Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/15

 ii s. xii. JULY 3, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

The book appears to have belonged originally to one William Bromley, but the MS. is not in his handwriting. I have tran- scribed the spelling exactly. The right-hand side of the page is slightly mutilated, so that three lines are incomplete. In the first line

I suppose " Grimes " was the name. In the fifth from the end, "fire " or some equivalent iias been inadvertently omitted.

Epitaph.

Here cool the ashes of Mulciber Grim ....

Late of this parish, blacksmith ; He was born in Seacoal Lane and bred

at Hammersmith. From his youth upwards, he was much addicted

to vices,

and was often guilty of forgery. Having some talents for Irony, he therfore

produced

many heats in the Neighbourhood, "Which he usually increased by blowing up the coal.

This rendered him so unpopular, That when he found it nessary to adopt cooling

mea(sures)

His conduct was general accompanied with a hiss. Tho' he sometimes prov'd a warm friend, Yet,

where his Tntrest was concern'd, he made it a constant rule

to strike while the Iron was hot ; Eegaurdless of the injury he might do therby : And when he had any matter of moment upon the

anvill,

He seldom fail'd to turn it to his own advantage.

Among the numberless instances that might

be given of the cruelty of his

disposition, it need only

be mentioned, That he was the means of hanging many of the

innocent Family of the Bells, Under the idle pretence

of keeping them from Jang(ling) And put great numbers of the hearts of steel into

the hottest flames, Merely (as he declar'd) to soften the obduracy of

their tempers. At length after passing a long life in the commission

of these

Black actions, his fire being exausted, And his Bellows worn out, He was filed of to that

place Where only the fervid [?] of his own forge can be

exceeded,

Declaring with his last puff that " Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards."

H. K. ST. J. S.

" LA GARDE MEURT, MAIS NE SE BEND PAS." One of the favourite errors of crowds is to attribute well-known sayings to famous men. The Times, on the* centenary of Waterloo, threw fresh light on the above saying by publishing a letter written at

II P.M. on the evening of the battle by Capt. Digby Mackworth of the 7th Fusiliers, A.D.C. to General Hill. This shows that the

epigram was contemporary, but the Captain quotes it in such a way as to imply that it was a phrase already familiar. He says : " They [la vieille garde] crowded instinctively behind each other to avoid a fire which was intolerably dreadful ; still they stood firm, ' La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas.' For half an hour this horrible butchery went on," &c.

Up to now our knowledge of the origin of the saying had been summed up by that careful scholar the late W. F. H. King in his ' Classical and Foreign Quotations ' (third edition, 1904). On p. 159 he says :

" Legendary speech of Lieut. -Gen. Pierre Jacques, Baron de Cambronne, and General of division at Waterloo, when summoned to surrender with the remains of the Imperial Guard by Col. Hugh Halkett, King's German Legion. At a banquet given in his honour at Xantes (1835), Cambronne himself publicly disavowed the saying, which he further showed to be contradicted by facts. ' In the first place,' he would remark, ' we did not die, and, in the second, we did surrender.' Others have pretended that Cambronne's actual reply consisted of a single word (Us cinq lettres), more forcible than polite, which V. Hugo had the courage to print in full in 'Les Mise'-

rables' (vol. i- Bk. 1, ch. 15) Of the various

solutions of the question, that of Fournier [' L'Esprit dans 1'histoire,' pp. 412-15] seems the most probable that the mot was invented the night of the battle by Rougemont, a noted jaiseur de mots, then correspondent of the Independent, in which it appeared the next day, being repeated in the Journal Gineral de France on June 24."

Fournier's explanation must now be considered incorrect, as it is hardly possible that an English A.D.C. could have seen a French newspaper correspondent before 11 P.M. on the evening of the battle. It is probable that it was a phrase, current in the French army, that Rougemont first crystal- lized in print. It is practically impossible to discover the originator of a phrase that flies from mouth to mouth. Shall we ever know if Talleyrand said : " C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute " ; or if Pitt's last words were : " My country ! O, my country !" or : " Bring me one of Bellamy's pork pies" ? DE V. PA YEN-PAYNE.

49, JXevern Square.

FAULTS OF INDEX-MAKING. (See 7 S. x. 344.) I here call attention, not to curio- sities mainly ludicrous, but to those blunders which constantly occur through sheer stupidity. A palmary example occurs in North's ' Lives,' 1742, viz., " Assertions, some impudent ones of the Faction." How this could help any living soul to find what he wanted is beyond my power of guessing. And a correspondent in 1890 quoted ; ' Dis- graceful Act," "Fatal Storm," and "Rather uncommon for Females " from Palmer's