Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/183

 9" s. xii. AUG. 29, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

175

TONGUE-PRICKS (9 th S. xi. 447). If it would be any satisfaction to LEO 0., I can refer him to no fewer than seven volumes in which the proverb referred to appears in print in slightly varying forms (three dictionaries of proverbs and four ordinary dictionaries), e.g. :

Un coup de langue esfc pire qu'un coup de lance." " Un coup de langue est pis qu'un coup de lance." " Tel coup de langue est pire qu'un coup de lance."

And (an older form, referred to a MS. of the thirteenth century) :

A plus grant peine est sanee [guerie] Plaie de langue que d'espee.

From this last it would appear that " tongue- prick" is scarcely a strong enough term to use ; " tongue-wound " would perhaps ex- press the meaning better. I have not, how- ever, met with an instance of the actual use of the proverb by any author, and can only mention the following (nearly the same idea) from the * Testament Politique ' of Cardinal .Richelieu, part i. ch. vi. (quoted in Harbottle and Dalbiac's 'Diet, of French and Italian Quotations ') :

" Les coups de 1'epee se guerissent aisement, raais il n'en est pas de nieme de ceux de la langue, par- ticulierement par celles des rois."

The above, however, is certainly an appli- cation of the proverb in Richelieu's own words.

Littre quotes the following : " ' Le coup de verge fait une meurtrissure ; mais un coup de langue brise les os.' Saci, Bible, Eccle- siaste, xxviii. 21." These figures apparently are the reference to Saci's version of the Bible, and not to the chapter and verse of Eccle- siastes.

" Mieux vault des mains estre battu que de la langue estre feru." Genin, 'Recreations Philologiques,' ii. 245. Ge'nin quotes the proverb from a collection by Hernan Nunez (died 1553). EDWARD LATHAM.

61, Friends' Road, E. Croydon.

MARAT IN LONDON (9 th S. xii. 7, 109). If MR. E. H. COLEMAN would substitute evidence for assertion his observations concerning Marat would carry more weight. How does he prove, in the face of modern writers Bougeart, Ohevremont, Morse Stephens, Cabanes, Bax, and others that Marat was an "atrocious miscreant"? Whence is the evidence that he "must have been in Church Street, Soho," for a very short period ; that he was convicted of stealing 200Z. worth of moneys, &c., from the Ash- molean Museum at Oxford, and "was sen- tenced to five years' imprisonment in the hulks at Woolwich'"? Does MR. COLEMAN know that Le Maitre was the thief, and stole no moneys, but was sentenced to the

five years in March, 1777, and that Marat, M.D., was in Paris in June, 1777, on the staff of the Count d'Artois 1 This creates a little diffi- culty, which MR. COLEMAN may nevertheless be able to clear up. He would also confer a boon if he explained his reasons for the order in which he has given the towns "Newcastle, Warrington, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dub- lin " and state when Marat was in each of them under an alias, and how long, and why. To state that he died by Charlotte Corday's hand is rather hard on your readers. Most people who know that he lived know how he died by this time. He appears to be coming into notice again. ASHBY ST. LEGERS.

JOHNSON'S ' LIVES OF THE POETS' (9 th S. xii. 68). Perhaps no accurate quotation is intended, but a mere reference to, or reminis- cence of, the well-known description of tra- gedy^given by Aristotle in InV Poetics '(vi. 2) as Si tXeov KOL (J>6j3ov Trepaivowa Tr)V TCOV TOLOVTWV Tra6rj/jidT(i)v KadapcrLv.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

RlVER NOT FLOWING ON THE SABBATH

(9 th . S. xi. 508 ; xii. 19, 52). With regard to the river Sambatyon, the omniscient ex- pounder who can always account for the marvellous is represented by Simon Wilkin, F.L.S., the editor of Bohn's edition of Sir Thomas Browne's works (1852). His note to Sir Thomas's reference -to the Sabbatical river (' Pseudodoxia Epidemica,' book vii. ch. xviii. & 11) requires only belief in ** the existence of water-corn-mills in the time of the Emperor Titus " to make the story " perfectly intelli- gible." During the week, while the mills were at work, there had been kept up '* a head of water which had rushed along with a velocity sufficient to carry with it stones and frag- ments of rocks " ; but on the Sabbath day " the miller ' shut down,' and let all the water run through." This comment ends with the question, " What should hinder, in these days of hypothesis, our adopting so ready and satisfactory a solution ? "

F. JARRATT.

As to the historical character of Josephus's ' Wars,' no Jess an authority than Prof. Bury says that the work has all the value of a contemporary witness who had taken part in the war himself and had been present at the most striking scenes, and adds that it was written at Rome in Hebrew, and subsequently translated into Greek ('Student's Roman Empire,' p. 485). JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

In my father's book 'The Old Paths' he gives an extract from the liturgy of the synagogue in the Pentecost prayers : " The