Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/406

 332 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2S.ix.ocr.22.i92i. VIDA'S ' GAME OF CHESS.' I notice that there has recently been published a trans- lation of Vida's ' Game of Chess ' by Mr. R. S. Lambert. What other English trans- lations are there besides that of Goldsmith ? John Forster ( ' Life and Times of Goldsmith' ) states that " Mr. George Jeffreys translated the same poem (one of seven versions of it made in English)." Jeffreys's translation, which had been read by Pope, appeared in 1736. Samuel Seyer (1757-1831), historian, of Bristol, "also translated into English verse the Latin poem of Vida on Chess" (see ' D.N.B.,' no date given). Sir William Jones's well-known poem, ' Caissa, or the Game at Chess, a Poem' written in the year 1763, owes its idea to Vida, though only a few passages are borrowed from him. RUSSELL MABKLAND. SURNAMES WITH DOUBLE LETTERS. I have recently indexed a roll of the Free- holders of Kent qualified to serve as county jurors for the year 1804. The roll contains 1,644 names, which comprises 500 with one double letter and 45 with two double letters. Is not this total of one-third a large proportion of surnames to contain double letters ? W. J. M. SAMBATYON. (12 S. ix. 292.) THIS legendary stream has before now been the subject of a question and answers in ' N. & Q.' A writer at 9 S. xi. 508, wished to have an allusion explained in ' The Mystic ' of Philip James Bailey : That Sabbatic river, which, to flow The seventh day, ceaseth piously. On p. 19 of the next volume it was sug- gested that a clue might be found in Izaak Walton, 'The Complete Angler' (Part I., chap, i.) : One of no less authority than Josephus, that learned Jew, tells us of a river in Judea, that runs swiftly all the six days of the week, and stands still and rests all their Sabbath. At p. 52 it was pointed out that Josephus, this, namely, that the river between Arcaea and Raphanaea in Agrippa's kingdom was dry for six days together and ran on the seventh. In the same number the Rev. W. D. Macray gave the name of the fabled river, Sambatyon, adding that it was frequently mentioned in Jewish lore. He also quoted an account of it from the apocryphal travels of Eldad the Danite, " abridged from one of Dr. Neubauer's articles on the ques- tion ' Where are the Ten Tribes ? ' which appeared in the Jewish Quarterly Review." The river was described by Eldad as full of sand and stones, and said to roll during the six w r orking days, and rest on the Sab- bath day, w r hen it was surrounded with fire. Further information appeared on p. 175, where attention was drawn to a passage in Sir Thomas Browne's ' Pseudodoxia Epi- demica,' vii. 18, 11 : If any man make a doubt of Giges' ring in Justinus, or conceives he must be a .Tew that believes the sabbatical river in Josephus,. . . for my part I shall not be angry with his in- credulity. The same correspondent quoted the sugges- tion of Browne's editor, Simon Wilkin, that the story could be explained if one only granted the existence of water-corn-mills in the time of the Emperor Titus. Another correspondent gave an extract from the liturgy of the synagogue in the. Pentecost prayers : "... remember that on it [the Sabbath] the incomprehensible river resteth," and referred to various Jewish commentators. Much might be added to the above in- formation, but a few items must suffice. It is curious that in none of these answers was any notice taken of Pliny's brief mention, ' Nat. Hist.,' xxxi. 18, 24, " In ludaea rivus sabbatis omnibus siccatur." The Jesuit Hardouin has an interesting note on this, in which he refers to Isidorus, ' Origines,' xiii. 13, "In ludaea quondam rivus sabbatis omnibus siccabatur," and quotes the ex- planation of Sambation from Elias Levita's Lexicon (' Tisbites '). Elias says that Ram- bam (i.e., Maimonides) gave the name of the river as Goza. According to Hardouin, Lucas Holstein " in epist. de Sabbathio flumine " thought it was the river Eleu- therus, or at any rate one of its tributaries. Jerome Cardan, ' De Subtilitate,' near the end of Book II., professes to quote Josephus'a description of the river, but represents it as ceasing to flow on the Sabbath day. He treats the religious explanation as the result of ignorance and superstition, the cause being purely natural, " Nam tantum aqua- i rum cogebatur, ut in sex dies sufficeret, ! septimae non sufficeret," a solution which I is not particularly satisfying, even when I we are told that intermittent fevers are to
 * Bell. Jud.,' vii. 5, 1, says the opposite of