Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/172

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NOTES AND QUERIES. p* s. m. MAR. 4, m

ie ; sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens asus. ' ^Eneid,' book iv. 11. 365-7.
 * ibi diva parens, generis nee Dardanus auctor,

been very well known to posterity by name, and very little known by his works. It is strange that Dr. Johnson, who writes much about his poetry, should never have men- tioned this song, " Go, lovely rose ! " which has ensured Waller's fame. Waller is a genuine worker in poetry. There is not much verbiage in him. He is almost always labour- ing to bring out a thought. Often he pro- duces a thought of his own, more or less beautiful. Sometimes the thought is a mere conceit. Now and then it is very obviously not his own :

1. To no human stock

We owe this fierce unkindness, but the rock, That cloven rock produced thee.

' At Penshurst.'

Here he is following Homer and Virgil :

Nee tibi Perfide : Caucasus.

2. Like jewels to advantage set, Her beauty by the shade doth get.

'The Night Piece.'

Here he may have had Shakspeare in mind, although the idea does not appear to be quite the same :

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of Night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.

' Romeo and Juliet.'

3. Hearts sure of brass they had who tempted first Rude seas. ' Battle of the Summer Isles.'

For this he is indebted to Horace : Illi robur et ses triplex Circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci Commisit pelago ratem Primus. Book i. Ode 3.

i. As lilies overcharged with rain, they bend Their beauteous heads.

' To my Lord Admiral.'

Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Tickell, Byron, Shelley, Lady A. Lindsay, and, I dare say, many others have the same thought.

5. But 'tis sure some power above Which controls our wills in love.

' To Amoret.'

He seems to have got this thought from Marlowe. I do not know whether Marlowe's translation is literal or not :

It lies not in our power to love or hate, For will in us is overruled by fate.

' Hero and Leander.'

Dryden also has this line :

Love is not in our choice, but in our fate.

' Palamon and Arcite.'

And Byron says much the same thing : Is human love the growth of human will ?

' Lara.'

6. Give us enough, but with a sparing hand.

' Reflections.' This belongs to Horace :

Bene est cui Deus obtulit Parca quod satis est manu.

Book iii. Ode 16.

7. So sweet the air, so moderate the clime, None sickly lives, or dies before his time. Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncurst To show how all things were created first.

'Battle of the Summer Isles.'

Horace, in his sixteenth epode, speaks of slands which remain as they were in the Golden Age. But Waller's thought is different Tom that of Horace.

8. Others may use the ocean as their road ; Only the English make it their abode.

' On a War with Spain.'

This couplet seems to be the original of the Allowing :

Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along her steep :

Her march is o'er the mountain waves ; her home is on the deep. Campbell.

Love made the lovely Venus burn In vain, and for the cold youth mourn, Who the pursuit of churlish beasts Preferred to sleeping on her breasts.

'To Phyllis.'

I suppose that Waller is following Shak- speare, who knew little of the classics. Cer- tainly the classical Adonis did not disdain Venus. But Marlowe also, who was a scholar, makes Adonis show this astonishing coldness to Venus. E. YARDLEY.

EPITAPH AT WHITBY. I copied the follow- ing from a slab affixed to the east wall of St. Mary's Parish Church, Whitby :

"Here lies the bodies of Francis Huntrodds and Mary his wife who were both born on the same day of the week month and year (viz.) Sept r ye 19 th 1600 marry'd on the day of their birth and after having had 12 children born to them died aged 80 years on the same day of the year they were born September ye 19 th 1680 the one not above five hours before ye other.

Husband and wife that did twelve children bear, Dy'd the same day ; alike both aged were Bout eighty years they liv'd, five hours did part (Ev'n on the marriage day) each tender heart So fit a match, surely could never be, Both in their lives, and in their deaths agree."

The coincidences are very remarkable.

T. SEYMOUR. 9, Newton Road, Oxford.

FALSTAFF AND SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. There have been two incidental references in your columns recently to the identity of Falstaff and Oldcastle, which deserve to be quoted together : " The evidence that the Falstaff part was originally Oldcastle is con- vincing " (ante, p. 106), and " There is not a scrap of evidence to support this idle tale of K Rowe, published in 1709" (ante, p. 111). The former is from a note of mine on ' Julius