Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/241

 XII. SEPT. 19, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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and interesting romance was not written by our illustrious countryman, but was the production of a contemporary who held all Milton's opinions (even those opinions not published till Milton's posthumous MS. was discovered in 1825), was a very fine Latin scholar and Latin poet as well, and " as like as two peas " in many other ways to the great English Puritan, and yet was not Milton after all. One critic said that this unknown author in a certain passage lacked the self-confidence of Milton, and that in itself was sufficient to settle the question for an expert, and so on ; but not one critic has given the slightest hint yet who Milton's double was, where he lived and died, and what else he wrote besides this very unusual book. Can any reader of ' N. & Q.' help to do this ? NE QUID NIMIS.

[As already stated, we have little doubt that the work is Milton's.]

GERYON (9 th S. xii. 166). This monster represents a deep enigma which has probably not been fully solved. I have read nothing which satisfies me. He was the allegorical presentment of fraud and deceit, and I think he may have been meant to personate

"that old serpent called the devil which

deceiveth the whole world " (Rev. xii. 9), or, as the poet puts it, " tutto il raondo appuzza ' ; (' Inf.,' xvii. 3). Geryon had the face of a man, the body of a serpent touched up with a sting at the extremity, and the hairy fore- limbs of, maybe, a lion or some other ravenous beast. As Thomas Browne says :

" In the Picture of Paradise, and delusion of our first Parents, the Serpent is often described with

humane visage which is not meerly a pictoriall

contrivance or the invention of the Picturer, but an ancient tradition and conceived reality, as it stands delivered by Beda and Authors of some antiquity ; that is that Sathan appeared not unto Eve in the naked form of a Serpent but with a Virgin's head." 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica,' book v. ck.-iv.

The nodi and rotelle on his sides do not lend themselves to easy interpretation. I have wondered if the latter bore any allusion to the badges imposed upon the Jews, who have seldom been credited with fair dealing. The nodi are Gordian ; I must pass them by, or, as a slangy commentator would say, cut them, unless they have reference to the knots of witchcraft. Would that Boccaccio had not " left half told the story of " the Turkish and Tartarian broideries ! Perhaps some useful hints as to the decorative scheme of Geryon's flanks might be obtained at Liberty's.

May I say, before concluding, that there is nothing in the whole of the ' Inferno ' that is more vivid to me than this episode of Geryon 1

How clearly Dante himself must have realized it all ! The monster with its bust on the embankment and its tail in space ; the careful manner in which it puts forth over the abyss ; the sensations, mental and physical, experienced by one of the passengers during the descent all these things seem absolutely true. One fails for a time to notice that the creature lacks the wings one would have thought necessary for its passage through the air with a solid Dante on its back. I suppose that Geryon himself and Virgil were imponderable. ST. SWITHIN.

TONGUE-TWISTERS (9 th S. xi. 269, 455, 493 ; xii. 55). A list of English twisters is given as exercises in elocution books e.g.-, Bell's ' Standard Elocutionist,' Behnke's ' Speaking Voice,' &c. "Peter Piper's practical princi- ples" and the "Austrian army awfully ar- rayed " will serve as examples. In the legend 'Look at the Clock 3 Tom Ingoldsby makes fun of the name of some Welsh mountain, concluding

And so, with your leave, we '11 curtail it to Pen. The repeated list of instruments in Nebu- chadnezzar's orchestra presents difficulties to readers when this chapter occurs as the lesson, and is often read in a tone of ^m- patience which mars the effect.

Some French twisters are given in the appendix to Delille's excellent grammar, from which the following is taken : Quand un cordier, cordant, veut corder une corde, Pour sa corde corder, trois cordons il accorde ; Mais si Fun des cordons de la corde decorde, Le cordon, decordant, fait decorder la corde.

Here are some more examples that I have come across :

Dido dinait, dit-on, Du dos d'un dodu dindon.

" A Sans-Souci il y avait 666 soldats, qui sucaient 666 saucisses, dont 660 etaient avec sauce et 6 sans sauce."

" Un chasseur sachant chasser sans chien." " Ton the t'a-t-il tout ote ta toux ?" " La cavale au Valaque avala 1'eau du lac, et 1'eau du lac lava la cavale au Valaque." II a tant plu Qu'on ne sait plus Dans quel pays il a le plus plu. Mais au surplus, S'il eut moins plu ya m'eut plus plu.

" Bonjour, monsieur 1'original, quand yous des- originaliserez-vous ? Je ne me desoriginaliserai que quand tous les originaux se seront desoriginalises."

The Platt-Deutsch example given by MR. MATTHEWS, written in .German " Eine gute gebratene Ganse ist eine gute Gabe Gottes " is used as a skit on Berlin cockney dialect,