Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/33

 ii s. vi. JULY 13. 19.2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

21

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1913.

CONTENTS. No. 133.

NOTES: Sir William Jones's "On Parent Knees" Quat- rain, 21-Cobbett Bibliography, 22 Stewart : Freeman : Day : Pyke, 25 Runic Inscriptions on Crosses in the Isle of man "By a fluke," 26 -Buntingford Bell" Visto "= " Vista" Father Constable, O.S.B., 27.

QUERIES rAntonio de Ulloa John Hough ton's List of Painters Wilkes and the Acorn Brand of Polstead, Suffolk Shakespeare on the Pain of Death Sir Josceline Blount, 28 Great Glemham, Suffolk Author Wanted Porson and the Greek Anthology Pilfold of Effingham Copper Mine in Devonshire Delafleld Arms, 2i The Coopers and John Hoskins Milton Portrait by Samuel Cooper Sir Thomas Browne and Ptolemy Gloucester House, South Lambeth "Yorker" at Bridge Abel Gower of Boughton St. John William Stampe, D.D. Silk Weavers' Company, Dublin, 30.

REPLIES : Brodribb of Somerset : Sir Henry Irving, 30 Campione and the Ambrosian Rite Incidents at Dettin- gen Barnards of Pirton, Oxford MS. of Bishop Henry King's Poems Trussel Family Londres : Londinium, 32 Gordon of Glenbucket "Shieve" Vanishing London : Proprietary Chapels Penleaze, 33 Nicolaus Mysticus Dragoon Regiments : Band Rembrandt and Menasseh Ben Israel Knights of Malta : Grand Master Vilhena Omar Khayyam's ' Rubaiyat,' 34 A Norman "Mptte" Theory Honest Millers " Shire" : its Derivation Authors of Quotations Wanted, 35 Wiltshire Phrases Curiosities of the Gregorian Calendar Breton Song- Master of Garraway's, 36 Dr. Fell : Martial" Statio bene flda carinis " Ballad of Lord Lovel Rev. George Jermant Hewer of Clapham, 37 Bishop R. Foxe The " Roving Englishman," 38.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' An American Glossary 'Reviews and Magazines.

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

Jlotes.

SIR WILLIAM JONES'S " ON PARENT KNEES " QUATRAIN.

THERE has been much discussion in ' N. & Q.' about the Persian original of this quatrain, but the author has not yet been discovered. An important contribution was made in May, 1873, by a lady who signed herself LOTJISA JTJLIA NORMAN. She pointed out (at 4 S. xi. 451) that an Arabic version of the quatrain was published in 1796 by the Rev. J. D. Carlyle in his ' Specimens of Arabian Poetry.' Mr. Carlyle suggested that the Arabic was the original of Jones's " Persian,"' but he did not state in what book or manuscript he had found the Arabic. Both the Arabic and the Persian, together with Jones's translation, will be found in the Rev. Claud Field's ' Dictionary of Oriental Quotations,' London, 1911.

In November, 1879, an Anglo-Indian Orientalist, C. Ross, stated at 5 S. xii. 417,

that a prose version of the substance of the quatrain had been published by Galland in his ' Paroles remarquables, &c., des Orientaux,' of which there was an edition at the Hague in 1694. (There is another dated 1701.) In the same year, also in ' N. & Q.,' S. R. (the late Samuel Robinson) pointed out (5 S. xi. 430) that Barbier de Meynard had given, in a lecture on Persian poetry (Paris, 1877), a French version of the quatrain, and had, on the supposed authority of Defremery, ascribed the author- ship to Saiyid Ahmad Hatif of Ispahan, who is a Persian poet of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. B. de Meynard gave as his authority an article by Defremery in the Journal Asiatique for February-March, 1856. But, as my friend Mr. Ellis of the India Office has shown me, De Meynard is mistaken in supposing that Defremery attributed the quatrain to Hatif. All that Defremery said was that the quatrain which has verbal dif- ferences from the Persian as published by Jones in the Asiatic Miscellany (vol. ii. p. 374 of the Calcutta edition of 1785-6) was one of two which had been given to him by his teacher, M. Jouannin. No doubt De Meynard' s mistake is due to Def remery 's article having dealt with Hatif 's poetry, and given specimens of his verses. De Meynard inferred from this that the two quatrains given by Jouannin or at least one of them should also be attributed to Hatif. But, as a matter of fact, neither Jouannin nor Defremery said this, and it is quite certain that one of the two is not by him, for it is given by Daulat Shah as the work of Pindar of Rey (Rhages), a very early Persian poet. I refer to the quatrain about there being two days on which no man should be concerned about death (Prof. Browne's edition of Daulat Shah, p. 43).

There is no copy of Hatif s poems (Diwan) in the British Museum or the India Office, but there is one in the Bodleian, and another in the Rylands Library, Manchester. I have examined the Bodleian copy, and the quatrain is not there. I have not seen the Rylands copy, but it is unlikely that it contains the Jones quatrain, for the manu- script in question belonged formerly to Nathaniel Bland. He used it when he published ten of Hatif 's Odes in his ' Cen- tury of Persian Ghazels,' and it is im- probable that this elegant scholar would have omitted to see and refer to the remark- able Jones quatrain, had he found it in his copy.