Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/317

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s. in. APBIL 22, m] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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i uestion is asked, "Who has rendered these fords to the effect that the immobility of our jespective idiosyncrasies possesses us?" anc .' o forth. I think I can clear up the matter to JClLLiGREw's entire satisfaction. The expres- sion on which he comments is to be found in Horace's eleventh 'Epistle,' bk. i., the four c oncluding lines of which are as follows : Ccelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare

currunt ;

Strenua nos exercet inertia ; navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis, hie est Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus.

The passage is well known. Every grammar- school boy used to be familiar with the first line, and the fourth is quoted by Sir Philip Sidney in his 'Apologie for Poetrie' (Mr. Arber's reprint, p. 44, London, 1868) ; by Kobert Burton in his 'Anatomy of Melan- choly,' pt. ii. sec. iii. mem. 3 (sixteenth edition, London, 183G) : " 'Tis at hand, at home already, which thou so earnestly seekest," he exclaims, in his homely and sturdy English, when com- menting on the words ; and, lastly, Boswell, in his 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides,' p. 390 (fifth edition, London, T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1812), talking of his father's " elegant modern mansion," as it was termed by Dr. Johnson, who was then visiting it, says, " On the front of the house of Auchin- leck is this inscription, * Quod petis, hie est ; Est Ulubris ; animus si te non deficit sequus.' " j These citations, to which more might be added, i are enough to show that the words have never I been held to mean anything abstruse or i transcendental. I am pleased to be able to furnish the reference which KILLIGREW has forgotten. His translation of the lines quoted from Horace is as follows :

Who cross the channel get a change of climate, not of soul.

A passive force that knows no change continues to control :

We go in search of happiness by boat as well as car.

What you are looking for, my friend, is here just where you are,

Here or at Little Peddlington if once you under- stand

To keep your mind from worries and your temper well in hand.

Though a little diffuse (six lines for four), and a trifle fin-de-siecle in phraseology, KILLI- GREW'S version may pass master, subject to a Comment which I will pass anon. In Prof. L Morley's edition of Sir P. Sidney's ' De- ence of Poesie,' pp. 66, 67 (Cassell's "National ^ibrary," London, 1889), I find a note which
 * o completely supplies the information re-

quired that I give it in its entirety :

They change their skies but not their mind who run

across the seas ; We toil in laboured idleness, and seek to live at ease

With force of ships and four-horse teams. That

which you seek is here, At Ulubrse, unless your mind fail to be calm and

clear.

That is the version of the Professor, who continues :

"'At Ulubrse' was equivalent to saying in the dullest corner of the world, or anywhere. Ulubra? was a little town, probably, in Campania, a Roman Little Peddlington. Thomas Carlyle may have had this passage in mind when he gave to the same thought a grander form in ' Sartor Resartus ': ' May we not say that the ^hour of spiritual enfranchise- ment is even this? When your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inex- pressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed and thrown open, and you discover with amazement enough, like the, Lothario in " Wilhelm Meister," that your America is here or nowhere. The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable hampered actual wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere, is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be free. Fool ! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself. Thy con- dition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of. What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic ? O thou that pinest in the im- prisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, couldst thou only see.'"

From an indistinct recollection of this pas- sage, KILLIGREW will, I think, acknowledge that he has taken (1) the metre of what he calls his "doggerel"; (2) the identification of Ulubrse with Little Peddlington ; and, lastly, his transcendentalism, founded on the almost inspired utterances of the Sage of Chelsea. As to getting a "change of soul," that he could not reasonably expect ; it is a feat yet to be accomplished. The Professor talks of a change of mind," which is more to the pur- pose, and gives Horace's meaning with suffi- cient accuracy. I am pleased to be able to furnish KILLIGREW with the reference he wanted, and I would recommend him, if he feel annoyed at his forgetfulness, to make the pine-woods of Costebelle re-echo with the maledictory line quoted by " the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table":

Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt !

JOHN T. CURRY.

LEIGH : LEA (9 th S. ii. 84, 215, 374). It is, n my opinion, extremely doubtful that the Shropshire Shakerley denotes " the robber's mound." Has anybody ever heard of a cumulus or barrow being raised over the ^emains of a highwayman? If "robber" is ' the robber's retreat or deri " A.-S. scedcre +A.-S. hledw=mddle Eng. lewe, &c.=Mod.
 * o come in at all, the name more likely means