Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/548

 450 NOTES AND QUERIES. [,2 a. x. 10. ss. au rang des animaux de luxe, un peu avant les chiens de race et les chevaux de sang. This is in 1869. These coincidences are beyond all doubt what Johnson (' Rambler,' 143) termed added that they do not obviously belong to the " common stock of images " of cheap rhetoric. 2. The other instance touches much deeper issues, and suggests interesting conjecture. In chap. xiii. of ' Quentin Dur- ward,' Galeotti Martivalle, the astrologer, expresses to Louis XI. misgivings over the new invention of printing, which will tend to vulgarize knowledge and reduce the influence of the mysterious arts. This comparatively brief and casual statement is beyond question the original idea out of which Victor Hugo developed his theory of the ultimate victory of printing over architecture contained in the superb chapter of ' Notre Dame de Paris ' entitled ' Ceci tuera cela ' (v. 2). Note the correspondences. The remarks are made to the same King of France, Louis Onze. Claude Frollo, like Martivalle, is one of the learned wonders of the age, and is even suspected of knowing more than is good for him ; indeed, the profound conception of world-transformation through the printed book is quite beyond the King's grasp. Psychologically speaking, it is far from likely that any ecclesiastic of the fifteenth century could have manifested such preternatural prescience. That the connexion with ' Quentin ' Durward ' is not mere conjecture receives confirmation through Hugo's early essay, ' Sur Walter Scott ' (1823) which is written on that very novel. ' Notre Dame ' appeared eight years later (1831). We now turn to a singular coincidence. Exactly twenty years later (1851), the Hon. Eleanor Stanley, in ' Twenty Years at Court,' records a conversation with Macaulay on the subject of explorations at Nineveh : Saying that in those days people, instead of printing a book, published a bridge or a street ; pamphlets might be the front of a house ; indeed that in those days the new side of Buckingham Palace ^ would have been a new edition with the author's latest additions and improvements (p. Hugo's words are : Le livre de pierre, si solide et si durable, allait faire place au livre de papier, plus solide et plus durable encore. . . . Ainsi, jusqu'a Gutenberg, 1 architecture est 1'ecriture principale, 1'ecriture universelle. PAUL T. LAFLEUR. McGill University, Montreal. SPANISH PROVERB, "ANTES MTJERTO QUE MUTADO." This occurs on p. 40 of Adrian d'Amboise's ' Tiaicte des Devises' (Paris, 1620). The meaning is " Dead before changed," i.e., I will die before I change my mind. In Izaak Walton's ' Life of Donne,' he writes : I have seen one picture of him, drawn by a curious hand, at the age of eighteen, with a sword . . . and his motto then was How much shall I be changed, Before I am changed ? (Note.) Antes muerta que mudada. (A Spanish by -word.) If Izaak really penned this. I fear his acquaintance with Spanish was limited. RICHARD H. THORNTON. Portland, Oregon. WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries in order that answers may be sent to them direct. JANE AUSTEN : REFERENCES WANTED. Can anyone give the references for the following quotations in Jane Austen : 1. ' Persuasion,' chap. xv. The elegant little clock on the mantelpiece had struck " eleven with its silver sounds." 2. ' Northanger Abbey,' chap. iv. AVe are told to " despair of nothing we would attain," as " unwearied diligence our point would gain." 3. Ibid., chap. xv. The old song, " Going to one wedding brings on another." 4. ' Letter?,' May, 1813. " He will not be come to bide." R. W. CHAPMAN. THE CAPON TREE IN JEDWATER. I should feel greatly obliged by any information which can be given regarding this interesting tree, the last survivor of the ancient Jed Forest, and situated on the right bank of the river Jed, about a mile from Jedburgh, Roxburghshire. The origin of the name is unknown, and local records are silent regarding it. It is believed to be over a thousand years old, and stands in a field called the Prior's Laugh. I have ascertained that in former times there was a capon tree at Brampton, near Carlisle, also one at Alnwick Castle, Northum- berland, referred to in Tate's ' History of Alnwick.' " Coban " and " covine " are variants of " capon," which some think is
 * ' accidental similitudes " ; and it may be