Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/68

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. v. JAN. 20, 1012.

AUTHORS or QUOTATIONS WANTED (US. iii. 128). Whether or not it is possible to recover the author of " Qui fallit in poculis iallit in omnibus," quoted by YGREC as an inscription on a loving -cup of 1681, it seems likely that there are several forms of the pro- verbial saying. Vincentius Opsopaeus, in his ' De arte bibendi,' iii. 746, has

Qui fallit vino, fallit et ille fide. ' Delitise Poetarum Germanorum,' iv. 1267. Mrs. Gamp's " No, Betsey ! Drink fair, wotever you do ! " conveys a somewhat similar sentiment. EDWARD BENSLY.

(US. iv. 449.)

The precept, " Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight fora fool," seems to be based on the Latin lines :

Sex horis dormire sat est juvenique senique, Septem vix pigro, nulli concedimus octo.

' Collectio Salernitana,' ed. De Benzi, vol. v. p. 7 ; also in vol. i. See King's ' Classical and Foreign Quotations,' 3rd edition, p. 317. EDWARD BENSLY.

(US. iv. 469.)

Like plants in mines, which never saw the sun, But dream of him, and guess where he may be, And do their best to climb and get to him.

Browning's ' Paracelsus,' last page.

T. S. O.

MILITARY EXECUTIONS (US. iv. 8, 57, 98, 157, 193, 237, 295, 354, 413, 458). My thanks are due to the contributors to this discussion, the number of whom attests the wide interest it has evoked. To judge, however, from most of the replies, my query, which referred solely to the alleged use by the firing party of ball and blank, has appa- rently, with one or two exceptions, missed fire. I was, and am, concerned not at all with either the disposition on parade of the luck- less executioners, the mode of the command- ing officer's signal on such occasions, or the question of recoil or sound, but only with the composition and distribution of the ammunition served out. These latter, not- withstanding MR. RHODES'S lament that we are still without a definite military authority as to the practice, are made suffi- ciently clear by the statements of COL. PHIPPS and MR. BURDON. Though no posi- tive order exists for the custom I queried, an understanding is rife which justifies a belief in its prevalence. I may add, by way of conclusion to this somewhat gruesome but interesting subject, that I have recently been favoured, by the kindness of the contributor who signs ROCKINGHAM, with a cutting from The Boston Daily Globe of

13 Dec. last, descriptive of ' The First Mili- tary Execution in the Army of the Potomac,' 13 Dec., 1861, in which it is stated that

'' the men for the firing-party, twelve in number, were selected by ballot, one from each of the companies in Johnston's regiment. The carbines had been loaded by the Provost Marshal, one of them bearing a blank charge. Thus no man could positively say that he was responsible for the death of his former comrade-in-arms."

This corroborates the view advanced in my query at the first reference, and supplies the information I sought therein.

J. B. McGovERN.

St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

CAPT. CUTTLE'S HOOK (11. S. iv. 506). This seems to have been a somewhat trouble- some instrument to both Dickens and his illustrators. When Capt. Cuttle is first introduced to the reader in chap. iv. of ' Dombey and Son,' he is described as " a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with a hook instead of a hand attached to his right wrist." Hablot K. Browne in one illustra- tion at least depicts the hook on the cap- tain's left arm. Dickens himself seems to forget entirely the Captain's loss of his hand on several occasions, or at any rate to represent him as performing certain actions like a person possessed of both hands. Curiously, these all occur in chap, xxiii., in. order as follows :

1. " The captain in his own apartment was sitting with his hands in his pockets, and his legs drawn up under his chair," &c.

2. " ' Clara a-hoy/ !' cried the captain, putting a hand to each side of his mouth."

3. " Squeezing both the captain's hands with uncommon fervour as he said it, the old man turned to Florence," &c.

That painstaking and careful writer on Dickens lore, the late Mr. F. G. Kitton, writes as follows in his book ' Dickens and his Illustrators ' :

" Although Dickens does not actually tell us which hand was missing, he clearly hints at it when he says that at dinner-time the captain unscrewed his hook and substituted a knife, and therefore we may justly conclude it was the right hand which was gone."

This statement, "He unscrewed his hook at dinner-time and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead" (chap, ix.), would be convincing if it stood alone, but unfor- tunately it can be capped by an equally convincing statement respecting the fork. When the captain and Florence dine together (chap, xlix.) we read that he " said grace, un- screwed his hook, screwed his fork into its place, and did the honours of the table."

But as we know for certain, from the novelist's own distinct statement quoted at