Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/533

 9* s. ii. DEO. 31,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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that play fit chronologically with the other plays which relate to Falstaff and his com- panions. One critic says that the play ought to be read between 'Henry IV. 'and 'Henry V ' another, who gives a very good reason against the supposition of the first critic, says that it should be read between the first and second parts of ' Henry IV.' But it certainly ought not to be read between these two parts for in the second part of 'Henry IV.' Bardolph does not know Shallow until Shallow intro- duces himself to him, and Falstaff and bhallow evidently have not seen each other for some considerable time before their meet- ing in that play. Dame Quickly has not become in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' the dissolute character which she is in the other plays. The fact is that Shakspeare did not consider where the play should be read, and however one places it there will be incon- gruities. E. YARDLBY.

HOMER AND JEWISH RITES. Two passages in Pope's 'Iliad' ("Cbandos Classics") have stirred my intellectual curiosity, and prove that one touch of ritual makes the antique world kin. The ancient Jews were great upon "washing of hands," with the cere- monial laws of which one tractate of the Talmud largely busies itself. This "laving of hands " is regarded with such veneration by the Rabbins that they crystallized its im-

Ssrativeness by stamping it with a seal as of osaic sanctity. Living in such an atmosphere, and trained from childhood to cherish this specific rite as indigenous in Judaism, I felt some amazement when I read, p. 165 of above :

Now pray to Jove what Greece demands : Pray in deep silence arid with purest hands.

Buckley adds a note which displays a wide outlook: "This is one of the most ancient super- stitions respecting prayer, and one founded as much in nature as in tradition." Was he, I wonder, acquainted with our DH" 1 n?*t33 (hand laving) ? Clearly this custom, common to the sons of Shem and Japhet, must have taken its rise in some older religion, parent of both. Whence came it ? I should like to know. I should also like to know what is the original Greek for " purest hands."

Another rite which hitherto I had deemed characteristically Jewish in origin, viz., the ceremony of "laying on of hands," or, as we call it, "Semichasyodahyim" a rite also practised in the dominant Church in relation to the investiture of bishops seems likely to be derived from a much older source than the Hebraic, if the following passage in bk. xiii.

of Pope's ' Iliad ' is correctly transcribed by that fanciful writer. On p. 232 we find : There with his sceptre that the deep controls. He [Neptune] touched the chiefs and steeled their

manly souls.

Strength, not their own, the touch divine imparts, Prompts their light limbs, and swells their darine

hearts.

I have italicized the words "touched the chiefs" because if the original contains no such matter as "touching" or "laying on' of the sceptre my hypothesis fails. In any case, I consider the subject well worthy of the pens of such learned Grecians as DR. SPENCE and the REV. ED. MARSHALL, whose views I shall look forward to with some eagerness and delight. Are there any Persian or Sanskrit parallels to help us to a solution of this interesting question ?

M. L. BRESLAR.

Percy House, South Hackney.

"WORLD WITHOUT END." This expression seems to have been first used by Coverdale, in the 1535 version of the English Bible, to translate the Vulgate "in seculura seculi" (Ps. xlv. 17 and Is. xlv. 17). Wycliffe has inlocis " unto the world of world." Nearly all sub- sequent English versions in the second place follow Coverdale; but the Douay renders " for ever and ever," and Benisch translates the Hebrew "in all eternity." Although the expression " world without end " has become exceedingly familiar from its frequent use in the Prayer Book, one cannot help regretting that in this place in Isaiah the revisers did not adopt that of the Douay version, which in the Psalm in question is used both in the A.V. and R.V. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

A CONTRAST. I find a striking contrast between the events of 1344 and of 1898 in the following extracts. In Chaucer's ' Prologue ' we are told concerning the Knight that

At Gernade at the sege eek hadde he be \ Of Algezir.

In the Daily Telegraph of 12 Dec. I read : " On Saturday [Dec. 3] another golf-match, at

Algeciras, came off between the Gibraltar Garrison

and the Channel Squadron team."

WALTER W. SKEAT.

A MARTYR BISHOP OP ARMAGH. Don Federico de Mugartegi showed me in his house at Markina in Spanish Basqueland a collection of manuscripts in five volumes, entitled ' Ybarguren Antiguedades de Viz- caya,' which his ancestor had submitted to the inspection of Wilhelm von Humboldt. In the second volume there is a " Capitulo que trata que tierra fue basconia y de donde