Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/69

. m. JAN. 28, m] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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o any other student of the genius loci who ould set niy doubts finally at rest. I will lever believe that it took colour from the ocation in times past of any considerable xxJy of Hebrews in the neighbourhood, as uich a body could hardly have existed with- )ut a "shool" or place of worship. Much ess will I give credence to the impression shat some wealthy but eccentric Jew was in the habit of frequenting the spot. It was so known long before the unhappy daughter of Karl Marx discovered its beauties and formed a pretty nest there ; while the only Hebrew magnate who lived in the district at all, to my knowledge, was the late Mr. Bedding- ton, an orthodox Jew, who would scarcely have strolled so far from his estates near Carshalton on the Sabbath day, as in that case he must have exceeded the limits of the r\2V mnn or "legal Sabbath walk." I have an idea that it is a corruption of "Joe's Walk." But who was Joe ? Was he a love- lorn swain whose " cardiac affection " was augmented by some local Lady Vere de Vere? Was this thoroughfare in times bygone the " private pass " to the main high- ways lying at right angles to it, which this mysterious Joe kept jealously closed to the busy wayfaring public, and thus earned for it the opprobrious epithet of "Jew's Walk " ? I dare not assign so odious a purpose to this spot as that which Ovid in book i. of his ' Art of Love ' has assigned to a Eoman quarter in order to castigate the Jews. Dryden's rendering is to the effect that they do

Not shun the "Jewish Walk," where the foul drove On Sabbaths rest from everything but love.

Such a connexion were well-nigh impossible in the days when Sydenham must have been the haunt of the Muses, and its groves the resort of our cultured ancestors.

And here let me add a characteristic note by Dryden which reproduces his temper towards the Jews of his day. He writes :

"The Jews in Augustus's time had the free use and exercise of the rites of their religion, and were allowed to frequent their synagogues without re- straint. Hither, as now in London [the italics are mine], the Roman ladies used to resort out of curio- sity, and were mightily taken with the grandeur and magnificence of the priests' vestments. But Ovid gives us to understand that those devout Jews would here make assignations with Roman women on the Sabbath day, whence it was called the Jewish Walk."

Now my reading of the lines afore-cited is totally different from that, and even Dryden, as I shall show, seems to have recognized the force of what I now maintain. For I conceive the Jewish Walk in Rome was the mart or

exchange whereto the Hebrew merchants and bill - brokers resorted to meet their clients, from which it was found impossible to divorce the attendance of the vicious and the criminal, even as it was found impossible to exclude the same classes from infesting the aisles and walks of St. Paul's in the sixteenth century, or from the porticoes of the Boyal Exchange after it was opened by Queen Bess in 1571. It would have been monstrous in Dryden to have preferred such a charge against the merchants of his day, and quite as unaccountable as it was in Ovid, yet he did not hesitate to add a disfigurement to the note I have quoted when he said :

" It has long been observed that if this version [viz., as to the base uses of the Jewish Walk] seems to bear a little hard upon the ancient Jews [the italics are mine], it does not at all wrong the modern."

I dare say this was thought very witty in its day. Wit even nowadays is preferred in some quarters to sober truth.

M. L. BRESLAR. Percy House, South Hackney.

SHAKSPEARIANA. 'TEMPEST,' II. i. 278-80. Ant. Twenty consciences,

That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they,

And melt, ere they molest !

Antonio means, "There are twenty consciences (of those high in state, whom it was necessary to win over) that stand 'twixt me and ' ab- solute Milan,' but they are reduced to a condition of torpor, and must become active ere they molest me." In the word " candied " there is doubtless a hint as to the method of treatment the opposite of acerbity by which these consciences were reduced to the desired state. EDWARD MERTON DEY.


 * CORIOLANUS,' I. ix. 46.

Let him be made an overture for the wars. If " him " is regarded as the dative, instead of the objective case, the difficulty in inter- preting this much-discussed line will, I think, disappear. What would be then expressed would be, u Let an overture for the wars be made to him," meaning, " Let a proposal be made to the parasite with a view to engaging his services for the wars. The bribes and flattery you offer will be congenial to him, and, when steel has become soft as the silk he wears, he will make your best soldier." The words are spoken witn infinite scorn, and no doubt contain, in addition, a suggestion that the Eomans would like to have a general who would natter them to their hearts' con- tent, as a parasite flatters his patron. The