Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/115

 s. NO 6., FEB. 9. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

107

English.

"For Richard the Duke of Glo'ster, by nature their ; uncle, by office their Protector, to their father beholden, | to themselves by oath and allegiance bounden, all the bands broken that bind man and man together, without any respect of God or the world, unnaturally contrived to bereave them, not only their dignity, but also their lives."

A comparison of these and other passages might, I think, impress one with the notion that the Latin treatise was the original of this History, even if there were no other evidence.

Lastly, I may be allowed to remark that the inferiority of the Latinity might alone have served to cast a doubt upon the authorship of the Latin History. One editor was struck with its great inferiority as a composition to More's other Latin productions, and supposed that the author had not taken the trouble to revise it.*

The conclusions, then, to which all this evidence points are, first, that the Latin History was not the work of More ; and second, that the English was translated from the Latin. The translation probably was executed by Sir Thomas ; Rastell found it in his handwriting ; but the unfairness and inaccuracies of its statements are not to be attributed to him.

But if the original work was not More's, there can be no doubt whose it really was. The old opinion that it was Morton's, as Sir John Har- rington had heard, and Buck confidently believed, bears every mark of probability. Cardinal Morton might very well have written the Latin History. His politics and his prejudices fit the work exactly. The historian is an evident Lan- castrian, but a friend to Edward IV. ; he is also bitterly opposed to Richard III., and an evident adherent of the Woodville party. All this was Cardinal Morton ; and the reason why his MS. should have got into More's custody is not far to seek ; for More, it is well known, was, when a young man, a member of the cardinal's household.

JAMES GAIKDNER.

DOUCEANA.

[The following are further specimens of the valuable Notes which this accomplished antiquary was accustomed to jot down on the fly-leaves of his curious library.]

ELEPHANTS.

Douce's notes in his copy of Elephantographia Curiosa, sen Elephanti descriptio juxta methodum et leges Imp. Academics, authore D. Georgio Christoph. Petri, 4to. Erfordias, 1715.

Elephants provoked to fight by the juice of grapes and mulberries. 1 Mace. vi. 34. ; see also 3 Mace. v. 2.

More's iMtin ffor/ts, 15CG.
 * See the note prefixed to it in the Louvain edition of

Skeletons of elephants found on the banks of the Oby in Asia. Cuper's Letters, Sfc., pp. 25. 89.

Hunting of elephants. Gastius de Mor. Gent, ad Jin. de Virg. custodia, p. 307.

See Schott's Physica Curiosa, p. 865. ;_Index in Mus. Reg. Danic., sig. F.

See Science des Medailles, i. 198.

Gisbertus de Elephantis.

Hunting of elephants described at large in Cor- disier's Ceylon; and see it in Edinb. Rev., Apr., 1808. See likewise the mode of hunting ele- phants in Ceylon, in Monthly Mag., 1802, p. 117.

In the year 802, the King of Persia sent an elephant to the Greek emperor at Constantinople; the elephant's name was Abulabuz ; Reuber. Script. Germ., 33.

They have elephants in China, as appears from a book in Sir G. Staunton's possession, of a Chi- nese coronation ; but they seem to be used as a matter of state magnificence. Those I saw in this book only carried a sort of throne or ornament, but no men.

See particularly Gesner and Aldrovandus.

The elephant on one of Philip's secular coins is faithfully drawn. The guide holds the same kind of rod as used at present in India. It is not pro- perly delineated in the coin in the inside of the cover of this book.

Sagacity of an elephant in Jesse's Gleanings,

P-*>.

The young elephant sucks with the mouth, and not with the trunk, as many have asserted. Jesse, p. 255. ^

In Dulau's Catal., 1812, was the following ar- ticle, " Prezac, Histoire des Elephants, 16mo., fig. mor., bleu, double de tabis, 1650, Paris ; volume recherche et peu commune."

Gisbert Cuper wrote a dissertation on elephants, printed in Sallengre, Thesaur. Antiq. Romanarum, torn. iii.

Lipsius wrote " Laus Elephantis." See it in Dissertationum Ludicrarum Scriptores, 1638, 18ino.

In 1818, a fire of consequence happening at Constantinople, the silly populace conceived that the unlucky elephants, that happened to be in the city, were the cause of it, and the government was obliged to send them away.

M. Cuvier has proved that the African and Asiatic elephants ure of distinct races.

See the singular story of an elephant in Vossius de Idololatria, p. 496.

See Jacobams, Mm. Reg. Dan., Index, part i. sig. E 2., and part ii. sig. F.

[Note inserted at p. 22.] The man who rides on the elephant on the middle brass coins of Philip, holds in his hand an instrument of these forms, j[ f. On my denarius of Philip it is a simple goad, / ."

[Inside the covers, in addition to the woodcut