Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/79

 n s. x. JULY 25, 1911] K OTES AND QUERIES.

They sadden me because they are neither well inspired nor well written, and because the author's admirers would be glad to tear them up. To justify this criticism let me quote one stanza, which sug- gests the mawkishness of a schoolboy's composi tion :

Non, 1'histoire n'a rien dans aucun de ses cycles De plus tragique etde plus beau

Que 1'apparition de ce vieux a besides Avec ce crepe & son chapeau ! "

The St. James's Gazette of the same date gives three other stanzas from the poem, which it describes as " a long poem on Mr. Kruger's mission in Europe " :

Pardon pour cette Europe effroyable qui laisse

Opprimer les faibles toujpurs, Tuer lea Arme'niens, assassiner la Grece

Et massacrer les pauvres Boers !

Va vers cette blancheur dont le Nord s'illumine

Et que Dieu regarde regner ; Vieux Kriiger, va trouver la reine Wilhelmine,

Et dis-lui de t'accompagner.

Tu diras, en rendant aux fillettes, je pense, Les gros bouquets aux uoeuds nambants :

" Je n'^tais pas venu demander a la France Des mots Merits sur des rubans."

The St. James's Gazette says that Mr. Kruger, on being told of M. Kostand's verses, and of their power to make Europe thrill, said simply, " God is great and miraculous in His power." Perhaps the old man with the spectacles and the mourning hatband was occasionally humorous.

RdBERT PlERPOINT.

CAIXIPEDES (11 S. ix. 508). The name should be spelt Callippides, and was applied proverbially to any one who, in spite of all his efforts, got " no forrarder." Cicero, 'Ad Att,' xiii. 12, 3, when referring to Varro's delay with his promised ' De Lingua Latina,' writes : " Biennium prseteriit, cum ille KuA- AITTTTIO'T/S adsiduo cursu cubitum nullum processerit." Suetonius, ' Tiberius,' 38, tells us that Tiberius, who when emperor was continually making preparations to revisit the provinces, but never went, was nick- named Callippides, " quern cursitare, ac ne cubiti quidem mensuram progredi, proverbio graeco notatum est. ' ' The only form in which the Greek proverb is found is KaAAwrTros T/>x t ) in ' Mantissa Proverbiorum,' i. 87, in Leutsch's ' Parcemiographi Graeci,' where it is said to be used Erasmus, under ' Tarditatis et Cunotationis,' p. 682 in the 1629 ed. of the ' Adagia,' sug- gests that the Callippides in question is to be identified with a tragic actor mentioned by Plutarch. Tyrrell and Purser in their edition of Cicero's ' Correspondence,' v. 107,

regard this as improbable. A. Otto, ' Sprich- worter der Romer,' p. 66, points out that Callippus was apparently a runner who r after all his exertions, never reached the goal. He supposes the patronymic Cal- lippides to mean " a man like Callippus," and its treatment in the passage of Suetonius as a real name to be due to a misunder- standing.

The modern parallel, though not yet pro- verbial, and taken from the brute creation, is surely Mr. Pecksniff's horse, which " was full of promise, but of no performance. He was always, in a manner, going to go, and never going." EDWABD BENSLY.

ICE: ITS USES (11 S. ix. 469, 512). In this country ice for the table does not appear to be mentioned in any work until t he- eighteenth century. The ' New English Dic- tionary ' supplies several quotations, dating from 1722, which include ice-waters, ice- cooled potations, ice-makers, ice-houses, &c~ To these may be added eatable ice, called " iced -butter," which was first known to the Parisian coffee-houses in 1774. The com- bination of ice and salt which is still in every- day use for such purposes as ice-cream freezing is said to have been used by Fahren- heit in 1762.

But the use of ice as a luxury or as refrigerant is matter of ancient history. The several gradations in bringing this- greatest luxury of warm climates and modern times to perfection were probably the- following : First, preserving snow in pits which it is likely was practised in very early ages and mixing it with drink ? next, boiling water, and placing it in a vessel in the midst of snow, a method recognized at least in principle by Aristotle and Galen \. then the use of evaporation, by which artificial ice is procured throughout Hindo- stan ; and, lastly, the employment of nitre to refrigerate the water containing the liquor to be used. This last discovery was- claimed by Villa Franca, a Spaniard, in 1550, but it is more probable that the Portuguese- found it in their Indian possessions. At this period there were no ice-cellars in France ; the word gladere is not met with in the oldest dictionaries, and it does not occur even in that of Monet, printed in 1635.

The practice of cooling liquors at the table of the great was not usual in any country besides Italy and the neighbouring state* before the end of the sixteenth century.. Under the reign of Henry III. the use of snow must have been well known at the French Court, though it was considered by