Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/45

 8*s. xii. JULY ii, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

37

Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk ! When that this body did contain a spirit, A kingdom for it was too small a bound ; But now two paces of the vilest earth Is room enough.

Shakspeare has in * Cymbeline ' a line with a thought similar to one of Horace, though differently expressed :

Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base. This will remind readers of a stanza in one of Horace's odes :

Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis : Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum Virtus ; neque imbellem feroces Progenerant aquilse columbam.

Horace may be remembered in 'Twelfth Night':

My master loves her dearly : And I, poor monster, fond as much on him : And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.

Somewhat so :

Insignem tenui fronte Lycorida Cyri torret amor : Cyrus in asperam Declinat Pholoen, &c.

Shakspeare and Virgil have hyperboles which resemble one another :

Surges Which wash both heaven and hell.

'Pericles.'

Tollimur in coelum curvato gurgite, et idem Subducta ad Manes imos desidimus unda.

Book III.

Rush on his host as doth the melted snow Upon the valleys ; whose low vassal seat The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon.

' Henry V.'

Although the image is somewhat altered, the above lines remind one of the verse of Horace :

Furius hibernas cana nive conspuet Alpes.

E. YARDLEY.

WESLEY'S PORTRAIT BY KOMNEY (9 th S. xi. 447, 516). Neither of the portraits men- tioned at the latter reference is the original engraved portrait by Romney to which Wesley refers in his ' Diary,' although both may be described as versions of the original (with considerable variations, however), which was engraved by Spilsbury in 1789, and of which an excellent reduced photographic reproduction is given as a frontispiece in Messrs. Hutchinson's recently issued edition of Sou they 's ' Life of Wesley.' If the querist will communicate with me I may be able to assist him. W. ROBERTS.

Royal Societies Club, S.W.

1 am much obliged to the contributors of the two replies to my query which appear at the second reference, and to MR. PIERPOINT

especially for information privately supplied. I am told by another private correspondent, on the authority of an article in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for 189G, pp. 176-8, that Mr. Walter R. Cassells has the original por- trait by Romney, having purchased it at Christie's for 500Z., and that the one at " C.C.C., Oxford " (sic), is a replica. I sup- pose that " C.C.C." here is an error for Christ Church. The portrait in the possession of the Rev. G. Stringer Rowe is said to be another replica. C. C. B.

HIUNG-NU OR HUNS (9 th S. xi. 509). I pre- sume MR. ACKERLEY knows De Guignes's 'Histoire Ge'nerale des Huns' (1756-8). He first propounded the theory that theHiung-nu of the Chinese annals were the same people as the Huns, which drew forth the remark from Voltaire that " c'est une etrange entre- prise de vouloir prouver par des pieces authen- tiques que les Huns yinrent autrefois du nord de la Chine en Sibe'rie." A great deal has been written about the subject since, but in my opinion very little has been added to our knowledge on the subject. Friedrich Hirth communicated a paper entitled ' Ueber Wolga-Hunnen und Hiung-nu' to the Bavarian Academy in 1899 ; but, owing to typographi- cal difficulties, the full text of his paper could not be published at Munich, but was to be printed by the St. Petersburg Academy. Mr. E. H. Parker, British Consul at Kiuugchow, in his ' A Thousand Years of the Tartars ' (Shanghai, 1895), has translated, so he states, everything to be found in Chinese sources about the Hiung-nu. L. L. K.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

Edited by J. A. H. Murray. Vol. VIII. Part II.

R Reactive. By W. A. Craigie, M. A. (Oxford,

Clarendon Press.)

THE latest instalment of the 'New English Dic- tionary,' issued under the direction of Mr. Craigie, contains 112 pages, and constitutes virtually, though not absolutely, a double section, sixteen pages which belong to it having been previously given with the letter Q. It contains 1,434 main words, this number being increased by subordinate entries, combinations, &c., to 3,703, against 257 in Johnson and 1,440 in the ' Century.' Illustrative quotations, moreover, number 14,182, against 1,731 in the best equipped of competitors. Few words com paratively having, we are told, required extensive treatment, the number given is above the average. A notable feature is also, it is said, " the prevalence of groups of monosyllabic words having the same form, but of different origin and meaning." Striking examples of this are supplied by race, rack, rag, rail, rake, rap, rape, rash, rat, rate, rave, and ray. The first