Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/28

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. ix. JAN. 10,

Probably the French place-names of Belgium yield some interesting adjectival forms : a man of R outers is " rollarien."

Readers of ' N. & Q.' will, no doubt, be able to add to the above, which, with " turquenois " (Tourcoing) and " vervie- tois " exhaust the writer's notebook. It is something .to come across such forms as " briochois " or " fuxeen " in cold print ; the more so if actually used, and not merely preserved in a dictionary or word-museum.

I note the recent publication of " Essai historique sur Treguier, par un Trecorrois."

SICILE.

ROBERT BARON, AUTHOR OF 'MIRZA, A TRAGEDIE.'

(See ante, p. 1.)

FROM the names alone previously given one might have surmised that Baron had come from Norwich. Do the names also indicate that he had not yet definitely joined either political camp, but counted his friends in both ? The only indication of political opinions which I have noticed in ' The Cyprian Academy ' shows the author as rather a Royalist than a Parliamentarian. Flaminius, after landing at Dover, admired the beauty of the island,

" which was then fiuorishing, enioying a wel setled and a happy peace under an unusurped Governe- ment " '-Gyp. Acad.,' Part II. p. 2.

' The Cyprian Academy ' is a romance in prose and verse, which embodies in it two dramatic pieces : ' Deorum Dona,' a masque ; and ' Gripus and Hegio,' a pastoral in three acts. These are said by Fleay* I do not know on what ground to" have been "written, but not acted," at Cambridge. It certainly seems likely that they were com- posed before the narrative in which they are set. The romance shows the effect of Sidney's ' Arcadia ' on an imitative boy. Its language, however, while it has many touches of old-fashioned euphuism, is dis- tinguished by a recourse to the most absurd Latin expressions,! which suggests a study

'Biogr. History,' sub 'Baron, R.' t Take, for example :

Now, now we Symbolize in egritude [we are sick alike]. I. 34.

let their coynesse set an edge on us And cuspidat our animosities [sharpen our courage].

pol y anthro P ica11 [populous

A sleeke stone to repumicate her linnen. I. 11 Our Kustick immorigerous roomes. ibid.

of Cockeram's ' Dictionarie,' as well as by the introduction of scraps of French, which lead one to think that Baron had reached" France some time before his book wast finished. We know that he was at Paris a month or two later, and the following passage (part i. p. 7) suggests a first-hand knowledge of Paris and its environs :

Cynthia had 6. times repaired her wained homes ; then Paris the durty Theater of all Nations, being plagued with an almost generall infection, or in- valitude, Flaminius with his cousin German, th& Duke of Luynes, (the powerful! Favourite of the crown of France,) retired to his Tusculanium [sic] at Poysey, a prety gentle place, scituated upon- the River Sequana, some 15. miles distant fronv Paris, at the foot of the great Forrest of St. German- ..the French King at this time had his residence- at his standing house within a mile of Possy [=Poissy]."
 * t He resided in the Metropolitan City Paris, till 1

Perhaps Baron had himself been driven from the unhealthy conditions of Paris to a, retreat at Poissy.

' The Cyprian Academy ' is chiefly noto- rious, however, for its plagiarisms from Milton's ' Minor Poems ' of 1645, which were- first exposed in print by Wartoii, and were given still more fully (as the ' D.N.B.' says)- in the booksellers' edition of Milton of 1801,. vol. vi. pp. 401-8. Mr. Knight, who con- siders successful plagiarism to be Baron's- chief title to distinction, would have done well to remember, as Langbaine did, that ' The Cyprian Academy ' was the work of a boy of 17. He seems to me to credit Baron also with a cunning which he did not possess when he says that " with so much judgment did he steal that his thefts passed unrecognized for more than a century after his death." What is really striking is the insouciance with which he steals, not merely from Milton, but from Shakespeare, Suckling^ Lovelace, Carew, and others. Milton at the- moment may have been the least known, but no reader of the time could have failed to notice the bold borrowings from other poets. Langbaine himself had detected obligations to Waller and to Webster's ' Duchess of Malfy ' : " excusable," he says,. " only on the account of the Author's Youth."

A Miltonic reminiscence which has not been noticed occurs at part ii. p. 32, " a promentory or starry pointed Piramid " ('Ep. on Shakespeare'); another at part i. p. 20, " from 's Saphire colour 'd throne " (' Sol. Music,' line 7). Suckling's ' Ballad of a Wedding-Day ' has led to two lines (part iii. p. 72) :

Her round small feet beneath her roab doe run- Now out, now in, as if they feard the sun.