Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/391

 9* s. XH. NOV. u, IMS.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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ma ucta (Ish kabe die Ehre). This phrase is frequently heard in the streets, accompanied with an elaborate wave of the hat indeed, in external politeness as well as real friendli- ness the citizens of Prague rank on a level with those of most continental towns. The Sokol (Falcon) Society have a greeting which has now become national na zdar, a genuine Slav phrase which baffles translation, but means in effect " good success in every way." Rukulibam (I kiss your hand), addressed to a lady, conveys much in a single word.

The important literary relation between this country and Bohemia is apt to be over- looked. The seed sown by Wiclif bore good fruit, although much was spoilt by those who claimed to be his spiritual descendants. Count Liitzow contributes an appreciation of Swinburne to a recent number of the periodical Lumir, which preserves the name of a Cech bard. Prof. Dr. V. E. Mourek, bejoved and honoured by the English com- munity, holds the field with his Cech-English dictionary, and has translated works by Dr. Smiles and other authors. The trans- lations of Shakspeare, Coleridge, and Burns of Prof. J. V. Sladek, the national poet, have long been popular ; the veteran J. Vrchlicky has rendered Macaulay and other bards into his native tongue ; a young and rising man of letters, Dr. Borivoj Prusik, has lately brought out an attractive version of ' Richard Feverel,' besides the 'Pickwick Papers,' and has also made Tshechov, Gorki, and Polish authors known to his countrymen ; Miss M. Jesenska is responsible for a translation of 4 Silas Marner ' ; Prof. Bohuslav Brauner writes scientific papers for English journals. A bibliography of English works translated into Cech would occupy considerable space. As I write, Dr. V. Tille sends me his transla- tion of Augustin Filon's history of English literature.

With all the activity and progress apparent in every direction, superstition lingers in Prague and the country in quaint forms, but this may be due to the Slav temperament. The hotel porter solemnly assured me that ghosts patrol the streets after dark, perhaps the spectral army sung by Longfellow in 'The Beleaguered City.' Dalibor's melodies are said to be heard from that dreadful dungeon on the Hradschin. The genial host and hostess of Zampach make the flesh of visitors creep with the story of the monk's ghost, but I neither saw the apparition nor did the candles burn blue. A professor and journalist told me of black dogs haunting the Vyshe- grad cemetery stray members of Hackel- bergs pack or departed miscreants? The

cognate story of the Peel spaniel visibly horrified the narrators.

In conclusion, suffice it to say that Bohemia and the Cechy present great interest to Englishmen, for whom they feel a high regard. So-called " Bohemianism," which Thackeray reveals to us, has no place in the life of the citizens of Prague. This is a Western, not a Slavonic trait.

FRANCIS P. MARCHANT.

FRANKENSTEIN : RASTELL AND HEYWOOD : THE FIRST PRINCE OF WALES. In 'An His- torical View of the Beginnings of English Comedy,' prefixed to * Representative English Comedies : From the Beginnings to Shake- speare' (1903), Prof. C. M. Gayley, of Cali- fornia, speaking of the Feasts of Fools and of the Ass, says (p. xx) :

" Whether adopted by the Church in its effort to conciliate paganism, or tolerated for reasons of secular policy, these mock-religious festivals were soon the Frankenstein of Christianity ; and it was doubtless against them rather than the seductions of the sacred drama that most of the ecclesiastical prohibitions of the Middle Ages were aimed." W. A. Wheeler in ' A Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction ' describes Frankenstein as "a monster, in Mrs. Shelley's romance of the same name, constructed by a young student of physiology out of the horrid remnants of the church- yard and dissecting-room, and endued, apparently through the agency of galvanism, with a sort of

rctral and convulsive life. This existence, ren- ed insupportable to the monster by his vain craving after human sympathy, and by his con- sciousness of his own deformity, is employed in inflicting the most dreadful retribution upon the guilty philosopher."

And Wheeler quotes by way of illustration a passage from Charles Sumner : "It [the Southern Confederacy] will be the soulless monster of Frankenstein," &c., which should have reminded him that Frankenstein is not the monster, but "the guilty philo- sopher" of Mrs. Shelley's remarkable tale. The story, more often quoted than read, bears a faint resemblance to one of those told, in Sir Richard Burton's charming book, by the Baital or Vampire to the Raja Vikram, wherein the learned dons "in the learnedest university of Gaur (Bengal)," having con- structed a terrible monster, with the appear- ance of a tiger and the muscles of an ele- phant, are incontinently devoured by him.

Prof. Gayley calls (Ixi) John Rastell, author of 'The New Interlude and Mery of the Nature of the Four Elements,' and John Hey wood, the epigrammatist, "friends" of Sir Thomas More : they were both friends and connexions. The former married More's sister Elizabeth. Their granddaughter Eliza-