Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/523

 9ts.x.D*c.27,i902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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which " was a sort of nickname which comes from the word vilain" and so perpetuate his own disgrace. If the poet's true name was Frangois de Montcorbier, he most probably assumed the name by which he is generally known out of gratitude to his benefactor, his "more than father, Maistre Guillaume de Villon," to whom he leaves his library (' Grand Testament,' p. 77). Whatever modern usage may be, Villon makes the name rime with pavilion, carillon, bouillon, &c., the writer of the ' Eepues Tranches ' with billon and pavilion. B. D. MOSELEY.

THE POETS ON ADVERSITY (9 th S. x. 285, 375). The germs of the same idea may be found in Gray's ' Elegy in a Country Church- yard,' written in 1751, a poem of which nearly every line has been quoted : Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire : Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyres

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.

The same idea is developed and illustrated in several consecutive stanzas.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

At the end of the tenth Satire Juvenal denies the divinity of Fortune :

Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia : nos te Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam cceloque locamus.

But in the seventh Satire he acknowledges

her supremacy :

Si Fortuna volet, fies de Rhetore Consul :

Si volet haec eadem, fies de Consule Rhetor.

Ventidius quid enim? QuidTullius? Annealiud,

quam

Sidus, et occulti miranda potentia fati? Servis regna dabunt, captivis fata triumphos.

Cicero held that Fortune was not the ruler of life. She, however, was too much for him in the end. He must have lost confidence in his own wisdom when he was about to be dispatched by the servants of Antony. Juvenal has remarked on the imprudence of Cicero in bringing his fate on himself :

O fortunatam natam me consule Romam.

Antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si sic

Oninia dixisset.

E. YARDLEY.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S 'WOODSTOCK' (9 th S. x. 65, 170, 252). Is it worth while to dispute about the age to be assigned to Sir Henry Lee in Scott's novel when that most careless of writers has, in the third chapter, made Joceline, the keeper, say to Tomkins, " Nay, do not take the high tone with me, brother ;

remember thou hast not the old knight of sixty-five to deal with " ? C. L. S.

There is a still more curious slip in ' Wood- stock.' It has been pointed out before now that in the twenty-fifth chapter Charles alludes to Milton's ' Samson Agonistes,' which was not published until 1671.

EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, S. Australia.

Whether Sir Walter Scott took the idea of allowing the beard to grow after the decapi- tation of Charles I. in 1648-9 from General Thomas Dalyell (or Dalziel) allowing his beard to grow, I cannot say. Probably it was intended as an indication of grief. The battle of Both- well Brigg, at which General Dalyell was present, was fought in 1679, nineteen years after " the king enjoyed his own again," and in ' Old Mortality ' Sir Walter describes the general as wearing a beard of patriarchal length, "having never shaved since Charles I. was brought to the scaffold " (chap. xxix.). There is an engraving of him in Ohambers's ' Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scots- men,' said to be "From an original painting in the possession of Sir James Dalyell of Binns, Bart." He is represented with long flowing hair, in armour, holding a truncheon in his hand, and cleanly shaven. He died in 1685.

Coming to our own times, I ca'u remember, nearly fifty years ago, the introduction of the beard at Oxford, and to the best of my recollection Canon Jenkins, a Fellow of Jesus College, who had been engaged in missionary work in Natal, was the first introducer of the popular movement in the university. My old friend the late Thomas Adolphus Trol- lope, a frequent correspondent of ' N. & Q.,' prefixes to his ' What I Remember ' a portrait of himself, with a large beard, giving him a leonine aspect. But ecro-erai rj[i.ap to us all, if our lives are spared, when the hand cannot hold the razor, and we must either go un- shaven or call in the services of the tonsor. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

LORD SALISBURY ON DECAYING NATIONS (9 th S. x. 427). The passage referred to may be found in a speech by the Marquis of Salisbury made before the Primrose League, 4 May, 1898. The war between Spain and the United States was going on, but the pas- sage in question follows on a disquisition on the state of the Far East. It runs as follows in the Times, but is too long to quote entirely :

" You may roughly divide the nations of the world as the living and the dying. On one side you have great countries of enormous power growing in