Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/14

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. m. JAN. 6, 1917.

at all, they prove a greater popularity abroad than at home, and Fielding's popularity in England has never been questioned. If we were to take the second half - century for comparison we should find the figures quite as unfavourable for Richardson ; there would be more English than foreign editions of Fielding, but fewer editions of Richardson with which to compare them.

Did Fielding, I wonder, anticipate all this when he wrote: " They found the limits of nature too strait for the immensity of their genius, which they had not room to exert without extending fact by fiction " ?

FREDERICK S. DICKSON.

215 West 101st Street, New York.

SAPPHO : A SUGGESTION.

e, iravra (ptpuv 6ffa atvo\is tffKtdcur' Atfws, ^pfLs Kv, fopfis alya, fapeis fwrtpi iralda.

Farnell (' Greek Lyric Poets '), p. 167. "OiV and alya cannot mean lamb (SL/JLVOS) and kid (l/H0os) ; nor does the coming of daylight separate the young from their dams, since all go to pasture together : so that Kv and alya are not to be construed with /mrepi, as seems to be usually done, and the meaning must be that Evening (undoing the work of Morning) brings back the flocks to the homestead, and (a human touch) the shepherd-boy to his mother a pretty little picture, such as a Welshman would delight in putting into an englyn.

Farnell remarks (p. 341) that airoiov, found in one of the authorities after the last <<?/*, led Bergk to adopt the reading dirt ; and he seems willing to believe that Sappho, after emphasizing Morning as the separator, might have spoken of Evening, the reuniter, as taking away (diro{peiv) the daughter from the mother. This, with all respect to two learned men, is nonsense, which is not relieved by the reference to Catullus (Ixii. 21), where the context is different. A.-n-oiov must be a corruption of dir' olCiv, arid instead of a distich we are in presence of a stanza no doubt the first of a series :

' Atfws,

e, irdvra (j>pa,lvo\i i. ifttpfis 6l'v, tpLS alya, <^/>ets air' olu 3- /J-drept Trcuda.

1. Hex. Heroic. :

- -- I l~ -- I -- ~

2. lambel. :

-- I -- I -- || --- |

3. Adonic: ^~-,

where the metre of 1-2 is except for the omission of an iambus identical with that of Hor. Epod. 13 (Archilochian). Line 2,

as commonly edited, has no intelligible- metre.

Whether this simple emendation has oc- curred to anybody else, I do not know, not being within reach of a good classical library,.

Before it presented itself to me, I had put the lines, in an idle moment, into hexameters provoked by a Cornish version which seemed to me to be inaccurate ; and whether- my conjecture is accepted or not, they are at least true to my conception of Sappho's meaning :

Hespere, cuncta ferens quot lucifer abstulit Eos, Fers et ovem et capram, genetrici fers quoque

natum.

WALTER J. EVANS. Green Hill, Carmarthen.

DREAM FOLK-LORE. I find that the~ dreams of village people who have relations serving in the war, or missing, are commonly believed to afford intelligence regarding the* absent men. Even when the dreams of a family contradict each other there seems to be no difficulty in accepting their evidence..

That the mental preoccupations of waking; hours may influence visions of the night is not recognized. D. M.

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.

GENERAL WOLFE. I am compiling a record of relics relating to this intrepid soldier, and certain officers who served under him in the campaign in North America, 1757-60. There are, undoubtedly, many interesting items other than those already published,, if one could but learn of their whereabouts..

It is to get into touch with them that I trespass upon the kindness of your readers in the hope that they will send me any par- ticulars known to them. My investigations show how widely such items are distributed,, and how increasingly difficult it will become to locate and collate them as time goes on.

In view of all that Canada has done and is doing, I earnestly appeal to your readers to assist me in making as complete as pos- sible a work which should prove of some historical importance, depicting as it will, by means of reproductions, the portraits of men who accomplished great things for our- country, their homes, their letters, and many other military and personal items as- they were in those times.