Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/199

 fl* s. ii. SEPT. 3, '980 MOTES AND QUERIES.

191

May love, and peace, and friendship rest

Perpetual inmates in your breast,

To stamp a bliss that may endure

To make you blest as you are pure ;

To tune that song, that charmed the groves,

To your own raptures, your own loves.

For the full composition vide 'The Life and Times of Henry Grattan,' by his son, Henry Grattan, M.P. (London, Henry Col- burn, 1839). HENRY GERALD HOPE.

Clapham, S.W.

ECCENTRICITIES OF TEMPERATE LATITUDES (9 th S. ii. 104). As the month of 1491 in which the Grand Canal of Venice was frozen is not mentioned in the quotation from Bembo, the following notice of the same winter by a Venetian chronicler may be worth adding :

" A' 10 de Zener, e stk grandissimo fredo, tal che se ha agiazzk la laguna si lattamente che si camina al seguro da Camaregio [sic] a Marghera ; et e st& conduto da Marghera in Canaregio alguni manzi su per il giazzo. ' Annali Veneti di Domenico Mafipiero' ("Archivio Storico Italiano," torn. vii. parte ii. p. 686).*

In the subjoined translation I have modernized the names ; but the driving of the oxen across the frozen lagoon to Venice is a tame achievement compared with the doings on the ice of the Grand Canal related by Bembo. This is not the only recorded instance of severe winter weather in Venice. Misson, writing from Venice on 20 January, 1688, says :

" I have read somewhere in Mezeray's History, that the Adriatick-Sea was frozen in the Year 860 (others say in 859), and that they went in a Coach from the main Land to Venice. As for us, we were oblig'd to take Gondola's at Mestre, and were about an Hour and an half on the Water." ' A New Voyage to Italy,' 1695, i. 146.

I am not cognizant of any account of the weather in England in 1491, but have met with notices of that year's winter in other parts of Europe. Hungary is said to have been visited in 1491 by a frost which made frightful havoc in the army of King Ladislas, and it is on record that in this very winter the Scheldt was frozen. (See Torfs's ' Fastes des Calamites Publiques,' 1862, pp. 42, 267.) From the proximity of the mouth of the Thames to the embouchures of the Scheldt we are at liberty to conjecture that our own country must have suffered from cold in 1491, especially when we find that an earlier freezing of the Scheldt (in " 1463 ou 64," as Torfs expresses

the lagoon was frozen so thoroughly as to afford a safe passage on foot from Canal Regio to Malghera ; and a herd of oxen was driven over the ice from Malghera to Canal Regio."
 * "On 10 January there was intense cold, and

it, the uncertainty arising perhaps from the old computation of the year) was synchronous with "ane fervent froste thrugh Englonde, and snowe, that menne myght goo overe the yise, and a fervent colde," which Warkworth, with a remarkable oxymoron,* registers in his 'Chronicle' (p. 3) as an extraordinary occurrence in the third year of Edward IV. (1463-4). On the other hand, the 'Chronique Scandaleuse ' records sub anno that the winter of 1463-4 in France was "court sans estre froit." F. ADAMS.

106A, Albany Road, Camberwell.

BARBERS (9 th S. i. 467). Here are some historic barbers. There is the barber of Midas, whom Ovid commemorates, 'Meta- morph.,' xi. 182 :

Sed, solitas longos ferro resecare capillos, Viderat hoc famulus.

Ctesibius, the barber at Alexandria, Athen- seus. 1. iv. c. 24.

The barber of Archelaus, to whom, on being asked how he would be shaved, he replied, "In silence": IIws a-f Ketpw ; o-twTnui',

(Plutarch, 'Apophthegm.,' 'Opp. Mor.,' Paris, 1624, p. 177a; also 'De Garrulitate,' ib., p. 509a).

The barber of Herod, who spoke of having been tempted by Tiro to cut the king's throat, was stoned by the populace (Josephus, ' Ant.,' xvi. 17). Compare with this the story of Domitian, whose barber saw on his towel an inscription after he was hired to kill him. Domitian, of course, is only the emperor for the purpose of the story (' Gesta Romanorum,' Wright, vol. ii. p. 70, tale xxiii. ; ' Gesta Rom.,' Osterley, cap. 103, Berl., 1872, p. 431).

The barber who spread the news of the defeat of the Athenian army in Sicily, and narrowly escaped being put to death on the wheel (Plut., ' De Garrul.,' u.s. p. 509a, sqq.). There is also the story of this in Plutarch's 'Life of Nicias' (Langhornes' translation, vol. iii., 1819, p. 461).

The "servant of Caesar's, who was his barber, a timorous and suspicious man, led by his natural caution to inquire into every- thing, and to listen everywhere about the palace," found out a plot against Caesar " Life of Julius Caesar,' ib., vol. iv. p. 427).

The barber Licinus, whom Horace men- tions (' De Arte Poet.,' 300, 301) :


 * Not peculiar to him, for Fabyan (ed. Ellis,

p. 609) says of the frost of 1435 that it "frase y 8

Thamys feruently." Con-pare Ecclesiasticus xliii.

21 ; Lucan, iv. 52; Tacitus, ' Ann.,'xiii. 35; Milton

P. L.,' ii. 595. See also Tassonr's explanation,

'come si pu6 dire che freddo abbruci" (' Pensier

Diversi,' 1636, p. 28).