Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/70

 52 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.x. JAN. 21, 1922. Forster, in his ' Life of Charles Dickens,' says : Mr. Tonson was a small part in the comedy, entrusted with much appropriateness to Mr. Charles Knight, whose ' Autobiography ' has this allusion to the first performance, which, as Mr. Pepys says, is " pretty to observe." The actors and the audience were so close together j that as Mr. Jacob Tonson sat in Wills's Coffee- j house he could have touched with his clouded cane the Duke of Wellington." T. W. TYRRELL. St. Elmo, Sidmouth. PSALM LXXXIII. (12 S. x. 8). The Vulgate, I following the Septuagint, begins this psalm I With the words " Deus, quis similis erit tibi," ; accordingly it so begins in the breviaries, | where the psalm occurs in Friday matins. ! Hence it was commonly known as the " Deus, | quis similis." But as these words do not occur in the Hebrew, they were rejected in the sixteenth century as " apocryphal," so do not appear in English in our Prayer Books and I Bibles. I can no longer consult the earlier ! English versions in primers and Bibles, but : some other correspondent may be able to; tell us how the verse stands in them. J. T. F. Winterton, Lines. The heading of this psalm in the Prayer j Book should not be called a mistake, as! these Latin words are not translations, rough ! or otherwise, of an English version, but i taken from the opening of the corresponding psalms in the Vulgate. In this case Psalm Ixxxii. in the Vulgate ( = Ixxxiii. in the Eng- lish) begins, " Deus, quis similis erit tibi ? ne taceas, neque compescaris Deus." EDWARD BENSLY. Reference to the Vulgate affords some answer to this query. Psalm Ixxxiii. in our j English versions is the equivalent of Psalm I Ixxxii. in the Vulgate. Of this latter the first verse runs, " Deus, quis similis erit tibi ? ne taceas, neque compescaris Deus." Our Psalm Ixxxiii., alike in the Authorized Version and the Prayer Book, ignores the first interrogative clause found in the Vulgate and in the Septuagint, and begins our translations at " Ne taceas." K. S. The Rev. J. M. Neale, in his ' Commentary on the Psalms,' says, regarding verse 1, " The first clause of this verse runs, in most of the older translations (LXX. Vulg. Aethiop., ! .Syr., Arab.), 'O,God, who shall be like unto Thee ? ' In a psalterium I have (Antwerp, Plantin, 1683) the first verse reads, " Deus, quis similis erit tibi ? ne taceas, neque com- pescaris Deus." J. DE BEBNIERE SMITH. THE FIFTH PETITION IN THE LORD'S PRAYER (12 S. ix. 508; x. 11). The ques- tion still remains, Why did Tyndale, or whoever first put the Lord's Prayer into English, use the word " trespasses " ? Reference to St. Luke xi. 4, seems to suggest the answer. The Greek word there is a/zaprms-, the Latin peccata. C. A. COOK. Sullingstead, Hascombe, Godalming. COL. CHESTER'S EXTRACTS FROM PARISH REGISTERS (11 S. vi. 90 ; 12 S. ix. 389, 473, 517). G. E. C.'s set of these transcripts was distributed by one of his executors who cannot remember where they went, but I still believe that most of the volumes were presented to public libraries connected with the parishes mentioned. I under- stand that the other set is still complete in the College of Arms. C OF A " STINT OCULOS CLARI QUI CERNIS SIDERA TANQUAM" (12 S. x. 8). The answer to the query on the authorship of this line must be, I am afraid, " Anon., anon., sir. 2 * The puzzle is given among a batch of " Grammaticorum illae cruces vulgatae, ob constructionis dimcultatem, aut vocum ambiguitatem nobis quoque pueris agitatae in Scholis," in the * Sylvula Logogriphorum' at the end of the second part of Nicolas Reusner's ' Aenigmatographia ' (Frankfurt, 1602), p. 159. As Reusner was born in 1545, the line, to be known to him at school, must be as old as the middle of the sixteenth century. And to how many previous generations of schoolboys may it not have been familiar ! A few lines lower oji Reusner's page are Mea pater in sylvas, filium tuum lupus est, and Filia sub tilia mea net subtilia filar, and, of course, the jingle with ' Cane Decane." In W. Binder's ' Flores Aenigmatum latinorum ' (Stuttgart, 1857), p. 94, the line " Sunt oculos clari," &c., has the following line attached to it : Dico grammaticum, versum qui construit istum. EDWARD BENSLY.