Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/520

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. DEC. 25, 1903.

SLEEP AND DEATH (9 th S. xii. 389). In- numerable poets have handled this subject, but one verse-writer in particular has been suggested to my mind by DR. FURNIVALL'S request. Patrick Proctor Alexander, who died in 1886, while a typical Bohemian, was at the same time an accomplished literary critic and philosophic writer. He was a friend and companion of Alexander Smith, the poet, a sketch of whom he wrote for 'Last Leaves.' To Frasers Magazine, the Spectator, and other journals Alexander con- tributed poems. The following sonnet from his pen, perfect in its delineation of a mood, and faultless in expression, appeared many years ago in the Spectator. Its theme is not wholly dissimilar to that in the lines cited by DR. FURNIVALL, and its reproduction may be welcome to some readers of ' N. & Q.' : Come to me now ! come ! benignest Sleep ! And fold me up, as evening doth a flower, From my vain self, and vain things which have power Upon my soul to make me smile or weep. And when thou comest, oh, like Death, be deep. .No dreamy boon have I of thee to crave, More than may come to him that in his grave Is heedless of the night-winds how they sweep. I have not in me half that cause of sorrow U hich is in thousands who must not complain ; And yet this moment if it could be mine To lapse and pass in sleep, and so resign All that must yet be borne of joy and pain, I scarcely know if I would wake to-morrow.

JOHN GRIGOR. l(b, Choumert Road, Peckham.

1 presume DR. FURNIVALL is familiar with the celebrated passage in the ' Iliad,' xiv. 231 e t sgq. :

Bath.

Gamroio, &c. PATRICK MAXWELL.

In Pope's 'Homer' (ed. 1804, p. 116) the following line is found :

She seeks the care of Death's half-brother, Sleep. An accurate Greek scholar will be able to say if this is a correct rendering of the original, or if what is quoted under the above heading is more exact.

ALFRED CHAS. JONAS.

. FLATS (9 th S. xii. 49, 134, 211). A descrip- tion of a flat in Edinburgh in the first quarter of the nineteenth century occurs in Lockhart's ' Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk ' vol. i. p. 20.

In 'Humphry Clinker,' published in 1770, there is a most amusing description of the flats in Edinburgh as they existed in those times, and Winifred Jenkins informs her tnend Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall that the cry is heard at night in that quarter

" Gardy loo, which means Lord, have mercy upon us," of course intending t( Gardez 1'eau." Sanitary arrangements were unknown, in those days.

In * Guy Mannering ' is a graphic descrip- tion of the flat in which dwelt "Paulus Pleydell, Esq., a good scholar, an excellent lawyer, and a worthy man." Yet the room in which his library was deposited seems to have commanded a noble prospect from its windows, so presumably the flat was in a lofty situation. The Firth of Forth, North Berwick Law, and the shores of Fife were all visible. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

Flats were certainly in vogue previous to the dates already given, for 1 remember stay- ing with an uncle vyho had a ground-floor flat in Victoria Street in 1867. I believe he was one of the first tenants. In those days Victoria Street was termed Pimlico. The next block of flats raised was named Grosvenor Mansions, in the same street. I well remember Victoria Street with fields on either side, and have seen every block in that tunnel of a street raised. THORNE GEORGE.

PORTRAITS WANTED (9 th S. xii. 429). The two portraits of the Erskine family are at the Rectory, Sutton Coldfield. They were exhibited in Birmingham in 1900.

W. K. K. BEDFORD.

" POUR OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS " (9 th S.

xii. 389). I do not know whether W. B. H.'s interest in the question is limited to the figurative sense or not ; but if not he will perhaps be interested in two articles in Chambers^ Journal for 1885, under the respective titles of 'Oil on Troubled Waters' (p. 77) and 'Some Further Uses of Oil on Troubled Waters ' (p. 470). I regret that I have not so far been able to find an early instance of the use of the phrase.

EDWARD LATHAM.

' RESKIMER, A CORNISH GENT.' (9 th S. xii. 169, 276). For " Reskymer, John, Sheriff of Cornwall, 1536, 1540 (son of Will Reskymer)," see Bpase and Courtney, ' Bibliotheca Cornu- biensis,' 1874, i. 562. ADRIAN WHEELER.

"RAGGIE" (9 th S. xii. 388). In India, in

he early part of last century, when Bellew

wrote his excellent 'Griffin,' the scarlet

'shell" jacket, or mess jacket almost the

Dnly uniform then worn in that country

was invariably called a "raggie," and this

not jocularly or as slang, but seriously and

as a matter of course so much so that it

figured under that name in the formal