be supposed to have " taken over " during his sojourn therein ? The query is suggested by observing that Francis

dated Banff, a town thirty miles, and upwards, north-west of Aberdeen.
 * Some short prefatory matter to the poem was