Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/23

 ii p. vi. JULY 6, 191-j.j XOTES AND QUERIES.

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large common lodging-houses, so that it was not difficult to elude the constables. But I can find no reference to any formal claim of the privileges of sanctuary or to Any attempts by force of arms to vindicate that privilege, as was the case in Whitefriars.

R. S. PENGELLY. lapham Park.

Baldwin's Gardens were built by a man named Baldwin, who is stated to have been a gardener to Queen Elizabeth. This was recorded on a stone set into one of the houses, which was removed some years ago when the houses were rebuilt. This street was most certainly a sanctuary, and so remained until these privileged places were abolished by Act of Parliament about 1695. HENRY BEAZANT.

Koundway, Friern Barnet.

Jesse must be right in saying that Bald- win's Gardens was a sanctuary, because in 1697 an Act of Parliament (c. 27, s. 15), which was then passed

" for the preventing the many notorious and scandalous practices used in many pretended privileged places in and about the Cities of London and Westminster and the borough of Southwark,"

mentions amongst the sanctuaries to be swept away " Baldwin's Gardens."

CONSTANCE RUSSELL. Swallowfield, Reading.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND (11 S. v. 388).

To-morrow I will live, the fool does say ; To-day 's too late, the wise liv'd yesterday,

quoted by Voltaire in his letter to Thieriot, is the conclusion of Cowley's rendering of Martial, v. 58 (59). The Latin lines are :

41'ras vives : hodie iam vivere, Postume, serum est. Ille sapit, quisquis, Postume, vixit heri.

Cowley's last line, however, is an alex- andrine, and begins

To Day it self 's too late.

He translates the poem in his tenth essay, to Mr. S. L.' EDWARD BENSLY.
 * The Danger of Procrastination. A Letter

If your correspondent does not know Ros- coe's ' Life of Pope,' the subjoined letter will be welcome to him. It was written whilst its author was on a visit at Dawley to Lord Bolingbroke, two months after an accident which had befallen Pope, and is one of Voltaire's few English letters :

SIR, I hear this moment of your sad adventure. That water you fell in was not Hippocrene's -water, otherwise it would have respected you. Indeed, I am concerned beyond expression" for the danger yoxi have been in, and more for your

wounds. Is it possible that those fingers which have dressed Homer so becomingly in an English coat, should be so barbarously treated ! Let the hand of Dennis, or of your poetasters, be cut off ; yours is sacred. I hope, sir, you are now perfectly recovered. Really, your accident con- cerns me as much as all the disasters of a master ought to affect his scholar. I am sincerely, Sir, with the admiration which you deserve, your most humble servant, VOLTAIRE.

In my Lord Bolingbroke's House, Friday at noon, Nov. 16th, 1726.

Few Englishmen could indite a letter in French with the facility and felicity ex- hibited by Voltaire in English.

J. B. McGovERN.

"THE MORE THE MERRIER" (11 S. v. 429). The assertion that this phrase had for its author an epigrammatist of the seven- teenth century is certainly untrue. As for King James I., if he used the phrase, it was because it was already proverbial. All the same, we are not told what authority there is for his use of it.

However, it goes back at least to the sixteenth century, and is probably one of those proverbial phrases of which it is absurd to pretend that the origin is known. I give a quotation from Gascoigne which the ' N.E.D.' dates " about 1575" :

And mo the merier is a Prouerbe eke.

Gascoigne's ' Works,' ed. Hazlitt, i. 64. WALTER W. SKEAT.

From Bartlett's ' Familiar Quotations,' s.v. ' John Heywood,' I copy the following, with its foot-note references :

" ' The moe the merrier.'* ' Proverbes,' pt. ii.

Epigrams, 1608. Beaumont and Fletcher : ' The Scornful Lady,' Act I. sc. i. ; ' The Sea Voyage, Act I. sc. ii.'
 * P * Gascoigne, ' Roses,' 1575. Title of a Book of

Cf. the French : " Plus on est de fous, plus on rit " (Dancourt, ' Maison de Cam- pagne,' sc. xi., 1661-1726).

H. GOUDCHAUX.

Bartlett, for this phrase, gives a reference to Heywood's ' Proverbes,' quoting from the edition of 1874, a reprint of that of 1598. This work was the first attempt to make a collection of colloquial sayings in the English language, being arranged in the form of a dialogue. It is believed to have first ap- peared in 1546, and it is certain that four subsequent editions were printed, viz., in 1562, 1576, 1587, and 1598, a fact which bears eloquent testimony to its popularity.

Under these circumstances the phrase under discussion may have been almost as. well known and as oft-quoted in the time