Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/250

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NOTES AND QUERIES. to* s. x. SEPT. 27, 1002.

as Don Carolo d' Austria (second base Son to Rodolph the Emperour, and himself at that time saved by the goodness of his Armour) doth testine. Ibid., pp. 295-6.

But long before these dates Ben Jonsou, in 1609, had twice used the word in a very amusing way in ' The Silent Woman,' Act IV. sc. ii., where Truewit cries out :

" You shall hang no petard here : I'll die rather. Will you not take my word? I never knew one but would be satisfied. Sir Amorous (speaks through the key-hole), there 's no standing out : he has made a petard of an old brass pot, to force your door."

Many years after this, probably between 1620 and 1625, the same author, in his ' Execration upon Vulcan,' wrote the following lines : Blow up and ruin, mine and countermine, Make your petards and grenades, all your fine Engines of murder, and enjoy the praise Of massacring mankind so many ways !

After listening to one who had been in his youth a man of war, let us hear what a man of peace has to say. Robert Burton, in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' part ii. sect. ii. mem. 4, has the following remarks, which, I take it, first appeared in 1621, though I quote from what is declared to be an exact reprint of the edition of 1651 (sixteenth ed., London, B. Blake, 1836, p. 357) :

"Crollius hath made, after his master Para- celsus, aurum fulminans, or aurum volatile, which shall imitate thunder and lightning, and crack lowder than any gunpowder; Cornelius Drible a perpetual motion, inextinguible lights, linum non araens, with many such feats : see his book de naturd elementorum. besides hail, wind, snow, thunder, lightning, &c., those strange fire-works, devilish pettards, and such warlike machinations derived hence, of which read Tartalea and others.'

If Dr. Murray wishes to consult these authorities, he need only turn into the Bodleian Library, whence Burton derived so much of his amazing learning.

From the references given it would appear that the engine was a French invention, and that petard is the more correct spelling. As to the derivation of the word, I will only say in Camden's phrase : " Inquire if you under- stand it not of Cloacinas chaplaines, or such as are well read in Aiax"* (chapter on ' Sur- names,' p. 135).

Since I wrote the above note I have con- sulted Littre's great 'Dictionnaire,' which gives petard as the correct form, but says that "la d ne se prononce pas, et ne se lie pas," which words will account for the diversity of spelling. Shakespeare, accord- ing to Ben Jonson, had "small Latin and less Greek," but he must have had no little

[* An apparent reference to Sir John Harington's Metamorphosis of Ajax.'J

French, if we are to judge by the following Dassage which Littre quotes from Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne's ' Histoire depuis 1550 jusqu'en 1601,' vol. ii. 349: "Voici les premieres nouvelles de ces petars (1580) qui ont tant fait parler d'eux, et qui n'avoient encores este essaiez sinon en un meschant chasteau de Rouargue, qui n'a pu nous donner son nom." Though this 'His- ire' was not published until long after Hamlet ' was written it would seem to show learly when the weapon was first used, and that Shakespeare had adopted the original spelling of the word. JOHN T. CURRY.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. (See 9 th S. viii. 2.)

THE death of the author of ' Festus' on the 6th inst. recalls to me the pleasant message I received from him through his niece, Miss F. C. Carey, in reference to the extract from Mr. Theodore Watts Dunton's letter in the Athenaeum, of April 1st, 1876. The passages were very gratifying to him, but he told his niece that when he wrote ' Festus ' he cer- tainly had never seen ' Paracelsus.' His niece wrote : " My uncle and Mr. Browning had so great admiration for each other's genius, and each was so noble in character, that I am sure that if it had been so the influence would have been as willingly ad- mitted by one as it would have been gener- ously accepted by the other."

Although the papers have had biographical notices of the poet, a few notes as a record may not be out of place in ' N. & Q." He was early brought under poetic influence, as his father, who had been a schoolfellow of Henry Kirke White, was also a writer of verse. When a boy of eight he witnessed Byron's lying in state in the "Old Blackamoor's Head," situated in the High Street, Nottingham. So early as 1836 ' Festus ' was commenced, and in 1839 the book was published by Pickering.

Mr. J. A. Hammer ton, in an essay on ' Philip James Bailey and his Work,' which appeared in the Sunday Magazine, January, 1898, after he had been paying a visit to the poet, de- scribes ' Festus ' as being the answer to Tennyson's hope,

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill :

"Many another has suggested this world problem ; but Philip James Bailey has essayed its solution."

During the whole of his long life the poet enjoyed excellent health. He was passionately fond of the sea, and for a time he resided in Jersey ; then at Cliff Cottage, near Ilfra-