Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/470

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. it. DEC. 10,

five stanzas, nineteen of which are given at the end of his 'Life' in Cassell's edition. And in Forster's 'Life of W. S. Landor,' ed. 1895, p. 28, we find two stanzas in this metre which appear to have been written by Landor in 1794.

To the interesting parallels furnished in chap. xvii. of Mr. Walters's valuable work I venture to add the following, not knowing whether in any of them I have been antici- pated.

1. 'In Memoriam,' Ixxvii. 2 :-

These mortal lullabies of pain

May bind a book, may line a box.

Montaigne, ' Essays,' ii. 18, says of his own writings, "En recompense, j'empecherai peut- etre que quelque coin de beurre ne se fonde au marcne," with two quotations from Martial and Catullus to the same effect, which Tennyson may have had in mind.

2. 'The Lord of Burleigh,' lines 79, 80 :

With the burden of an honour Unto which she was not born.

In Ovid's ' Heroides,' ix. 29, Deianira says to Hercules :

Quam male inaequales veniant ad aratra juvenci,

Tarn premitur magno conjuge nupta minor ; Non honor est, sed onus.

3. 'In Memoriam,' vi. 1, 2 :

One writes, that "Other friends remain," That " Loss is common to the race" And common is the commonplace

That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more.

Colton in his 'Lacon,' vol. ii. 247 (1822), writes thus :

" Most of those arguments which are adduced as pregnant with consolation under our misfortunes are not an alleviation, but an aggravation of our ills. Thus if our friends can prove to us that the calamity under which we labour is what all are liable to, that none will in the end be exempted from it, and that many others are now actually

suffering under it, these melancholy truisms

ought rather to a benevolent mind to be a matter of regret."

4. The lines that follow :

Too common ! never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break,

i. e., with news of death, may be compared with Lucret., ii. 679 :

Nee nox ulla diem, neque noctem aurora secuta est. Quse non audierit mixtos vagitibus segri Ploratus, mortis comites et f uneris atri.

5. The illustration of the dragon-fly in ' The Two Voices ' was used in the same way, and with detailed description, by Dr. Olyn- thus Gregory in his 'Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion' (1815).

6. ' In Memoriam,' xxi. 6 :

I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing,

Goethe had written :

Ich singe wie der Vogel singt ; and Lamartine in ' Le Poete Mourant ': Je chantais comme 1'oiseau gemit.

7. ' The First Quarrel,' iv. :

I was a child, an' he was a child. So E. A. Poe in 'Annabel Lee':

I was a child, and she was a child. The date of ' Annabel Lee ' is 1849 ; that of 'The First Quarrel ' is apparently later. The coincidence is curious.

8. ' Lady Clara Vere de Vere ':

'Tis only noble to be good.

See No. 137 of the Guardian, which has for its motto Juv. ' Sat.' viii. 24 :

Sanctus haberi

Justitiaeque tenax, factis dictisque mereris ? Agnosco procerem.

In conclusion I may add that it is curious to find in Guarini's 'Pastor Fido'the exact converse of the thought, 'In Memoriam,' xxvii. 4 :

'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Guarini says, Act III. sc. i. :

O dolcezze amarissime d' amore, Quanto e piu duro perdervi, che mai Non v' avere 6 provate, 6 possedute ;

thus Englished in a version based on Fan-

shawe's and published 1736 :

O bitter sweets of love ! far worse it is To lose than never to have tasted bliss.

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

BOETHIUS.

SINCE this noble writer a light in darkness to Western Europe for 1,000 years has lately been denounced in the pages of ' N. & Q.' as a " curiosity who may do for men of out-of- the-way tastes and abundance of leisure to dream over, and for pedants to air their profitless learning upon," while "for most of us he is but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal " ; and since it has been declared that " Boethius has no message for us in these days," I hope I may be permitted to insert in your columns a few extracts in proof that the 'De Consolatione Philosophise' contains thoughts which have enriched thought, and will continue to do so as long as thought itself endures; and that, so far from Boethius having "no message for us in these days," there were perhaps never days in which much of his message was more needed than in ours, when so many seem to disbelieve