Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/164

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. FEB. 25, m

by Rhys, Stokes, Brugmann, Windisch, and others. WALTER W. SKEAT.

ROUNDS on RUNGS (9 th S. ii. 386, 430, 492, 530 ; iii. 75, 116). This argument appears likely to drift from its true course. It is not a question of convincing me, nor of finding the term in Chaucer (who, like Burns, may have used vulgar words) and in contemporary and previous writers, nor even, it may be, of tracing rung (to the entire exclusion of round) up to the year "one," and into the mouth of the most learned and highest functionary of the land in those days.* The sole question is, at the end of the nineteenth century, Which word is a writer or speaker to use, to avoid the risk of being considered either ignorant or vulgar ? If the controversy is to be decided in these pages, the only evidence to produce of real weight is present- day authority. Fortunately for those still in doubt, the dictionaries supply an alterna- tive the rather uncommon word rundle.

J. S. M. T.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (9 th S. ii. 69, 258, 458).

Said Day to Night, &c.

The poem by Emerson, with the title 'A Fable,' is in 'Nightingale Valley,' a collection by Giraldus (London, Bell & Daldy, 1860), p. 89. In this the line quoted as

If I cannot carry forests on my shoulders is

If I cannot carry forests on my back.

ED. MARSHALL, F.S.A.

(9 th S. ii. 228.)

The present is the life of man. This is expressed in Latin in these lines : Non est, crede mini, sapientis dicere, Vivam. Sera nimis vita est crastina, vive hodie.

Mart. I. xvi. 11, 12. ED. MARSHALL, F.S.A.

(9 th S. ii. 339.) 'Aei yap tv TrtTrrova-iv 01 Atos Kvftoi.

Sophocles, Fragm. 762, Dindorf. ALEX. LEEPER. (9 th S. iii. 8.)

My dead love came to me and said. This is the first verse of Mr. Stephen Phillips's very striking poem ' The Apparition.'

You who never turned your back. A curiously unhappy misquotation from Brown- ing's ' Epilogue ' (' Asolando ). It should run :

French, rather adds strength to my contention. So long back as there has been a competition between round and rung it makes it all the more probable that the former has been the polite term.
 * The fact stated, that round is taken from the

One who never turned his back but marched breast

forward,

Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong

would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake. C. C. B.

(9*8. iii. 28.) My ornaments are arms.

See Lockhart's 'Spanish Ballads': 'The Wander- ing Knight's Song.' W. H. PATTERSON,

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Master E. S. and the ' Ars Moriendi \- a Chapter in ''the History of Engraving during the Fifteenth Century. By Lionel Gust, M.A. (Ox- ford, Clarendon Press.)

EQUALLY interesting from the points of view of xylography and bibliography, and not less valuable from that of art, is the series of designs issued, with an introduction by Mr. Lionel Gust, from the Clarendon Press. Three sets of illustrations to the ' Ars Moriendi,' that quaint and authoritative ex- pression of ecclesiastical views and opinions in the Middle Ages, are herein for the first time rendered generally accessible in accurate facsimile, the exact size of the originals. Two of these sets are in copperplate, the third in wood engraving. Not easy is it to convey an idea of the nature of the task accomplished. At the Weigel sale in Leipzig in 1872 the British Museum acquired, for the large sum of 1,072^. 10s., exclusive of commission, a block- book (of twenty-four pages) of extreme rarity, which has been described as the 'Ars Moriendi' (editio princeps, circa 1440). Concerning the illustrations to this erroneous views have prevailed. Not until days quite recent has the fact been established by the researches of Dr. Max Lehrs, the Director of the Cabinet of Prints and Drawings in the Royal Museums at Dresden, that these are practically enlarged copies from the set of copperplate engrav- ings by the Master E. S. in the Douce Collection, now in the University Galleries in Oxford. The present volume, then, consists of the reproduction by collotype of the unique set of copperplate illus- trations to the ' Ars Moriendi ' in question ; the all but unique set of eleven copperplate engravings from the originals of the Master E. S., executed by the Master of St. Erasmus, now in the Print-Room of the British Museum ; and the woodcut illustra- tions executed for the supposed first edition of the 'Ars Moriendi,' which have "hitherto only been reproduced by inferior processes." A treatise might be written on the light cast by these beautifully executed designs upon mediaeval views and upon primitive culture generally. To those familiar with the Douce Collection designs the task of explana- tion and comment is unnecessary ; to those pos- sessed of no such knowledge it is, without the reproduction of the illustrations, impossible. In a short and eminently serviceable introduction Mr. Gust supplies all information concerning matters of detail, variations, &c., which the student can require. He does more, however. He accepts plenarily the conclusions of Dr. Lehrs that what we will call the Oxford collection is the editio princeps of the ' Ars Moriendi,' and that the illus-