Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/64

 58

NOTES AND QUERIES. [128.11. JULY is, me.

rover brought in by the prisoners who had overpowered the crew, a ship's boat in which the crew of a merchant vessel were cast adrift by pirates who captured their vessel, \-o. They do not contain a single wreck. The vessels were sold by the local vice- admiral, and the summa expoitorum is the amount of the proceeds. " Oneris " would make sense, but the writing is very good (there is no quest ion of misprint, as suggested by J. J. B. ). In the account of another year I find ovens, which suggests that the word is ouens ; but I still seek the meaning.

That P !i is X'' is a mere guess. How does J. J. B. interpret it ? YGREC.

ST. MADRON'S WELL, NEAR PENZANCE (12 S. ii. 9). MR. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT quotes from my book ' England's Riviera,' at pp. 211, 212. Will you allow me to say that for the next edition I had already al- tered the passage ? It will run to this intent :

"Bishop Joseph Hall (1574-1656), suc- cessively Bishop of Exeter and Norwich, went so far as to preach upon the repute of St. Madron's Well in his ' The Invisible World : of God and his angels ' (Sect, viii., ' The Apparitions of Angels ') :

'" The trade, that we have with good spirits, is not now driven by the eye ; but is like to them- selves, spiritual : yet not so, but that even in bodily occasions, we have many times insensible helps from them in such manner, as that by the effects, we can boldly say, Here hath been an angel, though we saw him not. Of this kind, was that, no less than miraculous, cure, which, at St. Maderne's, * in Cornwall, was wrought upon a poor cripple t; whereof, besides the attestation of many hundreds of the neighbours, I took a strict and personal examination, in that last Visitation J which I either did or ever shall hold. This man, that, for sixteen years together, was fain to walk upon his hands, by reason of the close contraction of the sinews of his legs, was, upon three monitions in his dreams to wash in that well, suddenly so restored to his limbs, that I saw him able, both to walk, and to get his own maintenance. I found here was neither art, nor collusion; the thing done, the Author invisible.'

"['The Works of Joseph Hall, D.D.,' in 12 vols., vol. viii. pp. 372, 373, Oxford, D. A. Talboys, MDCCCXXXVII.] "

J. HARRIS STONE. Oxford and Cambridge Club, S.W.

RICHARD SWIFT (12 S. ii. 9). He is described in Dod's ' Parliamentary Com- panion ' as son of Timothy Swift, army contractor, by Susannah, daughter of Mr. John Carey. He was born in Malta in 1811,

"* S. Maternus." " f One John Trelille." "J At Whitsuntide."

and married in 1836 a daughter of John- O'Brien, a West India merchant. He was a dealer in leather, boot manufacturer, and London agent for the shoemakers of Northampton. He sat for the county ot Sligo as a Liberal from 1852 to 1857, defeat- ing the previous Conservative member, W. R. Ormsby - Gore (afterwards second Lord Harlech). He died March 24, 1872.

ALFRED B. BEAVEN. Leamington.

MILTON'S SONNET ON ' TETRACHORDON ' :. " LIKE " (12 S. ii. 7). MR. W. F. SMITH has very happily illustrated, rather than ex- plained, the line :

Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek. For the sense is quite plain. " Sleek " is opposed to " rugged." Savs Lady Mac- beth :

Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your nigged looks. Milton's line, then, evidently means :

Those rugged names, to our rugged lips, have come- to seem the reverse of rugged.

Curiously, the same sonnet contains another (I think, more) difficult use of " like " : Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheek, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, When thou taught'st Cambridge and King Edward

Greek.

" Tetrachordon," the poet in effect says,, being a musical term used by Aristotle (Probl. xix. 33), ought not to have jarred on the ears, or tried the lips, of his contem- poraries, had not the age " hated learning." Sir John Cheek's age, on the contrary, wnlike " ours " (Milton's), had no such hatred, and would not have complained of the use of the word in question.

Masson, in his note (iii. 471), says : "The construction of this passage is important,

and is generally missed. It is 'Thy age did

not, like ours, hate learning.' We should now

ay unlike ours."

The words " like ours," in fact, seem out of place. We may compare ' Tempest,' Act I. sc. ii. :

Like one.

Who having, unto truth, &// telling of it, Made such a sinner of his memory, To credit his own lie,

i.e., as to credit his own lie by (frequent) telling of it (the lie). But I do not think it would be easy to find a similar displacement in Miltoru W. A. C.

" EVERY ENGLISHMAN is AN ISLAND " (12 S. ii. 11). I write only from memory,, but I carry a strong impression that this was first said not by Emerson, but by Novalis.

L.. I. GUINEY*