Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/75

 JULY 25, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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it does, or would : " Posterior to leading a somewhat dissolute life, Tom Jones was married to Squire Western's daughter." Who that loves his mother-tongue would not use the simple Saxon words before and after instead of these hideous equivalents 1 " Prior to" would also appear to be objectionable in another way, for as time is implied, not place, would it not be more correct to write : "Anterior to his marrying," &c.1 "Ohe! Jam satis est."

The proper and legitimate use of the word prior cannot be better shown than in the following quotation from the sixth edition of Johnson's 4 Dictionary/ published in 1785 : " Whenever tempted to do or approve any- thing contrary to the duties we are enjoined, let us remember we have a prior and superior obligation to the commands of Christ." Here we have it, what it really is and nothing more, an adjective in the comparative degree.

Of all the dictionaries I have examined, the * Century ' is the only one that gives the phrase "prior to." It is there said to be used adverbially, like " previous to," which is a still more indefensible expression ; for why should previous take the place of previously, duly begotten according to the laws of grammar? Some people seem to forget that an adjective is an adjective, and an adverb an adverb, and that the one cannot be the other. From the two examples given in the dictionary just mentioned, one would gather that the phrase is of recent origin. They are taken from G. P. Fisher's ' Beginning of Christianity,' and the Contemporary Review, which was started in 1866. But in the eighteenth edition of Roget's ' Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases ' (1865) I find it grouped as an adverb with "anteriorly, antecedently, ere while," and so forth. Whether it is in the first edition of that work, published in 1852, I do not know, nor does it matter, for I can give an example long before (prior to !) that date. In Sir John Sidney Hawkins's edition of Ruggle's comedy * Ignoramus,' which was printed in 1787, we read on p. ix what follows : "Mr. Ferrar appears, from this life, to have been born on the 1st of Februarj^, 1591 ; his settle- ment at Cambridge, as above related, must therefore have been prior to the 1st of February, 1604." ^

In this and similar instances we cannot regard prior as an adjective correctly employed neither is prior to an adverb, because the objective case follows ; it is nothing but a clumsy prepositional phrase, which no one who wishes to speak or write idiomatic English will employ instead of the

plain Saxon word before; and I hope the Editor of *N. & Q.' and his learned con- tributors will join in the chase and hunt the odious thing to the death.

JOHN T. CURRY.

"A FLEA IN THE EAR." It seems worth noting that in the supplement to Godefroy's 'Old French Dictionary,' s.v. * Puce,' it is shown that the phrases " avoir la puce en Poreiile," to be uneasy, and " mettre a quelqu'un la puce en Foreille," to make one uneasy, were both current in Old French I can find in this expensive work no list of authors quoted, nor any explanation of the abbreviations employed. Surely this is a sad omission. WALTER W. SKEAT.

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers maybe addressed to them direct.

EPITAPH ATTRIBUTED TO MILTON. In a memoir of Mary Frith, alias Moll Cutpurse, which I find in what appears to be (the title- page is missing) a copy of Charles Johnson's 'General History of the Lives and Adven- tures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Pyrates,' &c., London, folio, 1734, I have come upon the following. Can any reader tell me what is the authority for attributing this epitaph to Milton? The lines present some Miltonic peculiarities, and, though rather rough and halting, are not more so than the epitaphs on Hobson, the university carrier :

" When she was dead she was interred in St. Bridget's [St. Bride's, Fleet Street] Churchyard, haying a fair marble stone put over her grave, on which was cut the following epitaph, composed by the ingenious Mr. Milton, but destroyed in the great conflagration of London :

[EPITAPH.]

Here lies under this same Marble, Dust, for Time's last sieve to garble ; Dust to perplex a Sadducee, Whether it rise a He or She, Or two in one, a single Pair, Nature's Sport and now her Care. For how she '11 cloath it at last Day, Unless she sighs it all away ; Or where she '11 place it, none can tell ; Some middle place 'twixt Heaven & Hell And well 'tis Purgatory 's found Else she must hide her under Ground These Reliques to deserve the Doom Of that cheat Mahomet's fine Tomb ; For no Communion she had, Nor sorted with the Good or Bad ; But when the World shall be calcined, And the mixed Mass of Human Kind