Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/269

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

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erved me with the ale, though I suspect it was not he Genuine Stunning ; and the landlord's wife, >pening the little half-door of the bar, and bending lown, gave me my money back, and gave me a kiss ,hat was half-admiring and half -compassionate, but ill womanly and good, I am sure." 'David Copper- ield,' chap. xi.

Derby Street, on which the house abuts >n the flank, is named after William, Earl of Derby, who, according to Stow, built himself i house in the neighbourhood in 1598, which iad a garden extending down to the river. The present house does not appear to be older than the reign of George II., or the first half of the eighteenth century ; but it would seem that there was a public-house on the site or in the neighbourhood as early as the reign of James I., it being, apparently, mentioned in a contemporary account quoted in 'Old and New London,' p. 382. In a description of Westminster in the reign of James I. it is said in a contemporaneous publication, " Almoste every fourthe house is an ale house, harbouring alle sorts of lewd and badde people." King James I., probably to amend the evil, gave, in 1620, permission to his groom- porter, Clement Cottrell, to license, within the limits of London and Westminster, the suburbs and villages within two miles thereof, forty taverns or ordinaries " for the honest and reasonable recreation of good and civil people," who might use the games of bowling, tennis, dice, and cards. The present house may have been built when Parliament Street was formed about 1733.

There does not appear to be any reason to connect the public-house with the Earl of Derby. The red lion, which was acommon sign, originated with the badge of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married to Constance, daughter of Don Pedro the Cruel, King of Leon and Castille. The duke bore the lion rampant gules of Leon as his cognizance, to represent his claim to the throne of Castille, when that throne was occupied by Hen ry de Transtamare. In after years it may have been used to repre- sent the lion of Scotland, and was a favourite sign with Scotchmen, the black lion, the crest of Owen Glendower, being most affected by Welshmen.

The sign at the external angle of the public- house is not inartistic in execution, and has the appearance of having once served as the figurehead of a ship. It is to be hoped that it may be retained when the house is rebuilt, and not, as is too frequently the case, con- signed to a museum. JOHN HEBB.

ROYAL ROADS TO KNOWLEDGE. Such roads, according to the ' Century Dictionary,' were so called "because the royal roads were

straighter and better than ordinary roads.' The writer of this definition would seem to
 * >e ignorant of the anecdote that used to be

3rinted in the prefaces to Euclid. It was told
 * hat when Ptolemy was anxious to learn

nathematics, but, finding his tasks hard, begged Euclid to show him a " royal road," the answer was, "There is^none." The original Greek, /AT) eiVai /3ao-iAiKr)v arpaTrov TT/OOS ycw/ic- rpiav, is given in William Smith's ' Classical Dictionary of Biography.' His authority is Proclus, who seems to have written at the close of the fourth century A.D. 'Arpa7ros= without a turn, is equivalent to "short cut."

Proclus is a rare book. My hope is, there- fore, that some reader who dwells in the shadow of the British Museum will copy for 'N. & Q.' not only the ipsissima verba of Proclus, but their context. Transplanted trees wither unless something of the soil in which they grow is carried away with them. JAMES D. BUTLER.

Madison, Wis., U.S.

PROPHECY CONCERNING SPAIN AND AMERICA. Among the various prophecies recorded in these columns, the following seems not to have found a place. It occurs in the twelfth of Sir Thomas Browne's 'Miscel- lany Tracts,' published in 1686, folio, with a short preface by Thomas Tenison : When New England shall trouble New Spain, When Jamaica shall be Lady of the Isles and the

Main,

When Spain shall be in America hid, And Mexico shall prove a Madrid, When Mahomet's ships on the Baltick shall ride, And Turks shall labour to have Ports on that side, When Africa shall no more sell out their Blacks To make Slaves and Drudges to the American

Tracts, When Batavia the Old shall be contemn'd by the

New,

When a new Drove of Tartars shall China subdue, When America shall cease to send out its Treasure, But employ it at home in American pleasure, When the new World shall the old invade, Nor count them their Lords but their Fellows in

Trade,

When Men shall almost pass to Venice by Land, Not in deep Water but from Sand to Sand, When Nova Zembla shall be no stay Unto those who pass to or from Cathay, Then think strange things are come to light, Whereof but few have had a foresight.

These verses were sent to the Knight of Nor- wich by a friend, with a request that he would consider the prophecy, which he did in an ' Exposition ' covering three pages. His chief prognostications are these: That the New England colony would in process of time invade the American Spanish ports by depre- dations or assaults, and would not improbably erect new dominions in places not yet thought