Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/73

 12 S. VI. MARCH, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

We are glad to announce that, as from the issue of April 3rd onwards, NOTES AND QUERIES will once more be published weekly.

The price of each Number will be Sixpence.

LONDON, MARCH, 1920

CONTENTS. No. 102.

NOTES : Danteiana, 55 Cornish and Devonian Priests executed, 56 Historic Walthamstow, 57 Shakespeariana, 58 London Coffee-houses, Taverns, and Inns, 59 Blooms- bury Oxford English Dictionary Church of St. Kather- ine Coleman Whittlesey. Cambs War and Paper-Supply Father of the Chapel, 62 D.D. Cantab, 63.

QUERIES : Louis Napoleon in Lancashire St. Stephen and Herod St. Malo, 63 Earliest Clerical Directory- Michael Drum' The Chess-hoard of Life 'The Sixth Foot Silver Punch Lsdle Metham R s Coningsby, 64 ' The Times ' : Burlesque Copy Geary or Geery Family Robert Jenner Pinner of Wakefleld Unannotated Marriages at Westminster, 65 Udiiy Edmund Dozell Rev. John Stones Robert Trotman Jacobite Memorial Ring John Griffiths Pollard Family, 66 - W. Cecil (Lord Burghley) Pewier Snuffers Hawkhurst Gang William Alabaster John Pearce Poems for Children Slates and Slate Pencils Cross-bearer of the University of Cambridge Thoringron, 67 Miller's ' Gardener's Dictionary ' Mary Jones Alfieri's Tutor Richard Dudley Curious Sur- namesLetter from the King (George IV.) Authors of Quotations Wanted, 68.

REPLIES : " We Four Fools." 68 An English Army List of 1740, 70 " The Whole Duty of Man," 71 William Harper J J. Kleinschmidt Monkshood Bramble 'Philochristus' : ' Ecce Homo' Capt. J. W. Carleton, 72 Walvein Family Lord Bowen Author of Anthem Wanted" Bocase " Tree Emerson's ' English Traits,' 73 Congeivoi Lawrence Wodecocke, 74 Newton. R.A. St. Cassian " Epater le bourgeois "Edmund Uvedale Rev. Aaron Baker, 75 Dreux Family Donkeys' Years, 76 John Witty John Sykes Urchfont. 77 Danvers Family Rsv. J. H. Bransbury S. Hopkins Sir E. Paget '' Gram" Dumb Animals' Friend, 78 Lepers' Windows Authors of Quotations Warned, 79.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' Sidelights on Shakespeare ' ' Catalogue of Printed Music ' ' Tales by Washington Irving' 'The British Academy.'

OBITUARY -.Arthur Henry Bullen.

Notices to Correspondents.

llofcs.

DANTEIANA.

1. ' INF.' xxiv. 4-6.

Quando la brina in su la terra assempra

L'imagine di sua sorella bianca,

Ma poco dura alia sua penna tempra.

A momentary attention must be drawn to the exquisite gem of poetic contrast set, so to speak, in the brow of this strange canto. Varied and curious to the Italian- English reader are some of the renderings into our speech of, as the Rev. H. F. Tozer rightly calls it, " this beautiful simile " : :

H. F. Gary :

When as the rime upon the earth puts on Her dazzling sister's image, but not long Her milder sway endures.

. Tomlinson :

When the hoar-frost doth copy, on the ground, The image of her sister clothed in white, Though fleeting her pen's temper must be owned. J. Ford :

And on the ground the dewy frost pourtrays The image of her sister blanch and bright, But soon in her soft feathery film decays. E. H. Plumptre : When on the ground the hoar-frost semblance

makes

Of the fair image of her sister white, But soon her brush its colour true forsakes.

The last quoted observes on this passage : "The phrase 'hoar frost, the sister of snow,' will remind the reader of 'dust, the sister of mud,' in ^Esch., 'Agam.' 495. The comparison is among the longest and most vivid of any in the poem, and is a typical example of the union of the power that observes the phenomena of external nature with insight into human feelings as affected by them."

And Mr. Tozer finds it " for Dante, un- usually long and elaborate in its details," refers to " similar effects of contrast " in ' Inf.' xxvi. 25 and 64, concluding by hinting that " this mode of poetic treatment is one for which he may have been indebted to Virgil," and supplying three instances from the ' ^Eneid ' x. 803 (ac velut, effusa si quando grandine nimbi, &c.) ; xii. 473 (ef penitus alta atria lustrat hirundo, &c.); and xii. 587 (Inclusas ut cum latebroso in pumice pastor vestigavit apes, &c.). It is well that the hint of Dante's imitation or plagiarism is conveyed conjecturally, for, it seems to me, as with Shakespeare so with Dante, commentators evince an almost feverish anxiety in their quest of, not merely thought-likenesses, but absolutely unacknowledged adaptations and adoptions. We know the poet's triple admission to Virgil's shade from the lines :

Vagliami il lungo studio

Tu se' lo mio maestro e il mio autore.

Da cui io tolsi

Lo bello stile che mi ha fatto onore.

'Inf.,' 1.83, seq.

But I regard Dean Plump tre's suggestion that " in the vision of Hades in Bk. VI. of the ' /Eneid ' he found, it need hardly be said, the archetype of the ' Commedia,' " as a reflection upon his originality and inventiveness. A post hoc er$o propter hoc is not always nor necessarily a valid argu- ment. Nor was it pressed as such for fully five centuries after Dante's death, and, strangely enough, by a compatriot of his. In the January number of The Antiquary, 1912, I concluded a second article headed
 * Some Precursors of Dante ' thus :

" The above are but few, though perhaps the chief, instances out of many culled from the rich eschatological inheritance into which Dante