Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/45

 n s. v. j A y. is, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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An identical legend has been current in connexion with the crypt, which is now all that is left, of the church of St. Wilfrid at Hexham (built A.D. 674-8), where a hole in the wail similar in character to that at Ripon exists. Both crypts are of one period, of similar design, and are said to resemble the confessio found under early churches in Rome and elsewhere. These subterranean chambers have been apparently constructed beneath the high altars of the churches, the main feature of which was a sacrarium. The door to this was entered from a private stairway used only by the brethren in charge. The worshippers de- scended by a separate staircase leading to a small ante-chapel that was divided from the chapel itself by a solid wall. In the centre of this was an orifice, or squint, piercing the otherwise blank wall, command- ing a view of the interior and of its sacred relics. As the worshippers passed this in turn their feeling of veneration would be heightened by the surrounding mystery of the situation and the play of light upon the holy relics seen through the hole in the wall in sudden revelation. That the orifice in- tended for such a solemn purpose was ever used for the baser object of the test indicated by the " needle eye " is not only improbable, but an examination of the squint itself will show the absurdity involved in such an attribution. R. OLIVER HESLOP.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The passage of which J. T. F. is in search is by Fuller, as stated in Walbran's ' Ripon Guide.' See ' The History of the Worthies of England,' ' York-shire,' ' Writers,' under ' Peter of Rippon,' ed. 1811, vol. ii. p. 512. EDWARD BENSLY.

SPENSER AND DANTE (11 S. iv. 447, 515). It is possible that MR. BRESLAR has not consulted Dr. Paget Toynbee's ' Dante in English Literature.' The book aims at tracing the influence of Dante upon English writers from Chaucer to Gary. In the preface we find the following statistics :

(i The number of authors represented is between five and six hundred, viz., some 50 for the four- teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, nearly 60 for the seventeenth, about 150 for the eighteenth, and the remainder for the first forty- four years of the nineteenth."

An examination of the text shows that not all the men of letters from whom citations are given made " definite allusion " to Dante, but that some of them (among whom is Spenser) are included on the basis of a patent influence at his hands. Moreover,

in some cases he is merely spoken of as " among the famous men of Florence," and John Evelyn is admitted to the company of those that reveal his influence on the ground of having mentioned in the ' Diary ' the statue of Dante at Poggio Imperiale. The lists are nevertheless of interest, and show that at no time in the history of English literature after the late fourteenth century were allusions to Dante what one could, from a quantitative standard, call " ex- tremely limited."

Among the authors before the seventeenth century who mention Dante by name are Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Barclay, Henry Parker (Lord Morley), John Bale, William Thomas, William Barker, Thomas Cooper, John Jewel, Thomas Churchyard, John Foxe, Robert Peterson, Gabriel Harvey, Sir Philip Sidney, Lawrence Humphrey, Robert Greene, George Whetstone, Bartholomew Young, George Puttenham, Sir John Harington, John Florio, Abraham Flaunce, Thomas Bedingfield, William Covell, Robert Tofte, Michael Drayton, and Francis Meres.

Among those in the seventeenth century are Ben Jonson, Robert Burton, William Burton, John Ford, John Milton, Thomas Heywood, Sir William D'Avenant, Sir Thomas Browne, Anthony Wood, Edward Phillips, and John Dryden.

IDA LANGDON.

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

LATIN ACCENTUATION (11 S. iv.. 448). It is not easy to return a brief answer to MR. W. BURD'S questions. The system of the word-accent in Latin has not been the same at all periods of the language, and there is a difficulty in determining when certain changes took place, what the exact nattire of these changes was, and to what causes they were due. A study of the following will be helpful :

Prof. W. M. Lindsay's ' Latin Language ' (Clarendon Press, 1894), chap, iii., 'Ac- centuation,' pp. 148-217 ; see especially pp. 163-5, 10, ' Exceptions to the Paen- ultima Law,' and 11, 'Vulgar-Latin Ac- centuation.'

The article ' Latin Language,' by the late Prof. A. S. Wilkins and Prof. R. Seymour Conway, in the eleventh edition of 'The Ency. Brit.,' especially pp. 246, 247.

See also Brugmann and Delbriick, ' Grund- riss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermaniscnen Sprachen,' vol. i., 2nd ed., Strassburg, 1897, part i. p. 232, Anmerkung ; an article by A. Hornung in the Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, vii. 572, and p. 547 sq. in vol. xiv., in a review by Fritz Neumann