Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/409

 n 8. vi. OCT. 38, MIS.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

337

The Bishop evidently considered that it might have been better than it is if it had been extended according to the original plan. The criticism from which Aitken made his extract is continued thus :

" Polite Letters never lost more than in the defeat of this scheme, in which each of this illus- trious triumvirate would have found exercise for his own peculiar talent ; besides constant em- ployment for that they all had in common. Dr. Arbuthnot was skilled in everything which related to science ; Mr. Pope was a master in the fine arts ; and Dr. Swift excelled in the knowledge of the world. WIT they had all in equal measure ; and this so large, as no age perhaps ever produced three men, to whom Nature had more bountifully bestowed it, or Art brought it to higher perfection."

In my copy of Swift's ' Works,' published in eight volumes in 1761, vol. v. opens with the ' Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scrib- lerus.' In the Table of Contents this is attributed to " Dr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Pope." THOMAS BAYNE.

ERASMUS OR TINDALE (US. vi. 246). The passage in J. R. Green's ' Short History ' quoted by MR. McGovERN is a translation of part of the ' Paraclesis ' prefixed by Erasmus to his editio princeps of the Greek New Testament, or ' Novum Instrumentum,' as he preferred to call it. See F. Seebonm's 'Oxford Reformers.' third ed., pp. 326-9. EDWARD BENSLY.

MR. McGovERN may like to see the actual words of Erasmus, taken from the ' Para- clesis ad lectorem pium ' prefixed to his edition of the Greek New Testament (Basel, 1516):

" Optarim ut omnes mulierculae legant evange- lium, legant Paulinas epistolas. Atque utinam hsec in omnes omnium linguas essent transfusa, ut non solum a Scothis et Hybernis, sed a Turcis quoque et Saracenis legi cognoscique possint. Primus certe gradus est, utcunque cognoscere. Esto riderent multi, at caperentur aliquot. Utinam hinc ad stivam aliquid decantet agricola, hinc nonnihil ad radios suos moduletur textor, huiusmodi fabulis itineris taedium levet viator."

L. R. M. STRACHAN.

Heidelberg.

Soon after reading this query I picked up The Guardian of 13 Sept., and in time came to an article by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould on ' English Psalmody.' He quotes the following words from the Dedication of a version of the Psalms in French rime by Clement Marot, about 1540 :

" The golden age would now be restored, when we should see the peasant at his plough, the carman in the street, and the mechanic in the

shop solacing their toils with Psalms and Canticles, and the shepherd and shepherdess reposing in the shade, teaching the rocks to echo the Name of the Creator."

The coincidence is a striking one.

E. G. B.

Dr. J. Brown, author of ' The History of the English Bible,' one of the recently published little " Cambridge Manuals," gives an account of the incident referred to in Foxe's ' Book of Martyrs,' and quotes the lines, " If God spare my life," &c. ; and then adds :

'It may be that in this utterance of his Tindale had in mind the vivid words which Erasmus had written in the preface to that Greek Testament of 1516 he had come to know."

There follows the quotation (rather ampli- fied) which your correspondent quotes from Green's ' History,' so that his conjecture is evidently quite correct.

A. H. ARKLE.

Oxton, Birkenhead.

[J. B. also thanked for reply.]

DECIPHERMENT OF OLD TOMBSTONE IN- SCRIPTIONS (11 S. vi. 246). In the course of her interesting communication on this subject Miss ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES says :

" It is, further, a good plan to revisit the spot at different times of the day, to take advantage of different effects of light and shade."

In dealing with the same subject in my little book ' The Churchyard Scribe,' 1908, p. 69, I tendered parallel advice :

" It is also well to scrutinize such inscriptions while both wet and dry, and under all conditions of light and sunshine."

However, though evidently writing mainly in reference to " outdoor " or graveyard inscriptions, your correspondent omits all allusion to what is, in my own experience, the most usual form of " illegibility," and on which I feel most strongly to wit, turf-grown flat stones and sunken head- stones and tombs. Over and over' again one encounters both manuscript and printed transcripts of the inscriptions in a given churchyard wherein no cognizance is taken of sunken or partially sunken memorials, though frequently the oldest and most inter- esting. I once paid the gravedigger of a large country churchyard three half-crowns, on three separate afternoons, for assistance in disinterring memorials I could not other- wise copy, and the interest of which far exceeded the cost. That was an excep- tional case. Still, it always strikes me as regrettable that an inquirer perhaps from the other side of the world should