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NOTES AND QUERIES. fii s. iv. DEC. 23, 1911.

Other similarities might readily be dis- covered.

It was not necessary that Spenser, in the letter to Ralegh, should refer to his know- ledge of Dante, while it was perhaps indis- pensable for him to intimate that in the scheme of his work he was to some extent in accord with his predecessors, Ariosto and Tasso. Had he annotated his poems like Gray, he might have shown where he occa- sionally met or utilized Dante.

THOMAS BAYNE.

[In the text of the ' Inferno ' the lines are xxiv. 50, 51 :

Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia,

Qua! fuino in aere, od in acqua la schiuma.]

PRIME SERJEANT (11 S. iv. 470). Perhaps the following extracts will give DR. BRADLEY the information he wants :

"The Viceroy '[Strafford, in 1632] increased the number of Serjeants-at-Law, which rank in pre- ceding reigns was [confined to one lawyer The

ancient name of King's Serjeant was then disused, and the 'Prime' and Second Serjeant became the accustomed distinction of title." Duhigg's 'History of King's Inns,' p. 146.

Duhigg adds at p. 392 :

"The degree of Serjeant-at-Law in Ireland is limited to three. In Hilary Term 1726 Robert Jocelyn was appointed to the new created office of ' Third Serjeant-at-Law.' "

Serjeant Jocelyn died in 1756, having been raised to the peerage as Viscount Jocelyn and Lord Chancellor of Ireland ' Dictionary of National Biography,' xxix. 399.

An important book of reference with regard to the early history of law in Ireland is ' The Liber Munerum Hibernire,' 2 vols., folio. SAMUEL HORNER.

Dublin.

DR. BRADLEY will find a list of Prime Serjeants, who appear to have taken precedence of the Attorney- and Solicitor- General, in C. J. Smyth's ' Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland,' 1839, pp. 182-92. The first name given in the list is that of Simon FitzRichard, who flourished temp. Edward II. The office was abolished in 1805, on the death of Arthur Browne, who had been appointed in 1802.

G. F. R. B.

There was only one Serjeant in Ireland rip to 1627, the first recorded appointment being made in 1326. A Second Serjeant was appointed in 1627, and the King's Serjeant (as up to that date the only then existing Serjeant was called) was named Prime Serjeant ; later a third was added, and the number has remained ever since

at three. The title Prime Serjeant was bolished in 1805, the last holder being Arthur Browne ; his successor was called First Serjeant, and each successor has borne this title.

Further information of a detailed kind may be found in Smyth's ' Law Officers of [reland,' 1839, and Haydn's ' Book of Dignities.' L. A. W.

Dublin.

There appear to have been three grades of Serjeants at Law. The first was known as Prime Serjeants or " Narratores Regis." A list of these officials will be found in Smyth's ' Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland,' published in 1839. It will be worth while to compare this list with that found in Lascelles's ' Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniae ' (vol. i. part ii. p. 71, part iii. p. 68), published by the Record Commission in 1852. T. C.

[MR. T. H. BARROW also thanked for reply.]

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (US. iv. 449). In Palgrave's ' Golden Treasury,' ii. 77, Ben Jonson's lines, beginning

It is not growing like a tree,

appear as lyric No. xcvi., under the title 'The Noble Nature.' This is one of the numerous misnomers in a very attractive book. A reader of Palgrave to whom Jonson's poems are inaccessible will natur- ally conclude that the single stanza, with its distinctive heading and the poet's name appended, is a complete and independent product. In reality it is the third strophe of ' A Pindaric Ode on the Death of Sir H. Morison.' THOMAS BAYNE

PORCH INSCRIPTION IN LATIN (11 S. iv. 330, 457). The second of MR, DOWLING'S four Latin lines will not scan, probably owing to the omission of the word " cui " (to whom) before or after " de quo." The addition of this word will make up the number of monitions in this line to six, the number of them stated in the first line. In the English versions of the advice the six are reduced to five by omitting " quid " (what). The first two of MR. DOWLING'S Latin lines are hexameters. The last two make an elegiac couplet, which forms a distinct set of monitions, not closely connected with the former six. JOHN R. MAGRATH.

Queen's College, Oxford.

In the first two lines of the quatrain at the second reference the metre has been mangled. It could be restored by reading

Si sapiens fore vis, sex serva quse tibi mando : Quid dicas, de quo, quomodo, quando, et ubi.