Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/373

 x. Nov. s, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

365

small contribution to the knowledge of the Strassburg press in the fifteenth century.

WILLIAM E. A. AXON. Manchester.

BRONTE. In the Gent. Mag. of February, 1813, p. 179, I find the following interesting entry under 'Marriages' :

" At Guiseley, near Bradford, by Rev. W. Morgan, minister of Bierley, Ray. P. Bronte, B.A., minister of Hartshead-cum-CliftOii, to Maria, third daughter of the late T. Bromwell [i.e., Branwell], esq., of Penzance. And at the same time, by the Rev. P. Bronze, Rev. W. Morgan to the only daughter of Mr. John Fennell, headmaster of the Wesleyan Academy near Bradford."

W. ROBERTS.

47, Lansdowne Gardens, S.W.

MR. JUSTICE MAULE MISQUOTED. A curious case of misquotation, absolutely spoiling a very famous utterance, occurs in Mr. H. Bellot's pleasant book 'The Inner arid the Middle Temple' (Methuen, 1902). I allude to Mr. Justice Maule's celebrated sentence on the impecunious bigamist, which had a strong bearing upon the revolution in the law of divorce brought about in 1857. It takes very slight alteration in Maule's speech to ruin wholly the satire which appears in almost every line. To show how much an inaccurate writer may innocently asperse the powerful sentences and cut down the pungent sarcasm of a judge I append the sentence, and also Mr. Bellot's paragraph, taken from his book, where it appears in inverted commas. The sentence is from the Times of 27 January, 1857, and the Law Magazine and fieview, 1857, p. 23:

The Times.

" Prisoner, you have been convicted upon clear evidence ; you have intermarried with another woman, your lawful wife being still alive. You have committed the crime of bigamy. You tell me, and indeed the evidence has shown, that your first wife left her home and her young children to live in adultery with another man. You say this prosecu- tion is an instrument of extortion on the part of the adulterer. Be it so. I am bound to tell you that these are circumstances which the law does not in your case take notice of. You had no right to take the law into your own hands. Every Englishman is bound to know that when a wrong is done the law, or perhaps I should rather say the constitu- tion, affords a remedy. Now listen to me, and I will tell you what you ought to have done. Im- mediately you heard of your wife's adultery you ought to have gone to an attorney and directed him to oring an action against the seducer of your wife. You should have prepared your evidence, instructed counsel, and proved the case in court ; and recollect that it was imperative that you should recover, I do not mean actually obtain, substantial damages. Haviug proceeded thus far, you should have em- ployed a proctor and instituted a suit in the Eccle- siastical Courts for a divorce a mensd et thoro. Your case is a very clear one, and I doubt not you would

have obtained your divorce. After this step your course was quite plain : you had only to obtain a private Act of Parliament to dissolve your marriage. This you would get as a matter of course upon pay- ment of the proper fees and proof of the facts ; you might then have lawfully married again. I perceive, prisoner, that you appear scarcely to understand what I am saying to you, but let me assure you these steps are constantly taken by persons who are de- sirous to dissolve an unhappy marriage. It is true, for the Wise Man has said it, that ' a hated woman when she is married-is a thing that the earth cannot bear,' and that 'a bad wife is to her husband as rottenness to his bones.' You, however, must bear this great evil, or must adopt the remedy prescribed by the constitution .of your country. I see that you would tell me that these proceedings would cost you 1,000?., and that your small stock-in-trade is not worth 100?. Perhaps "it may so be. The law has nothing to say to that ; if you had taken these pro- ceedings you would have been free from your pre.- sent wife, and the woman whom you have secondly married would have been a respectable matron. As you have not done so you stand there a convicted culprit, and it is my duty to pass sentence upon you. You will be imprisoned for one day."

Mr. Bellot.

" You have broken the laws of your country. You had a drunken, unfaithful wife, the curse of your existence and her own. You knew the remedy the law gave you, to bring an action against the seducer, recover damages from him, then go to the House of Lords and get a divorce. It would have cost you altogether l.OOO/. You may say you never had a tenth of that sum ; that is no defence in law. Sitting here as an English judge, it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Your sentence is one day's imprisonment."

I venture to think that Maule's sentence is worthy of a place in ' N. & Q.,' both for the benefit of readers and to lessen the chance of damaging his wit by misquotation.

W. H. QUARRELL.

GLOWWORM AND FIREFLIES. - - William Blake, in his little poem entitled ' A Dream,' about a strayed emmet, has the following :

. Pitying, I dropt a tear : But I saw a glowworm near, Who replied, " What wailing wight Calls the watchman of the night ?

I am set to light the ground, While the beetle goes his round ; Follow now the beetle's hum ; Little wanderer, hie thee home ! "

Blake is the most childlike of poets, and it is interesting to find the same metaphor, though somewhat differently applied, used by a very young child. W. H. Hurlbut, in bis ' Pictures of Cuba ' (Longmans, 1855, p. 81), speaking of the fireflies, says :

"The night glances with living meteors. The IMCM//O* are indeed inconceivably brilliant. ' Watch- men of the insects,' serenos de los bichos, a lovely quick-witted boy of four summers, the child of one of my friends, called these torch-bearers when he