Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/402

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[24S. NO 20., MAY 17. '56.

held in Lancashire. Matthew, son of William, holds four bovates of the king, which " disro- navit f finem belli." J. A.

[The entry in the Testa de Nevill, p. 405., reads in ex- tenso, " Mathaeus filius Willielmi tenet de eodem (i. e. in capite de Domino Eege) IIII r bovates quas disrationavit per finem belli ; " i. e. he holds of the king in capite four bovates, or ox-gangs of land, which he hath claimed, be- cause the war is ended. The said Mathew held per servi- tium militare, or by knight's service, and having so served, claimed the said land as by right of such service. " Dis- rationare, or dirationare, rem aliquam rationibus sibi vin- dicare," is one of the definitions of this word in Du Cange's Glossary ; i. e. to claim any thing for certain reasons or considerations.]

Goldsmith's " Animated Nature." It would oblige me much to be informed in what year this work was first published, the publisher's name, and the number of volumes ? J. J. LAMB.

. Underwood Cottage, Paisley.

[The first edition was in eight vols. 8vo., and hears the following imprint: "London: Printed for J. Nourse in the Strand, Bookseller to his Majesty. 1774." Price 21. 8s. in boards. Goldsmith died in the same year.]

Nathan Wright of Dennington. Can any of your readers give me any information concern- ing the descendants of Nathan Wright, who in the year 1657 left three acres of land at Fram- lingham, let at 101. per. annum, and seven acres of land at Kettleborough, let at 12?. per annum, to be applied to the relief of the poor of the parish of Dennington, in the county of Suffolk ?

The crest and arms of the said Nathan Wright would also oblige G. BURGESS.

[Sir Benjamin Wright, created a baronet in 1660, was son and heir of Nathan Wright, merchant and alderman of London, and for the establishment of his father's gift of 75/. for the purchase of land for the poor, gave to the parish of Framlingham, in 1662, the additional sum of 271. In Burke's Extinct Baronetcies will be found some notices of Nathan Wright's descendants. The account ends with Sir Samuel Wright, who died unmarried at Lisbon, Jan, 10, 1737-8, when the baronetcy became ex- tinct. Arms: Azure, two bars, argent, in chief three leopards' faces, or. Crest : Out of a ducal coronet, or, a dragon's head issuant, proper.]

" Post and Pan House." What sort of half- timbered house is meant by this expression ?

. CUTHBERT BEDE.

[The vertical timbers in the walls of wooden houses are called posts, and the style of work in which they are ex- posed to view, with the intervals filled with plastering, was sometimes called post and pane (Fr. pan.). Halliwell says, "A post-and-pan-house is one formed of uprights and cross pieces of timber, which are not plastered over, but generally blackened, as many old cottages are in various parts of England."]

SOURCES OF A GRACEFUL THOUGHT IN PRIOR.

(1 st S. vi. 430.)

" For hope is but the dream of those that wake." Similarly, the visions (avTaffiai) of poets whose minds reflect the images of absent objects, and who are mentally engaged in travelling, voyaging, ad- dressing an assembly, expending money which they are not really masters of, are compared by Quintilian to reveries or waking dreams otia animorum et spes inanes et velut somnia quaedam vigilantium. Horace, describing the poet's vio- lations of uniformity, says :

" Velut segri somnia vanse Fingentur species."

So natural, so obviously dictated by common sense, are the words of Prior above referred to, that in this passage he can hardly be charged with borrowing the idea from predecessors. " Cre- dimus ? an qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt ? " Stobaeus ascribes the words " Td$ 4\Trfoas eypiryo- p6roiv a.v0p(inru>t> bvelpovs eTi/ot " to Pindar, .ZElian to Plato, Diogenes Laertius to Aristotle. To me there appears to be greater verisimilitude in the inference that the wishes of every human being, if not immersed in sensuality, are parents to this thought : the extravagant sallies of the imagina- tion evolved by desires after things unattainable, are not all who are susceptible of these, conscious that they are but waking dreams ? In Harris's Philological Inquiries are many examples from Arabian poetry.

" The last line " [For hope, &c.], says Mr. Willmott, " is scarcely excelled by Pope's descrip- tion of ' Faith our early immortality.' " Kuhnius in his Commentary on JEliaris Var. Hist., citing the words of Synesius de Insomniis, irav TO&TO, &c., omne illud (quod speraverat) est vera somniantis visio et vigilantis insomnium, &c., remarks :

"Hinc patet Platonem *repi rijs o-Tra-r^K^ eAn-i'Sos, de fallaci spe, locutum esse. At spes confisa Deo vTrdoracrt? eA7rio|u.eV<oj' est, nee cum somniis ullam habet affinitatem."

Pope's description may surely be traced to St. Paul's " Faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The Lord's Day, as expressed in ancient Liturgies, " Domi- nicus Resurrectionis Dies," reminds the faithful Christian that his is Dominica Resurrectionis vita : " A faith which boasts to be for humanity cannot test its strength unless 'it is content to deal with men in all

possible conditions." We know Christianity will

fail, it must fail in Birmingham and Manchester, if it ad- dresses the people in those places mainly as spinners and

, workers in hardware When thoughtful men say

' that a working age of the world is about to begin, they

' mean, I suppose, an age in which those essential qualities

of humanity which belong to working men as much as to

all others shall be more prized than the accidents by which

one class is separated from another. Most important, then,