Page:Notes and Queries - Series 1 - Volume 2.djvu/11

NOTES AND QUERIES. JUNE 1. 1850. even the conservation of the public records, sanguine hopes from that quarter can hardly be indulged.

To insure correctness, without which the scheme would be utterly valueless, I would propose that a certain number of competent transcribers be appointed for each county, either at a given salary, or at a remuneration of so much per entry, to copy the registers of those parishes the ministers of which are unwilling to do it, or feel themselves unequal to the task. The option, however, should always, in the first instance, be given to the minister, as the natural custos of the registers, and as one, from local knowledge, likely to do the work correctly. To each county there should also be appointed one or more competent persons as collators, to correct the errors of the transcribers.

I throw out these rough hints in the hope that some of your correspondents will furnish their ideas on the subject, till we at last arrive at a fully practicable plan of carrying out Mr. Wyatt Edgell's suggestions, and, at all events, obtain transcripts, if not printed copies, of every register in the kingdom. L. B. L.

"He that fights and runs away," &c. — Your correspondent may be assured that the orations of Demosthenes do not afford any trace of the proverbial senarius, ; and it does not appear quite clear how the apophthegm containing it (which has been so generally attributed to Plutarch) has been concocted. Heeren, in doing full justice to the biographical talent of the Chæronean, has yet observed, "We may easily see that in his Lives he only occasionally indicates his authorities, because his own head was so often the source." It is in the life of Demosthenes that the story of his flight is told, but briefly; and for that part which relates to the inscription on the shield of Demosthenes, he says,. The other life among those of the Ten Orators, the best critics think not to be Plutarch's; and the relation in it is too ridiculous for credit; yet it is repeated by Photius.

The first writer in which the story takes something of the form in which Erasmus gives it is Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. 1. xvii. c. 21.) : —

"Post inde aliquanto tempore Philippiis apud Chæroneam prœlio magno Athenienses vicit. Tum Demosthenes orator ex eo prœlio salutem fuga quæsivit: quumque id ei, quod fugerat, probrose objiceretur; versu illo notissimo elusit,, inquit, ."

We here see that the senarius is designated as a well-known verse, so that it must have been in the mouths of the people long before it was applied to this piece of gossip. I have hitherto not been able to trace it to an earlier writer.

The Apophthegmata of Erasmus were first published, I believe, in 1531, in six books. I have an edition printed by Frobenius, at Basle, in 1538, in which two more books are added; and, in an epistle prefixed to the seventh book, Erasmus says, —

"Prodiit opus, tanta aviditate distractum est, ut protinus a typographo cœperit efflagitare denuo."

He names twenty-one ancient Greek and Latin authors from which the apophthegms had been collected; and, with regard to what he has taken from Plutarch, he mentions the licence he has used: —

"Nos Flutarchum multis de causis sequi maluimus quam interpretari, explanare quam vertere."

It, is from this book of Erasmus that the worthy Nicolas Udall selected his Two Bookes of Apophthegmen; and he tells his readers, —

"I have been so bold with mine author as to make the first booke and second booke, which he maketh third and fowerth."

Udall has occasionally added further explanations of his own to those translated from Erasmus. He promises, in good time, the remaining books but says, —

"I have thought better, with two of the eight, to minister unto yon a taste of this bothe delectable and fruitefull recreation."

Those who are desirous of knowing at large the course pursued by Erasmus in the compilation of this amusing and once popular work, will find it fully stated in his preface; one passage of which will show the large licence he allowed himself: —

"Sed totum opus quodammodo meum feci, dum et explanatius effero quæ Græce referuntur, interjectis interdum quæ apud alios autores additur cornperissem," &c.

The only sure ground, as far as I can discover, for this gradually constructed legend, is the mention of the flight of Demosthenes by Æschines and Dinarchus. In the more amplified editions of Erasmus's Adages, after the publication of the Apophthegmata, he repeats the story in illustration of a Latin proverb (probably only a version of the Greek), " Vir fugiens et denuo pugnabitur;" and I find in some collections of the sixteenth century both the Latin and Greek given upon the authority of Plutarch! Langius, in his Polyanthea (a copious common-place book which would outweigh twenty of our late Laureate's), has given the apophthegm verbatim from Erasmus, and has boldly appended Plutarch's name. But the more extraordinary course is that which one Gualandi took, who published, at Venice, in 1568,