Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/206

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NOTES AHD QtlfeRIE. ft* s. t MAR. 5,

They were riot/ originally of South Wales, but probably came from one of the western counties of England. I could procure further information if desired.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS. Town Hall, Cardiff.

THE PORTER'S LODGE (8 th S. xii. 507; 9 th S. i. 112). Richie Moniplies loq. :

"However, they spak only of scourging me, and had me away to the porter's lodge to try the tawse on my back, and I was crying mercy as loud as I could ; and the king, when he had righted himsell on the saddle, and gathered his breath, cried to do me nae harm; 'for,' said he, 'he is ane of our ain Norland stots, I ken by

the rowt [roar] of him.' But since I am clear

of the tawse and the porter's lodge," &c. 'The Fortunes of Nigel,' chap. iii.

The above is a direct allusion to the discipline of " the porter's lodge." The following may be considered a more indirect allusion to the same thing. The Lady of Avenel is address- ing Roland Graeme :

"Go to, sir, know yourself, or the master of the household shall make you know you are liable to the scourge as a malapert boy. You have tasted too little the discipline fit for your age and station."' The Abbot,' chap. v.

have

. . nothing

is so conciliating to young people as severity."

JONATHAN BOUCHIER. Ropley, Alresford.

AUTHORS OP QUOTATIONS WANTED (9 th S. i. 29).

" Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non opus est." This is one of the proverbs in the collection of Erasmus, and, as is the case with so many other proverbs, the authorship appears to be unknown. But there is reference to a similar expression in the ' Poenulus ' of Plautus :

Invendibili merci pportet ultro emptorem adducere, Proba merces facile emptorem reperit, tametsi in

abstruso sita 'st. Act I. sc. ii. 128, 129.

In books of Latin commonplaces it occurs as an illustration of " arrogantia.

ED. MARSHALL, F.S.A. " The penalty of injustice," &c. The passage inquired for is no doubt Plato, ' Theae- tetus,' 176D-177A, where Socrates, speaking as a character in the dialogue, is made by Plato to say that the punishment of wickedness "is not that which they [the wicked] suppose, blows and death, of which they sometimes suffer nothing when they do wrong, but one which cannot be escaped," viz., becoming unlike the divine, and like the contrary, they live a life according to that which they resemble. A.

(9 th S. i. 89.)

" There is just light enough given us," &c. Probably a free translation or adaptation of Pascal, ' Pensees,' part ii. p. 151, ed. Faugere : " II y a assez de lumiere pour ceux qui ne desirent que' devoir,

Truly, our sapient forefathers appear to ha thought with Mrs. Malaprop that "nothii

et assez d'obscurite pour ceux qui out une disposition contraire " (quoted in Farrar's ' Hulsean Lectures,' p. 10). G. H. J.

(9 th S.i. 129.) Better to leave undone than by our deed Acquire too high a fame when nim we serve 's away. The lines are from Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra,' III. i. The querist's "he" in the hyper- metrical second line is grammatical, Shakespeare's "him" is not. Dr. Abbott, in his 'Shakespearian Grammar' (1875 ed., 246), treats it as an attraction of the antecedent into the case of the omitted relative, but it is an inelegancy of speech, probably peculiar to Shakespeare, which is wholly indefen- sible. Dr. Abbott, without noticing this example, quotes another, to which may be added a third : ' ' Ay, better than him I am before knows me " ( ' As You Like It,' I. i. 46). F. ADAMS.

" Si vis pacem, para bellum." In the form " Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum," this comes from Vegetius, ' De Re Militari,' 3. Prolog. ED. MARSHALL.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. A Literary History of India. By R. W. Frazer,

LL.B. (Fisher Unwin.)

WITH this volume by the Lecturer on Telegu and Tamil at University College and the Imperial Institute and the Librarian and Secretary of the London Institution, a man of practical experience in India and author of ' Silent Gods and Sun-Steeped Lands 'begins an important series to be called " The Library of Literary History." The aim of the series, sufficiently indicated in its title, is to supply a history of " intellectual growth and artistic achievement," which, "if less romantic than the

popular panorama of kings, finds its material in

imperishable masterpieces, and reveals some- thing at once more vital and more picturesque than the quarrels of rival parliaments." Of the series to be thus constituted many volumes, which have been entrusted to capable writers, are in preparation. So far as we can judge, few of these involve labours more difficult and more important than those under- taken and accomplished by Mr. Frazer, and none, probably, offers greater difficulty to the writer with no special and trained knowledge who seeks to do justice to the work that has been done. So far as regards the philosophical aspects of the work, we are still in a period of transition, when a creed in some respects as conservative as that of the Hebrew or the Christian finds itself in presence of a youth- ful and an aggressive agnosticism, the outcome of recent educational influences, and hardens itself against the approaching and probably the inevit- able. Mr. Frazer's task has, moreover, been ren- dered more difficult by the obvious impossibility, within the space assigned him, of dealing adequately with "the significance of the early sacrificial sys- tems theorigin and purport of the epics, and...

the Grseco- Roman influence on the form of the Indian drama." As in the case of the promised and forthcoming 'Literary History of the Jews,' the history of the literature is necessarily that of the religion. Beginning with the incursion of the fair- skinned Aryan tribes through the bleak mountain passes which guard the north of India, Mr. Frazer