Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/188

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. iv. JULY, IMS.

The following fine expression of th contrast between the mind of the commercia gentleman in Athens, giving his report on it resources, and the love and admiration of i free soul rejoicing there in sky and sea anc air o'er hill and plain, is well known "Athens, the city of mind, as radiant as splendid, as delicate, as young a. ever she had been" (Newman's' University Sketches').

But has the echo in it of the passage in ' Paradise Regained,' iv. 238 sqq., been noted ? And how far was that " miracle of intellectual delicacy," Newman, con scious that Milton was inspiring him wit] terms for his Attic vision, expressed in words

... .as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair ?

The words italicized will help the reader in tracing the reminiscences^ Milton is pu first:

Where, on the ^Egean shore, a city stands Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil ; Athens, the eye of Greece .... There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound Of bees' industrials murmur, oft invites To studious musing ; there Uissus rolls His whispering stream.

And then Newman's words :

" Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue 2Egean. . . .But what [the agent of a London company] would not think of noting down was, that that olive tree [" olives in pro- fusion," reported the agent] was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited a religious veneration ; and that it took so kindly to the light soil as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his em- ployers, how that clear air. . . .brought out, yet blended and subdued, the colours on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth .... He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees."

W. F. P. STOCKLEY.

COLERIDGE AND PLATO. At 10 S. vii. 208 a correspondent asked for the source of the following, attributed to Coleridge :

" Plato, that plank from the wreck of Paradise cast on the shores of idolatrous Greece."

No answer seems to have been given. The source of the words, which were not quite correctly quoted, is a note of Coleridge's to No. xxxi. of the ' Introductory Aphorisms ' in his ' Aids to Reflection,' ed. 1843, vol. i. p. 23:

" Nor was it altogether without grounds that several of the Fathers ventured to believe that Plato had some dim conception of the necessity of a divine Mediator ; whether through some

indistinct echo of the Patriarchal faith, or some rays of light refracted from the Hebrew Prophets . . . .or by his own sense of the mysterious con- tradiction in human nature between the will and the reason we shall in vain attempt to deter- mine. It is not impossible that all three may have co-operated in partially unveiling these awful truths to this plank from the wreck of Paradise thrown on the shores of idolatrous Greece, to this divine philosopher, Che'n quella schiera and6 piu presso al segno Al qual aggiunge, a chi dal cielo dato.

Petrarch, ' Trionfo della Fama,' cap. iii. 6, 6." The bold metaphor of a plank from the- wreck of Paradise is not easily reconciled with the unveiling of awful truths.

I am indebted for the reference to a letter of Mr. H. C. J. Sidnell in The Saturday Westminster Gazette of April 27 last.

EDWARD BENSLY.

REDCOATS. I once made a few notes (11 S. viii. 226) on the most historic colour in English army uniforms ; and these notes I repent of in no wise, as they drew out some most valuable addenda, and taught me, for one, much that I did not know (see US. viii. 295-7). Since then some- half-dozen new references on the subject have tumbled, unsought, into my hands, and may be worth recording chronologically.

'The Queen's Visiting of the Camp at Tilbury' (Aug. 10, 1588), by Thomas Deloney, is the title of a broadside in th& British Museum which has been reprinted by Prof. Arber (vol. viii. of 'An English Garner,' 1896, pp. 46-51). Deloney's 'not very thrilling octosyllabics mention the Sergeant Trumpet, who, " with his mace," And nine with trumpets after him, Bareheaded went before Her Grace, In coats of scarlet trim.

Her guards in scarlet then rode after With bows and arrows, stout and bold.

In William Percy's ' Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia,' 1594 (again an Arber reprint), the tenth and best advances through full military imagery to its pre- diction of love's victory. The Honourable William, however, sees his lady arrayed against him, and thus describes her hostile yes and lips:

First from the leads of that proud citadel Do foulder forth two fiery culverins; Under, two redcoats keep the 'larum bell For fear of close or open veuturings.

During the Civil Wara, as the ' N.E.D.,* Vln. BAYLEY, and MR. APPERSON have noted, the soldiery on both sides used red pretty freely ; but the majority of instances, jiven are Parliamentary. Here are two