Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/153

 ii s. xii. AUG. 21, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

145

the common phrase, " juvenis quo non formosior alter," and asked if "alter " did not include any and every young man, each of whom was for the moment " alter." The Roman did not find it necessary to substitute " alius " for " alter," though he certainly meant the term to apply to all the rest, not merely to one. This argument was only received with grunts, so I believed it to be unanswerable ; it was certainly not convincing, for to the day of his death he protested there was no such thing as a third alternative. Waxing personal, he would sometimes add that a man who deliberately splits infinitives as I do, when occasion arises ought not to talk about grammar. Perhaps MR. BAYLEY will think so too.

C. B. WHEELER. 80, Hamilton Terrace, N.W.

I called attention to the frequent misuse of the word alternative many years since see 8 S. ix. 325 but the subject was not taken up. Probably it was felt to be too late to oppose an error so well-established. An error it is, however, thus to divert the meaning of a word for which we have no substitute in its original sense. C. C. B.

"HOMO BULLA" (11 S. -xii. 85). Appa- rently first used by Varro in the preface to his treatise De Re Rustica,' but as he there introduces it with the words " ut dicitur," presumably already proverbial in his time. The scholiast on Persius, ii. 10, also men- tions it as " proverbialiter dictum." A pessimist in Petronius, 42, remarks " nos non pluris sum us quam bullse," and in the same writer (also Seneca, ' Apocolocyntosis,' and Persius) is found the expression " animam ebullire." The same comparison (with TTO/A- oAvyes <wo.Ai<5es) is made at some length by Lucian (' Charon,' 19) ; and further Greek parallels may be found in Schmidt, ' Meta- pher und Gleichnis in den Schriften Lukians,' Winterthur (1897), p. 126. The epitaph on Cardinal Armellini (Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 April, 1892) contained the words " Certe homo bulla est." The metaphor as the ancients used it is of course taken from the bubbles on the surface of foaming water, not from soap-bubbles, as in our modern parallel expression. S. G.

That man is a bubble was a Latin proverb. Its earliest occurrence in literature is at the beginning of Varro's work on Agriculture, where he says : " Quod, ut dicitur, si est homo bulla, eo magis senex." If a detailed explanation were necessary, one could take that of Erasmus in his ' Adagia,' " Pro verb ium

hoc admonet, humana vita nihil esse fragilius, nihil fugacius, nihil inanius. Est enim bulla tumor ille inanis qui visitur in aquis r moment o temporis enascens simul et evan.es- cens," which suggests Burns's

Or like the snowfall in the river, A moment white then melts for ever. A more expanded comparison between a bubble and the life of man will be found in Lucian's ' Charon,' chap. 19.

EDWARD BENSLY.

ATLANTIS AND LEMURIA (11 S. xii. 86). The undoubtedly mythical lost continent of Atlantis, first conceived by Plato, has attracted numerous writers. There was a short article on the subject in a very recent number of Chambers' s Journal (12 June,. 1915, pp. 4445). Some time ago I saw a worthless book on Atlantis a pretended spiritualistic revelation which gave the precise dates of events in its history hundreds of thousands of years ago, but I did not trouble to note its title. My own index rerum contains the following references to- Atlantis :

Wilson (Sir Daniel), LL.D., F.R.S.E., ' The Lost Atlantis, and other Ethnographic Studies.' London* Simpkin & Co., 1892.

Sergi (Prof.), ' The Mediterranean Race.' London, W. Scott, 1901, p. 58.

Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1883, p. 240 ; 1885, p. 555 ; 1892, p. 649.

The Geographical Journal, xxi., 1903, p. 192.

Bulletin de la Societe de Geographic, Paris, 3 serie,. iii., 1845, pp. 165-6; vii., 1847, pp. 34-40.

In The Times, 19 Feb., 1909, p. 10, Atlantis- was identified with Minoan Crete (see also The Times, 25 Feb., 1909, p. 9). Mr. D. G. Hogarth, however (The Geographical Journal April, 1910) dissents from this view.

FREDK. A. EDWARDS.

The following book and articles will probably be useful in obtaining information on these lost continents :

1 Atlantis and Lemuria: their History and Civili- sation. Being Chapters from the Akashic Records/ by Rudolf Steiner. Theosophical Publishing. Society. 8vo, 3s. 6d, net.

' Donnelly on Atlantis. ' In Journal of Science,. vol. xx. p. 319.

McLean (J. P.), 'The Lost Atlantis.' In Univer- sity Qiiarterly, vol. xxxix. p. 436.

Geilie (A.), 'Search for Atlantis.' In Nature*. vol. xxvii. p. 25.

Martin (T.H.), 'Dissertations sur 1'Atlantide.' In his ' Etudes sur le Timee.' 1841.

" The Lost Continent.' In The Times, 19 Feb.,. 1909.

Winchell (A.), ' Donnelly's Atlantis : the Ante- diluvian World.' In The Dial [Boston, U.S.A.]* vol. ii. p. 284.

ARCHIBALD SPARKF, F.R.S.L.