Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/131

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S. I. FEB. 12, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

123

n an article on Mrs. Oliphant's 'William 31ackwood and his Sons,' which treats mainly >f the famous magazine that bears their lame, says :

"Maginn, who was then a schoolmaster in Cork, communicated for a considerable time under veil of jhe anonymous. Very absurd this mystery seems jouncilof 'Maga.'" P. 57.
 * o us now, but it was scrupulously respected by the

Why should Maginn 's caution seem absurd ? He no doubt gauged accurately the nature of the people he lived among, and acted with but reasonable caution. I feel sure that if in those days a schoolmaster had been known to write for the magazines his pupils would have fallen off, and he would have been spoken of as a frivolous, if not a dan- gerous man. How, I would ask, would the average member of a rural school board regard a master who showed tastes on a higher level than those to which he had been accustomed? Things are, I admit, on the whole somewhat better now than they were formerly, but improvement has been very slow. I believe there are very few of the literary, scientific, or artistic classes now among us, be they old or young, who, if they could be called upon to communicate the secrets of their early life, would not be constrained to tell us that the wretched folk who have long forfeited the good things which the intellect provided for them,

Le genti dolorose,

Ch' hanno perduto il ben dello intelletto "

(Dante, 'Inf.'iii. 17, 18),

had inflicted mental tortures which are still acutely painful to think of, even now that long years have passed away since they came to an end, solely because the sufferers pos- sessed intellectual longings such as the stupid people among whom their lot was cast were, either from nature or the effects of assidu- ous training, incapable of comprehending. I believe tnat in most cases this hatred of the intellectual side of life is produced by assiduous cultivation, not by mere mental incapacity, though of course jealousy must also be taken into account, for it is an observed fact that this form of mental per- version is very rare among the poor. If a man has written an amusing or instructive book, shown an intelligent interest in the things around, or produced anything what- ever that they regard as beautiful, the work- ing classes, alike of the towns and the country, almost always evince great respect for him.

An instructive instance of the fear which still haunts some really accomplished persons of their attainments becoming known to the outer world occurred in my hearing some

time ago. An eminent professional man was staying at a country house where I was also a guest. One day it was raw and damp, so we spent a long time sitting by a cosy fire, gossiping about poetry and poets. When the conversation came to an end my companion said : " Pray don't mention to any one this talk we have had. If it got known that I cared for poetry, everybody would think that I could not possibly be of any use in my pro- fession."

Miss Mitford records, in one of her letters, that Barry Cornwall was an assumed name. He is, sne says, "a young attorney who feared it might hurt his practice if he were known to follow this idle trade" that is, poetry (' Life,' ed. by A. G. L'Estrange, ii. 104). She also tells of another friend of hers, the son of a rich alderman, who was dis- inherited because he would write poetry (ibid. iii. 56). ASTARTE.

REMEMBRANCE OF PAST JOY IN TIME OF SORROW. I read a good article just lately in which the writer truly said, " This sentiment has become a commonplace among poets from Dante onwards." He then went on to remark that it is to be found earlier in Boethius : " For truly in adverse fortune the worst sting of misery is to have been happy." Yes, and he should have said yet earlier still, in the Book of Wisdom, xi. 12: "For their grief was double, namely, mourning and the remembrance of things past." Or, as Wycliffe gives it: "Double anoye hadde take hem, and weilyng with the mynde of thinges passid." R. R.

Boston, Lincolnshire.

CONYBEARE'S ' CAMBRIDGESHIRE.' (See 8 th S. xii. 478.) I have not yet seen this interesting book, so that I do not know whether the phrase in your review "was not a coin," referring to the mark, was Mr. Conybeare's or your own, whether it referred to England only, or to other places where the word was used.

If to the latter, a reference to Copernicus's treatise on coinage ('Monetse cudendse Ratio') will show that in the fifteenth century at least the word was used both for a weight and a coin. He says (p. 52, edition Wolowski, 1864), "Transit autem [moneta] sub nomi- nibus Marcharum, Scotorum, &c., et sunt sub eisdem nominibus etiam pondera " (money circulates under the names of Mark, Scot, &c., under which names weights also are known). And again (p. 30), "Con- fletur massa [ex sere et argento] ex qua marchse xx. fiant quse in emptione valebunt libram unam, id est duas marchas argenti "