Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/389

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S. I. MAY 14, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

381

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY U, 1898.

CONTENTS. -No. 20.

SOTES: Dante and Shakspeare " Strenua nos exercet inertia," 381 Nature Poetry, 382-Font Australian Flora and Fauna, 383 Massage " Hogmanay " Berkshire Parish Eegisters " Campus." 384 " Nynd " Coleridge -Boswell's ' Johnson,' 385 The Standing Egg Board of jriculture Heports Shakspeare's Theatre at Newington itts " Hamish," 386.

5KIKS. " Demon's, Aversion " " Dewsiers " R. L. .evenson " Turthel Cow "Hook of Holland Bunker's till Herald's Visitation S. Ireland " Are you there nth your bears?" Pennefather, 387 Personate=Re- ound Major Longbow " To Sober " " Kitty-witches " Skirmish at Northfleet Foot Measure Poco Mas sions "Co - opt" Musical Instruments Pye lily rPayen de Montmore, 388 Style of Archbishops- -Turner Authors Wanted, 389.

REPLIES: Mortar and Pestle, 389 "Choriasmus" Re- storation of Heraldry, 390 " Selion" Mead, 391 Law Terms Anchorites Boulter Serjeant Glynn Mrs. John Drew, 392 Winchester Cathedral Raoul Hesdin Moon through Coloured Glass, 393 Coins Weight of Books- Poem and Author Wanted Bishop Morton: Theophilus Baton Waverley Novels, 394 " Marifer" " Who stole the donkey?" "To the lamp-post." 395 ' Builder's Guide 'Cheltenham, 396 " Pung," 397 Port Arthur- Hongkong and Kiao-Chou Sonnets on the Sonnet Cervantes Military Trophies, 398.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Shaw's 'Plays Pleasant and Un- pleasant 'Mason's * Art of Chess ' Baring-Gould's ' Lives of the Saints,' Vols. XI. and XII. Aitken's Spectator' 4 Journal of Ex-Libris Society ' ' Edinburgh Review ' ' Gloucestershire Notes and Queries ' * Reliquary.'

Notices to Correspondents.

COINCIDENCES IN DANTE AND SHAKSPEARE.

MAY I venture to call the attention of such of your readers as are students of Dante to a remarkable coincidence between a passage in the ' Convito ' (' Prose, e Rime Liriche di Dante Alighieri,' torn. iv. p. 61, Venezia, 1758) and a portion of the speech of Hamlet, I. iv., which had been in the quarto edition and was omitted in the first folio ? Dante, in his preliminary discourse on the first Canzone of the ' Convito,' says :

" Quando e 1' uomo maculate d' alcuna passione, alia quale talvolta non pu6 resistere: quando e maculate d' alcuno sconcio membro : e quando e maculate d' alcuno colpo di fortuna: quando e maculato d' infamia di parent!, o d' alcuno suo pros- simo; le quali cose la fama non porta seco ma la presenza, e discuoprele per sua conversazione. E queste macole alcuna ombra gittano sopra la chiarezza della bonta, sieche la fanno parere meno chiara, e meno volente."

This passage has been translated as follows by Elizabeth Price Sayer* :

"Now, the man is stained with some passion, which he cannot always resist ; now. he is blemished by some fault of limb ; now, he is bruised by some

'Universal Library," 1887.
 * 'The Banquet of Dante Alighieri,' p, 20, Morley's

blow from Fortune ; now, he is soiled by the ill-, fame of his parents, or of some near relation : things which iame does not bear with her, but which hang to the man, so that he reveals them by his conversation : and these spots cast some shadow upon the brightness of goodness, so that they cause it to appear less bright and less excellent." Shakespeare makes Hamlet say : So oft it chances in particular men, That, for some vicious mole of nature in them, As, in their birth wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin

TJir 4-V.^v ,,', v.,.^,,.- 1, ~ .- _ 1. *

3y f

The form of plausive manners ; that these. men,

they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault: the dram of ill Doth all the noble substance oft do-out To his own scandal.

It should be noted that the thoughts are given by both poets in the same order the sequence is the same.

The coincidence here noticed does not appear to have struck Furness, or Dean Plumptre, or even the anonymous writer of a series of papers in which attention is drawn to many other coincidences in the writings of Shakespeare and Dante, and which ap- peared in Blackwood's Magazine in the years 1884, 1885, and 1886, entitled ' New Views of Shakespeare's Sonnets.'

MARGARET STOKES.

Carrig Breac, Howth, co. Dublin.

"STRENUA NOS EXERCET INERTIA." WILL some reader of * K & Q.' be so kind as to inform me who has rendered these words to the effect that the immobility of our respective idiosyncrasies possesses us thus accounting for the non-effect of change of scene asserted in the preceding " Ccelum non animum mutant," and enforcing the useless- ness of going in search of that happiness which, as stated in the succeeding lines, "hie est: estUlubris"? The lines concerned may be expressed by the following doggerel : Who cross the channel get a change of climate, not

of soul. A passive force that knows no change continues to

control :

We go in search of happiness by b9at as well as car. What you are looking for, my friend, is here just

where you are,

Here or at Little Peddlington if once you under- stand

To keep your mind from worries and your temper well in hand.

But, in the versions to which I have been able to refer, the oxymoron by which