Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/360

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

XL MAY 2, HXB

natural coupling of Goth and Hun, and the precedent of Campbell's phrase, pointed out in COL. PRIDEAUX'S interesting note, Mr. Kipling, in * The Rowers,' probably had directly in mind the Kaiser's " Hunnenrede," in which he is said to have held up to his soldiers the example of Attila's victorious army for emulation. This speech, if correctly reported, seems to add another proof to the one adduced from the naming his son Eitel that Emperor William II. probably considers the Germanic race akin to that of Attila.

M. C. L. New York.

A DISMANTLED PRIORY OF BLACK CANONS AT GREAT MISSENDEN (9 th S. xi. 101, 251). The non -Catholic editor of 'Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII.' has had better facilities for forming a judgment upon the actual state of the English monasteries at the time of their dissolution than either that devout historian Benvenuto Cellini or those rustics in whose traditions MR. FENTON finds a confirmation of his own, or, probably, the late Mr. Sibthorp. Dr. Gairdner's views on this subject are to be found on pp. 164- 167 of ' The English Church in the Sixteenth Century from the Accession of Henry VIII. to the Death of Mary,' published last year. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

BACON ON HERCULES (9 th S. xi. 65, 154, 199). MR. STRONACH says : " The mistakes made in the Shakspearean dramas are often cited as proof that the plays could not have been written by Bacon, but Baconians do not claim Bacon as infallible." Bacon, whatever mistakes he has made, was an excellent classical scholar; and Shakspeare had little knowledge of Greek and Latin. In 'Loves Labour's Lost' Holofernes says: "The deer was, as you know, in sanguis blood ; ripe as a pornewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of coelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven ; and anon falleth like a crab, on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth." It is clear that he makes coelo the nominative case, for he uses the other Latin words in the same case. Later in the play he has canus for dog. His only Latin quotation is from an elementary school-book. The other Latin words and expressions which he uses are very simple and trite. Shakspeare could not have read Tacitus, or other authors, with whom Bacon was familiar ; and he could as soon have flown as have written the Latin which Bacon wrote. He knew the work of one Greek author, Plutarch, through a trans- lation, and the works of two Latin authors, Ovid s Metamorphoses ' and Pliny's ' Natural

History,' in the same way. He might have "lad some knowledge of Ovid's work in the original. But he knew hardly anything more of the classics even through translations. 1 could write more on the subject, but I do not want to make my letter too long, and am afraid of repeating what I have written before in ' N. & Q.' E. YARDLEY.

JOHN CARTER, ANTIQUARY (9 th S. xi. 207). Although I send no answer to MR. HEBB'S inquiry, it may interest him to know that previous inquiries respecting John Carter have appeared in ' N. & Q.' See l sfc S. ii. 40 ; 2 nd S. iv. 107, 137. John Gorton's 'Bio- graphical Dictionary,' 1847, furnishes a his- tory of his life and works, said to have been obtained from " Private Information."

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

COACHMAN'S EPITAPH (9 th S. xi. 189). In the churchyard at Uphollaud, near Wigan, Lancashire, is a gravestone with this inscrip- tion :

Here underneath thou dost approach man, The body of John Smith the coachman.

There is no date upon it. G. H. A.

ARTHUR O'CONNOR (9 th S. xi. 81, 246). COL. PRIDEAUX'S kindly communication anent the malcontents of 1798, and the special exception he has taken to the term " savage " as applied by Froude to Arthur O'Connor, induce me to ask permission to direct attention to the opinions expressed in other quarters about the character of this devoted United Irishman. In Sir Jonah Barrington's ' Personable Sketches of His Own Times ' (Routledge & Sons, 1869), at vol. ii. p. 99, will be found the following :

" General Arthur O'Connor was a remarkably strong-minded, clever man, with a fine face, and a manly air ; he had, besides, a great deal of Irish national character, to some of the failings whereof he united several of its best qualities. I met him frequently, and relished his company highly."

The great Napoleon appointed Arthur O'Connor a General of Division in 1804, but, according to the ' Biographic Generale,' " the openness of his character, and his unalterable attachment to the cause of liberty, rendered him little agreeable to Napoleon, who never employed him."

Arthur O'Connor's portrait will be found in Sir Jonah Barrington's ' Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation' (Paris, G. G. Bennis, 1833), and in Dr. Richard R. Madden's 'Lives and Times of United Irishmen,' 1842, in which it is recorded that "no man was more sincere in his patriotism, more capable of making