Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/11

 9* s. x. J ULY 5, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

with those he quotes from Cowley, Johnson (unwittingly, I believe) almost extinguished the reputation of a poet who was, Dryden says, " the darling of my youth." The critic is so intent on parading the faults of the writer before our eyes that we are persuaded his poems are unworthy of notice. This is most unjust, for Cowley has very considerable merits which deserve recognition ; and, in any case, his works will repay a diligent study, as may be shown elsewhere.

Dr. Hurd's marginalia in the volume men- tioned are written with very great care, and are confined to those pieces which he printed in his ' Selections.' He has traced all the Latin quotations to their sources, and has many interesting references to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Donne, Clarendon, Milton, Dry- den, Addison, Pope, and Gray, the last of whom died when Kurd was getting near the end of his task. Though an admirer of Cowley, Hurd is not blind to his faults, which he con- demns, but attributes to the vitiated taste of the times. That he is the annotator I have not the least doubt, for the following reason, which seems decisive. The editor of this volume, " the courtly Sprat," as Johnson has once called him, has given only three speci- mens of Cowley's Latin muse. One is his 4 Elegia Dedicatoria ' to Cambridge Uni- versity, another is the version of the first book of the ' Davideis,' and the third is the strange little poem 'Epitaphium Vivi Auc- toris,' which is printed on the last page. On the blank leaf is written the following trans- lation of the lines, which is, I think, better than Henry Morley's, given in his edition of Cowley's 'Essays':

EPITAPH ON THE LIVING AUTHOR. I.

Here, stranger, in this humble nest,

Here Cowley sleeps ; here lies, Scap'd all the toils, that life molest,

And its superfluous joys.

ii. Here, in no sordid poverty,

And no inglorious ease, He braves the world & can defy

Its frowns and flatteries.

in. The little earth, he asks, survey :

Is he not dead, indeed ? " Light lie that earth," good stranger, pray,

" Nor thorn upon it breed ! "

IV. With flow'rs, fit emblem of his fame,

Compass your poet round ; With now'rs of ev'ry fragrant name

Be his warm ashes crown'd ! H.

I have given the lines exactly as they are written and punctuated. They are, we are told below, " Translated in Dr. Hurd s edition

of Cowley's ' Select Works,' 1772." Dr. Richard Hurd, it may be mentioned, was born in 1720, and after being successively Bishop of Lich- field and Coventry, and of Worcester, died in 1808. His name is found several times in these notes, but always in the third person. With the following comments on the Latin text of the above poem I will bring this paper to an end:

" Epitaphium vivi authoris] The conceit of a living death, was quite in the taste of our author. Vita gaudet mortua floribus] The application is the juster, & prettier, because of y e Poet's singular passion for gardens & flowers (on which subject he had written a latin Poem in six Books) : and then, according to the poetical creed,

vivo quse cura eadem sequitur tellure repostum.

Virg. En. 6, 564.*

I, pedes qu6 t'e rapiunt, et Aurse ! ' Forgot his Epic, nay Pindaric art ;' ' But still I love the language of his heart.'

Pope."

These are the last words written in the volume. Any doubt as to the identity of the annotator will be removed when I state that his name is thus given, "R. Hurd," in the margin of the page just before the second quotation, and that the handwriting is every- where the same. * JOHN T. CURRY.

A LIVING MEMORY OF GEORGE IV. 's CORO- NATION REJOICINGS. In the Launceston Weekly News of 7 June appeared a letter from Mr. R. Robbins, a former member of the local Town Council, but now resident in London, giving his recollections of the rejoicings held in the borough at the last three coronations those of George IV. in 1821, William IV. in 1831, and Victoria in 1838. This venerable

Smtleman who has lived to witness the iamond Jubilee procession of her late Majesty in 1897 from the Parliamentary stand at Westminster, and expected to see the royal progress of their present Majesties through the capital in 1902 from a point of vantage in Fleet Street wrote :

" Launceston since I can remember has more than held its own in showing its loyalty to the house of Hanover, both the old town and St. Stephens, at the coronation of George IV. and William IV., when they were separate boroughs, each returning two representatives to Westminster, and each con- tinued their loyalty as strong as ever at the coro- nation of Victoria after the borough had lost three members. St. Stephens for the last three corona- tions held their own festivities. They were then a separate borough, and had a large trade of their own, but time has changed this, and revolutionized their political and commercial system since they

words are very skilfully adapted to Cowley's case, I think.
 * A pardonable slip; it should be 654. Virgil's