Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/149

 S. I. FEB. 19, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

141

LONDON, SATVEDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1893.

CONTENTS. -No. 8.

N OTBS : " Medicus et Pollinctor," 141 " Random of a shot" Byron and Shelley, 142 Bibliography The An- gelus in Spain, 143 " Sybrit " Mortimer's Hole A Pseudo- Dickens Item, 144 "Colley Thumper" " Mouldy " " Down to the ground "Irish Troops at the First Crusade, 145" Breeches " Bible, 146.

QUERIES : " Culamite " " Dewark "Rifled Firearms "The Little Man of Kent "Elizabethan Dialogues o Wales Hammersley's Bank, 146 Breadalbane Raphael Engraving ' New Zealand' 'Tom Jones' Arabs and Agriculture Sir T. Dickeneon Author of Poem Apul- derfield Nicholas Clagett To Play Gooseberry Original Edition of Giraldi Cinthio, 147 Sources of Quotations- Nouns ending in O Da Vinci's ' Flora ' Pedigrees- Hansom, 148.

BEPLIES : Swansea, 148" One touch of nature," 149 "WingCd Skye," 150 The Lord of Allerdale A Book- binding Question, 151 Indian Magic E. G. K. Browne Brewster's ' Newton 'Wren and Ridout, 153 Henchman Goudhurst Bayswater, 154 The Last Letter of Mary, Queen of Scots Larks in August, 155 The Earl of Dun- fermline " Difficulted " Lady Elizabeth Foster The Green Table, 156 Enigma Sutton Arms T. G. Masonic Signs G. J. Harney, 157 Francis Douce Castlereagh's Portrait De Ros Woodes Rogers, 158.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Vere Foster's ' The Two Duchesses ' Cunningham's ' Alien Immigrants to England ' Baring- Gould's Lives of the Saints,' Vols, IX. and X.' Journal of the Ex-Libris Society.'

Notices to Correspondents.

jfato,

"MEDICUS ET POLLINCTOR."

THE supposed lethal exploits of professors of the healing art are ancient su ejects for jesting. (And the most inveterate jokers are perhaps the swiftest in invoking the physi- cian's aid.) In De Quincey's brilliant essay on 'Murder considered as One of the Fine Arts,' naturally this theme could not be omitted. De Quincey refers to an epigram on the subject which he found, not indeed quoted, but fully described, in one of the notes of Salmasius on Vopiscus.

Now Vopiscus is an author not much in demand at Mudie's, but an examination of the fine edition of the 'Historke Augustae Scriptores ' printed in ample folio at Paris in 1620 might do the patrons of the circulating library some good, if only by inspiring them with the awe and respect due to a really handsome book. On the title-page is an engraving of a ship sailing gallantly upon a sea of curly waves. No doubt it had another symbolism, but the barque has carried Vopiscus and his five companion historians for more than two and a half centuries, and is in no greater danger of perishing now than on the day it was launched a handsome book,

well printed, well edited, well indexed. Into these extensive annotations of the later Roman historians Salmasius has emptied the fruits of his wide scholarship. And it is perhaps not with unmixed regret we find that, even in those days of giants, the giants sometimes stumbled. Apparently trusting to memory, Salmasius attributes to Lucilius what all the editors of the ' Greek Anthology ' regard as of uncertain authorship. The Opium-Eater's description of the contract between "Medicus et Pollinctor" is that the doctor agreed to kill all his patients for the benefit of the undertaker, who in return gave half of the linen bandages which he stole from the corpses. The wholesale character of this transaction is somewhat minimized later on. When the article appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, Christopher North apparently looked up the epigram and added the Greek text, and this translation of the original :

Damon, who plied the undertaker's trade, With Doctor Krateas an agreement made. What grave-clothes Damon from the dead could

seize,

He to the Doctor sent for bandages ; While the good Doctor here no bargain-breaker Sent all his patients to the Undertaker.

When De Quincey revised this essay in 1854 for the fourth volume of 'Selections Grave and Gay,' he omitted Wilson's translation if it is Wilson's ; but it has been restored by Masson, and is quoted, without acknowledg- ment, by Lord Neaves in his charming mono- graph on the ' Greek Anthology.' De Quincey is wrong in saying that the names of these classical exemplars of professional friendship are unknown, for, as we have seen, Krateas was the name of the skilful physician, and Damon that of the enterprising undertaker. Herder, in his German version of the epigram, gives an ingenious twist to the verse by calling them Damon and Pythias. He regards pollinctor as the equivalent of grave- digger. The Roman pollinctor was a sub- ordinate of the real under taker, the libitinarius, who took charge of all the arrangements of the funeral. This functionary derived his title from the goddess Libitina, the cheerful divinity who presided over corpses and burials, and at whose temple he exercised his calling. The special office of the pollinctor was to "lay out" the body and prepare it for the tomb. He also, possibly, made the mould of the dead man's face from which was obtained the waxen image used in the funeral pro- cession. The Rev. William Shepherd in his version of the epigram, which preceded that of Christopher North, regards sexton as the fitting equivalent :