Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/302

 246

NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. vi. SEPT. 28, 1912.

Wolrige, and in 1873 Wolrige- Gordon. His eldest son became Gordon-Gilmour, and the latter's son, in turn, bears the surname of Little-Gilmour. Meanwhile the male line of the old Gordons of Hallhead and Esslemont is still extant, and but for the inadequate entail of 1731 might be reigning under the old family roof-tree. Small wonder that the poet, unversed in the intricacies of the law, felt puzzled and disappointed, if he did not actually seek solace in death.

The Wolrige-Gordons have carried on the military traditions of the Gordons, for the present Laird of Hallhead and his three brothers have had distinguished careers as soldiers. J. M. BUXLOCH.

123, Pall Mall, S.W.

ERASMUS OR TINDALE. In Green's ' Short History of the English People,' p. 314, Erasmus is made to say of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles :

" I long for the day when the husbandman shall sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, when the weaver shall hum them to the tune of his shuttle, when the traveller shall while away with their stories the weariness of his journey."

Can any one supply me with the source of these translated or imputed words ? I had always been under the impression that they were penned or uttered by Tindale, as Foxe ('Book of Martyrs,' p. 322, ed. 1824) quotes him as saying to "a certain divine" :

" If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to* know more of the Scripture than you do."

Tindale, like most of his contemporaries, was influenced by Erasmus in many ways, and it may well be that the influence ex- tended even to the adoption of thoughts and phrases peculiar to the great Latinist of the sixteenth century. If this be not so in the curious parallelism here instanced, the closeness of the resemblance between the two passages adds one more example to the many coincidences of expression wherewith literary history abounds.

J. B. McGovERN.

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

FRENCH SONNET. In looking through my notes I lit upon a French sonnet I copied twenty-nine years ago, as it struck me at the time as one of the most charming lyrics I had ever read either in French or in any other literature. This judgment is, of course, a matter of personal taste ; but as for myself,

after reading the sonnet again, I keep to it ; and the idea has struck me that I might give pleasure to not a few readers and contri- butors by publishing it in the hospitable columns of ' N. & Q.' Its author is Felix Arves (1806-55), whose name is entire! y forgotten, though, besides the little volume of poetry published in 1833, wherein the sonnet is found, he wrote a tragedy, ' La Mort de Francois I.,' and a witty comedy, ' Plus de Peur que de Mai.'

I wonder whether the British Museum Library (that vast storehouse) owns a copy of his works! It was the famous critic Jules Janin ^' the King of Critics," as he was styled at the height of his fame who directed the attention of his countrymen to the sonnet, which then, for a white, was in everybody's mouth. I do not hesitate to call it a model of its kind. Here it is :

Ma vie a son secret, mon ame a son mystere :

Un amour eternel en un moment conu. Le mal est sans remede, aussi j'ai dil le taire,

Et celle qui 1'a fait n'en a jamais rien su.

Ainsi j'aurai passe pres d'elle inapereu, Toujours a ses c6tes et pourtant solitaire, Et j'aurai jusqu'au bout fait mon temps sur la terre,

N'osant rien demander et n'ayant rien. recu. Pour elle, quoique Dieu 1'ait faite belle et tendre, Elle ira son chemin, distraite, sans entendre

Le murmure d'amour, souleve' sous ses pas. A 1' austere devoir uniquement fidele, Elle dira, lisant ces vers tout remplis d'elle :

" Quelle est done cette femme ? " et ne com- prendra pas.

G. KRUEGER.

Berlin.

[This sonnet appeared in The Athcnceum for January 13th, 1906, with a translation by the late Joseph Knight, which we believe our readers will be glad to have here :

One sweet, sad secret holds my heart in thrall ; A mighty love within my breast has grown, Unseen, unspoken, and of no one known ;

And of my sweet, who gave it, least of all.

Close as the shadow that doth by her fall I walk beside her evermore alone, Till to the end my weary days have flown,

With naught to hope, to wait for, to recall.

For her, though God hath made her kind as sweet,

Serene she moves, nor hears about her feet

These waves of love which break and overflow.

Yea ! she will read these lines, where men may see

A whole life's longings, marvelling, "Who is she That thus can move him ? " and will never know.]

DECIPHERMENT OF Ou> TOMBSTONE IN- SCRIPTIONS. After some experience in the decipherment of weather-worn gravestones of slate and granite, from the fifteenth century downward, I think it may bo helpful to others to mention that I found