Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/160

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. xn. AUG. 22, 1903.

than twenty books by himself, including several other works written by Eneas Silvius, between the years 1475 and 1478.

Of the other two editions of the l Historia Bohemica' printed in the fifteenth century, one was issued at Venice in 1498 by Chris- tophorus de Pensis dictus de Mandello (Hain, at Basle by Johannes de Amerbach (Hain,
 * 256); the other is undated, but was printed
 * 254).

I append a collation of the 1475 edition :

Fol. la. " Enee Siluii Piccolominei Senen'. Car- dinal' Sancte Sabi | lie ad Alfonsum Aragonum Regem Clarissimum in Histo | riani Bohemicam prefatio incipit Lege foeliciter."

Fol. 2b, 11. 6, 7. "Enee Siluii Piccolominei Car- dinal' Sancte Sabine | Historic Bohemice Liber Primus Incipit lege foeliciter."

Fol. 72b. "Finis. | Quo Anno Eneas Siluius Piccolomineus Senen'. Tituli sa' | cte Sabine Car- dinal' Historia' [szclha'c Bohemica' edidit: assu' |

tus est ad Su'mum Pontificatu' Impressorib' j

Mgr'is Johanne Nicolai [sic] Hanheymer de Oppen- heym & Jo [ hanne Schurener de Bopardia. Rome Anno Jubilei et a | Natiuitate Jhesu Christi.

M.CCCC.LXXV. Die x. me' | sis Januarii Memento

mori."

Followed by a death's head. Hain, *255. Seventy - two printed leaves, thirty -three lines to a full page. S. J. ALDEICH.

New Southgate.

DOWNIE'S SLAUGHTER : PARALLELS (9 th S. ix. 367, 474 ; x. 115).

Some have been wounded with conceit, And died of meer opinion straight.

'Hudibras.'

A note to this couplet in Zachary Grey's edition (1744) supplies a parallel to MR. HOBSON MATTHEWS'S story :

" Remarkable are the effects of both fear and joy. A trial of the former kind was made upon a con- demned malefactor in the following manner. A dog was by surgeons let bleed, and suffered to bleed to death before him ; the surgeons talking all the while, and describing the gradual loss of blood, and of course a gradual faintness of the dog occasioned thereby; and just before the dog died, they said unanimously, ' Now he is going to die.' They told the malefactor that he was to be bled to death in the same way ; and accordingly blindfolded him and tied up his arm ; then one of them thrust a lancet into his arm, but purposely missed the vein ; how- ever, they soon began to describe the poor man's gradual loss of blood, and of course a gradual faint- ness occasioned thereby; and just before the sup- posed minute of his death the surgeons said unani- mously, ' Now he dies.' The malefactor thought all this real, and died of mere conceit, though he had not lost above twenty drops of blood.''

A variant of this story is found in Dun ton's
 * Athenian Oracle' (1704, vol. i. p. 239) :

"Fancy is very strong in some persons, especially such as are of a melancholy disposition; the relation of the doctor in the reign of King James the First who undertook either to kill or cure by fancy, is no

foreign answer to this question. The doctor begged some condemned persons to make the tryal, and choosing one among the rest, whose constitution he thought might be most proper to work upon, he preserved him till the last, setting the rest one after another up to the chin in warm water, afterwards breathed a vein, and let them bleed to death ; using to those that stood by such remarks as, * Now such and such veins are exhausted, now so,' till they expired ; and coming to the last person, he was accordingly stript and placed like the rest, when the doctor made a false orifice that would not bleed, using the same remarks of him to the bystanders as he did of the rest, and when he was going to make the last remark he made for the rest, the person swooned away, and died- without loss of blood, purely by fancy."

A closer parallel to the Downie legend occurs in Montaigne's ' Essays ' (1580) :

" II y en a, qui de frayeur anticipent la main du bourreau, et celuy qu'on debandoit pour lui lire sa grace se trouua roide mort sur 1'echaffaut du seul coup de son imagination."

Sir Walter Scott, writing to Joanna Baillie in 1811, and referring to her new volume of tragedies, says :

" By-the-by, a story is told of an Italian buffoon, who had contrived to give his master, a petty prince of Italy, a good hearty ducking and a fright to boot, to cure him of an ague ; the treatment succeeded, but the potentate, by way of retaliation, had his audacious physician tried for treason and condemned to lose his head ; the criminal was brought forth, the priest heard his confession, and the poor jester knelt down to the block. Instead of wielding his axe, the executioner, as he had been instructed, threw a pitcher of water on the bare neck of the criminal ; here the jest was to have terminated, but poor Gonella was found dead on the spot. I believe the catastrophe is very possible." Lockhart's 'Life.'

Where did Dunton and Sir Walter Scott find their anecdotes ? P. J. ANDERSON. University Library, Aberdeen.

STORY OF FRENCH REVOLUTION (9 th S. xii. 88). C. B. will find the character of Lomaque in 'Sister Rose,' Household Words, 1855, vol. xi. p. 217, &c. The story fills several pages. W. G. BOSWELL-STONE.

'2, Bardwell Road, Oxford.

BELL INSCRIPTION (9 th S. xii. 68) Has not MR. GEORGE MARSHALL mistaken R for B in this inscription 1 If so, it would read MAVE- RECiiNACELOR, i e. % " M(aria) ave regina celor(um)." J T B

EPITAPH ATTRIBUTED TO MILTON (9 th S. xii. 67). This epitaph is attributed to Milton by the writer of the ' Life of Mrs. Mary Frith/ London, 16G2, which is apparently reprinted in Johnson's 'Highwaymen.' there is, I think, no other authority for the ascription. I once had occasion to read this ' Life,' and to collect other references to Moll Cutpurse, and