Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/134

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 s. x. A. IG, 1902.

authorship based on Sonnet Ixxvi., to which the learned judge frequently recurs. He says ,p. 156):

" The author of the Sonnets, admittedly, was the Author of the Poems and the Plays, and the whole Shakespearian question would seem to resolve itself into the question, who was the author of the

Sonnets? The author could not have been Shake-

spere. If he kept Invention he did not keep it in a noted weed. He had no reason to conceal his name."

Judge Webb again quotes the line about invention at p. 162. At p. 64, after quoting the sonnet, he says : " Here the author certainly intimates that Shakespeare was not his real name, and that he was fearful lest his real name should be discovered."

Again (p. 264), writing of this sonnet, he speaks of "the sonnet which warned the public that Shakespeare was not the real name of the author, but the noted weed in which he kept Invention." See also p. 65.

But does the author of the sonnet really endeavour to conceal his name? What are the lines relied on ?

Why write I still all one, ever the same, Andl keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed ? O know, sweet love, I always write of you.

Here I think the ordinary reader would attribute to the words no other meaning than that the poet ever wrote to the same purpose, ever (as he says) kept his poetry dressed in the same well-known dress :

O know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument.

It follows that the person addressed could recognize the author as plainly as if the sonnet had been signed William Shakespeare. In Sonnets cxxxv., cxxxvi., and cxliii. the poet, so far from concealing his name, plays on it again and again. Now why Francis Bacon should write three sonnets punning on a name by which (on the Baconian hypothesis) the person addressed can never have known him or, indeed, any one else for that matter remains altogether un- explained. W. E. ORMSBY.

THE INVENTOR OF THE POSTCARD. Dr. Emanl. Hermann, Councillor of the Austrian Ministry of Commerce, to whom is ascribed the invention of the postcard, died in Vienna 14 July, at the age of sixty-three. Dr. Her- mann first suggested the idea of the postcard in an article which appeared in the Neue Freie Presse in 1869, and his suggestion was carried into effect by the Austrian post office almost immediately. The price was two kreutzers, which is less than a halfpenny, and

the communication on the card was restricted to twenty words ; but this limitation was soon dropped. Germany was, I believe, the next country to adopt the postcard, after which it very soon became universal.

FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.

"CoND." The 'N.E.D.' gives the verb cond in the senses of "to conduct, to direct the helmsman how to steer a ship." I do not, however, find the noun cond, which in the passage below seems to mean " the place from which orders are given for the steering of a ship ":-

1766. " Such, for example, as the ship that came in one night from the Cfape of Good Hope plump into the harbor of Goa, a distance of some thousands of miles, the devil holding the helm, and the Virgin Mary at the cond, in quality of quarter-master. - Grose, ' A Voyage to the East Indies,' new edition, 2 vols., ii. 170.

W. CROOKE.

[Dr. Murray gives the word under con, conn, but the earliest quotation is 1825.]

' SERGEANT BELL AND HIS RAREE-SHOW.' Sotheby's sale catalogue for 22 July includes the following item :

"[Dickens (C.)] Sergeant Bell and his Raree- Show, embellished with woodcuts by Cruikshank, Thompson, Williams, &c. Tegg, 1839."

The book was, I believe, written by George Mogridge, a voluminous writer for the young, and one of those who " borrowed " the pseu- donym of " Peter Parley " from the American Goodrich, who first made it famous. The association of Dickens's name with it is surely a cataloguer's mistake. If not, I should be glad to learn the extent of the novelist's connexion with a book so widely different from his usual work. By the way, the ' D.N.B.' (vol. xxxvi. p. 302) gives 1842 as the date of publication. WALTER JERROLD.

Hampton-on-Thames.

THEMISTOCLES AND THE PELOPONNESIAN FLEET. There is a curious slip in Mr. Bury's truly admirable 'History or Greece,' with reference to which a few words may be of interest. It is at the bottom of p. 326 (ed. 1900), where we read :

"The activity of Themistocles in defeating the designs of Sparta at this period is reflected in the story that he induced the Athenians to set fire to the Peloponnesian fleet in Thessalian waters."

In Latin there are separate verbs (suadeo and persuadeo) for endeavouring to persuade others to do anything and for actually succeeding in such endeavour, but in English persuade can only mean the latter, and for the former we are obliged to use three words, " try to persuade." In like manner to induce is to lead or prevail upon a person to do a