Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/350

 342

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XIL GOT. si, 1903.

a barrow called Coplow, in which, as th Ordnance Survey informs us, human remain have been found. Just below, on the othe side of the road, is a large tumulus caller Stan Low (stone tomb). This is built o stone, of which about half has been remover to mend the road with. I am keeping an eye on it, as I expect that, sooner or later the road- menders will find an interment.

S. O. ADDY.

COWLEY'S 'DAVIDEIS.'

IN W. Davenport Adams's * Dictionary o: English Literature,' of which useful work many would welcome a new and correctec edition, I find a very erroneous statement under 'Davideis.' The compiler, after giving an extract from Dr. Johnson's criticism o: the poem in his life of Cowley, says, " He quotes the following lines as 'an example of representative versification, which perhaps no other English line can equal ' : Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise : He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river's bank expecting stay Till the old stream that stopp'd him shall be gone, Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on."

Mr. Adams has not given the fourth line correctly, for he has substituted the adjective "old" instead of whole, as Johnson has it, who does not himself quote quite accurately, as I shall show presently. Furthermore, he does not see, to judge from his language, that the piece is quoted for the sake of the last line, an alexandrine, which in the old edi- tions of 'The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets' is printed in italics.* But he is to be excused for thinking that the verses occur in the 'Davideis,' for the critic has in- troduced them in the midst of his examina- tion of that poem without the slightest hint that they are not a part of it. One is really tempted to the conclusion that Johnson thought they were, for he evidently looked on them as being original, whereas they are only a translation of a well-known passage in Horace. If he had not for the moment for- gotten that the line he so deservedly com- mends was the English equivalent of

Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis sevum, I do not think he would have failed to acquaint us with the fact, and commented thereon. I now proceed to give Cowley's own words, which are to be found in the tenth of his Verse and Prose,' and I quote from a copy of his works edited at the author's request by Bishop Sprat, and enriched with the
 * Several Discourses by Way of Essays, in

For example, in that of 1801, vol. i. p.

manuscript notes of Bishop Hurd. It is the fourth edition, published in 1674, about which I have already spoken in these pages (9 th S. x. 1). On p. 141 we read :

" But to return to Horace,

Sapere aude,

Incipe ; vivendi qui recte prorogat horam, Rusticus expectat dum labitur [sic] Amnis, at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis sevum.

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ;

He who defers this work from day to day,

Does on a Rivers Bank expecting stay,

Till the whole stream, which stopt him, should be

gone,

That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. Ceesar (the man of Expedition above all others) was so far from this Folly, that whensoever in a journey he was to cross any River, he never went one foot out of his way for a Bridge, or a Foord, or a Ferry, but flung himself into it immediately, and swam over ; and this is the course we ought to imitate, if we meet with any stops in our way to Happiness. Stay till the waters are low, stay till some Boats come by to transport you, stay till a Bridge be built for you ; you had even as good stay till the River be quite past." P. 141.

Dr. Hurd gives the reference to Horace's lines (1 Ep. ii. 40), but he is not satisfied with the above version, as we gather from the following marginal note :

" This translation gives y e Sense, but not y e Grace, of the Original. The following does more justice to y e Latin poet :

To mend his life who has it in his power,

Yet still defers it to a future hour,

Waits, like y e peasant, till y e stream be dried :

Still glides the stream, and will for ever glide. Mr. Nevile's 'Imit. of Horace,' p. 85. H[urd]."

From Lowndes's 'Manual' I learn that Thos. Nevile's ' Imitations of Horace and of Juvenal and Persius ' were printed in 1758. Few, I think, will prefer Nevile's somewhat jingling version to Cowley's, which Johnson, f he did not quote from memory, tried to im- prove, which Mr. Adams has changed for the worse, which even Henry Morley did not print with absolute correctness in his edition of the Essays' (Cassell's "National Library," 1886, D. 172, where jie substitutes "the" for ' this "), but which we all prefer to have in he very words of the writer, who, no mean 3oet himself, was one of the best translators )f poets we have ever had.

JOHN T. CURRY.

BEN JONSON AND GABRIEL HARVEY. (See 9 th S. xi. 201, 281, 343, 501 ; xii. 161, 263.)

IN Jonson's succeeding plays those in vhich the attack upon Marston and Dekker s most prominent we can still find Gabriel larvey recalled. Penniman gives a list of en words disgorged by Crispinus in Jonspn s