Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/519

 ii s. x. DEC. 26, 1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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he had dreamt in 1835, and first embodied in a short story, ' Zicci ' (vol. ii. p. 32). 'A Strange Story/ written in 1861, also

" originated in a dream, and as such it was first told by the author to his son, who used to say that the first sketch was even more interesting and striking than the longer story which was after- wards founded upon it." Vol. ii. p. 340-41.

The fact that ' A Strange Story ' owed its origin to a dream makes still more curious a coincidence between this story and Stevenson's dream-tale of ' Olalla,' pointed out by Mr. Graham Balfour in his ' Life of Robert Louis Stevenson,' vol. ii. p. 15.

Thus it appears that dreams have a market value in England, as well as in Japan (see ante, p. 421). I never heard of any one stealing a dream, but jny nurse used to warn m3 that if I wanted a dream to com3 true I must never tell it to any one. Perhaps that was for fear of theft. In a Christmas annual somo years ago there was published a dream of Robert Louis Stevenson's which he had told to a friend. M. H. DODDS.

On pp. 160-61 of ' Between Whiles ' (1877)' by Benjamin Hall Kennedy (1804-89), are ten lines of Latin elegiac verse on the theme irXfov i7//io-u TTO-VTOS, with a translation into English, and the following note :

" This epigram was conceived and composed in sleep as it stands here, except that the phrase ' flos pagi ' is substituted for the more florid words of a slumbering brain ' iuuenum rosa.' The English version was of course the work of a waking hour."

It would be a mistake to suppose that there is anything more surprising about this incident because of the language in which the lines are written. A scholar like Dr. Kennedy, one of the chief amusements of whose spare hours was to compose in Greek and Latin, would probably find his brain working more m3chanically in this occupa- tion than when writing English verse. On the first page of The Athenaeum for the 5th of this month is an instance of the mind of an English-speaking person using Greek and Latin as a means of expression under abnormal circumstances.

Those who have not accustomed them- selves to use a " dead " language might be surprised at Johnson's behaviour when in the middle of the night he felt the first symptoms of a paralytic saizure :

" I was alarmed, and prayed God, that however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding. This prayer, that I might try the integrity of my faculties, I made in Latin

verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be very good : I made them, easily, and concluded myself to be unimpaired in my faculties." Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 19 June, 1783, in Boswell's ' Life of Johnson.'

EDWARD BENSLY.

Another poem (and a very beautiful one) which came to its author in a dream is the one that appears under the title ' Dominus Illuminatio Mea ' on p. 1058 of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch's ' Oxford Book of English Verse,' where it is anonymous. It has subsequently appeared, under the name of Richard Doddridge Blackmore the novelist, in the ' Oxford Book of Victorian Verse.' The authorship was first revealed a few years ago in if I remember rightly a letter to The Athenceum, in which it was stated, on the authority of the novelist's wife, that Blackmore had dream3d that he was at the funeral of a dear friend, and that he heard the mourners singing the poem at the graveside. It contains four stanzas, of which the first is :

In the hour of death, after this life's whim, When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim, And pain has exhausted every limb The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him.

H. I. B.

CONCORDANCES OF ENGLISH AUTHORS (11 S. x. 461). Mr. Charles Crawford's ' Concordance to Kyd ' was completed in 1910, and forms the fifteenth volume of Prof. Bang's " Materialien." Three parts of his Marlowe Concordance extending to ' Goods ' have appeared the last in 1913. It is to be hoped that the rest of the work has not perished in manuscript, but I understand that the printing-house of Uystpruyst at Louvain from which the " Materialien " were issued was burnt down at the sams time as the University Library. G. C. MOORE SMITH.

FLORAL EMBLEMS OF COUNTRIES (10 S. v. 509; vi. 52, 115; 11 S. x. 349, 413, 457). Our list will not receive additions from official sources. Friends at several embassies and consulates have no knowledge about floral emblems. According to a small six- penny book called ' Everybody's Scrap-Book of Curious Facts,' Germany has its national emblem in the shape of th3 cornflower.

LEO C.

The rose, thistle, shamrock, and daffodil are watermarked in the new one-pound notes. The daffodil is under the word " Parliament."

THOS. WHITE. Junior Reform Club, Liverpool.