Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/201

 ii s. xii. SEPT. 11, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

193

LOSDOX, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1915.

CONTENTS. No. 298.

NOTES: 'The Trusty Servant,' 193 M. Donnadieu, Autograph Collector, 194 A Webster-Massinger Play, 19fi-The Split Infinitive German War Fetishes: the Archangel Michael and Hindenburg Martyrs in England Tee-Names, 198.

QUERIES : A Swahili MS. English Pirate's Haul, 1579

John Longman: Spinets ' Dame Wiggins of Lee': 'Six Little Princesses ' Willett Family, 199 General Sankey Vincent Le Blanc The Fabric of Cathedrals- Authors Wanted Violation of Sanctuary Kaye's 'His- tory of the Sepoy War,' 200 Biographical Information Wanted " The Shakespeare's Head " Mrs. Henry Stephens, nee Planta Cookson of Darrington The White Rose of York, 201.

REPLIES : The Site of the Globe, 201 Fitzjames, 202 Overland Panorama, 204 Dedication of Lady Chapel The Knollys Family London Printers St. Andrew : National Colours, 205 Queen Elizabeth's Fifth Parlia- ment _ The Cloister and the Hearth,' 207 Roses as Cause of Colds and Sneezing The Cosmopolitan Club Bookworms Dr. Busby: Roberts, 208 Punch's Whole Play: Gunpowder Plot " Fiance "Employment of Wild Beasts in Warfare The Virtues of Onions- Scotch Court of Session, 209 Epitaphs : Winterton, Lines" Homo Bulla 'Translation of Verlaine Wanted

James Hook and his Wives Bibliography of Irish Counties and Towns, 210.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-Konkan Folk-Lore Notes ' Bulletin

of the John Rylands Library ' ' Burlington Magazine.' Books of Theology, chiefly Pre-Reformation. Notices to Correspondents.

JElotes.

' THE TRUSTY SERVANT.'

TURNING over the pages of an old common- place book lately, I noticed, under the title Servant,' the following paragraph :

" Apelles painted a servant with his hands full of tools to signify diligence in work ; with broad shoulders to hear many wrongs ; with hind's feet to run swiftly at his master's command ; with a lf;m helly that he should be content with spare diet ; with the ears of an asse and his mouth shut with two keyes, to signifie he should be swift to hear and slow to speak."

To judge by the style of the handwritings, this book seem=* to have been compiled between about 1690 and 1720. As in most collections of the sort, references are but scantily supplied, and I have failed to trace in lists of Apelles' paintings any reference to the picture mentioned above. There is a symbolical painting referred to by Pliny <'Nat. Hist.,' lib. xxxv.) and by Lucian,

in which " Calumny " is represented as dragging " Innocence " before a king with ears like those of Midas. This is reproduced in Wolf's ' Lectio num. Memorabilium Cent. XVI.,' ii. 955, with something less, certainly, than Apelles' power. This painter, however, who had gained the reputation of applying his art in a symbolical and allegorical way, was probably credited with far more than he produced. ' Apelles Symbolicus ' is the title of a book in two stout 8vo volumes (Amsterdam, 1699) by John Michael von- der Ketten, supplying a vast series of sym- bols for the help of poets, orators, and preachers on nearly everything in heaven and earth, with copious illustrations.

We may put aside the attribution to Apelles as unimportant, but the artist of the well- known painting of 'The Trusty Servant ' at Winchester would seem to have had this de- scription in mind. Milner ('Hist, of Winches- ter,' vjol. ii. p. 126) calls the painting that of a hirc%cervus, or animal compounded of a man, a hog, a deer, and an ass, which is explained by an inscription in Latin and English verse to be the allegory of a trusty servant. The first edition of the ' History ' contains a good engraving of this " piece of antiquity," dated 1749, but it omits the background, which is shown on the undated engraving by Robins and Gilmour, published just before Husenbeth's edition of Milner (vol. ii. p. 164).

The painter of * The Trusty Servant ' has departed from his supposed original in a few points. There tools were in both hands, here in the left only. Here the shoulders are not specially broad, nor does the contour of the bust at all suggest spare diet. Padlocks were unknown in the time of Apelles, but the two keys imply an equally careful reti- cence.

Mr. T. F. Kirby, late Bursar of Winchester College, in his carefully compiled ' Annals ' of the College (1892) has not much to tell of " this Abraxas of the sixteenth century." After describing the painting, and quoting the Latin and English versions of the in- scription, he continues :

"It is not known where the figure came from. The implements in the left hand, and the scenery in the background, indicate a German or Flemish origin, the broom being exactly that which the Flemish ' Buy a Broom ' girls used to offer for sale in the streets of London seventy years ago. The first allusion to the figure in the bursar's books occurs in 1628, ' Hieronymo pictori pro reparanda effigie D'ni Fundatoris in aula et servi ante culinam.' A similar figure is, or was lately, the sign of an inn at Mines tead, in the New Forest." Pp. 39, 40.