Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/227

 9-S.V. MARCH 17, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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out indication of the locality to which Mr. Hissey refers. MR. ANDREWS may be in- terested in ascertaining and informing your readers whether this instance is also Lincoln dialect. Q. V.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (9 th S. v. 109).

These honours peace to happy Britain brings ; These are imperial works and worthy kings, are the last lines of Epistle iv. of Pope's ' Moral Essays.' The epistle was addressed to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, the famous amateur architect, and the application of the last line to a breakwater is appropriate, as will be seen from the context in which the poet addresses Burlington : Bid harbours open, public ways extend, Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring main.

J. A. J. HOUSDEN.

So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave. Pope, Epilogue to the ' Satires,' Dialogue 2, 1. 211.

E. YARDLEY.

Whatever sweets Sabsean springs disclose, Our Indian jasmin, and the Persian rose. I cannot answer for the whole couplet, but the first line occurs, I believe, somewhere in Dryden's ' Aurungzebe,' where it begins " What sweets soe'er." C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

Does this become a soldier, this become Whom armies followed and a people loved ? These lines occur in Young's tragedy of ' The Re- venge,' and are uttered by Zanga, the villain of the piece. H. Y. POWELL.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Horns of Honour, and other Studies in Byways of Archceology. By Frederick Thomas Elworthy. (Murray.)

EMBOLDENED by the success of his 'Evil Eye,' issued six years ago (see 8 th S. v. 239), Mr. Elworthy has written a companion volume, the receipt of which by the public is likely to be not less favour- able than that of its predecessor. This is prin- cipally occupied with the subject of "horns" and that of "hands," though incidentally in the later work, as in the earlier, very many forms of supersti- tions or popular faith are discussed. The two works are, in the full sense, companion volumes. The same authorities, with some allowance in the later for more recent discoveries, have been consulted ; identical materials have been, to a great extent, employed ; the old explorations and researches have served for the new work; and the references in the present volume to its x^redecessor are so numerous that the student will do well to have both by his side. In the conclusions, or absence of conclusions for Mr. Elworthy has, as he says, no theories to propound or support a further point of resemblance is found. On the subjects with which he deals Mr. Elworthy is an enthusiast ; his collection of symbolical objects, made principally in the south of Europe, is large and profoundly interesting; and many 01 his treasures have been exhibited before the Society of Antiquaries. Books richer in sug-

gestion than his are scarcely to be met with, and he has acquired in the pursuit of his studies a large amount of erudition. On the subjects on which he writes he is always worthy of attention, though his knowledge is wide rather than exact. He refers, for instance, to " a curious little book of 1647 called ' The Divell a Married Man,' " a work unrecorded, so far as we are aware, by bibliographers, and of the existence of which we were not aware. He is unconscious, however, that it is a translation or a rendering of Machiavelli's famous novel of ' Bel- fegor' (the 'Belphegor' of La Fontaine), written more than a hundred years previously. In his pro- foundly interesting account of the dischi sacn he regards the ladder, a frequent object, as symbolizing "the patient, climbing, striving, persistent suitor [of Fortune], who sues her by his own efforts, and means to scale her heights ; to win by patient per- severance the favours she was believed to bestow."' He quotes from ' The Book of the Dead,' points to the notion of a connexion between earth and heaven by a ladder as being familiar to the Egyptians, and doubtless to the whole Eastern world, and refers to Jacob's dream as according with the notions and beliefs of the age in which the patriarch lived. In connexion with this view we can but commend the study of Dr. Smythe Palmer's 'Jacob at Bethel' (Nutt, 1899), in which the significance of the ladder in Chaldean cosmogony is traced, and a theory dif- ferent from that Mr. Elworthy puts forward is sug- gested. Not in the least a dogmatist is our author. He is a seeker after truth, and in no way wedded to his own theories, ingenious, even when most con- jectural, as these are.

The application of the horn as a sign of contempt and as indicating a cuckold is familiar enough in modern days. There can be no doubt, however, that the horn was, at a much earlier period, a sign of honour. Mr. Elworthy holds that the Hebrews believed Moses to have descended from the Mount with solid horns upon his head, and says that this idea prevailed down to the Middle Ages. A state- ment to the same effect, which is made by Mr. Elworthy in 'The Evil Eve,' is quoted by Dr. Murray under the word 'Horn' in the 'H.E.D.' This belief is taken to indicate that the great law- giver was held to have become divine, and to have received miraculously the mark of divinity and kingly power. In the Vulgate, Deuteronomy xxxiii. 17, it is said of Moses, "Quasi primogeniti tauri pulchritude ejus, cornua rhinocerontis cornua illius." On the history of horns as badges of power and distinction Mr. Elworthy is profoundly inter- esting and instructive, and the illustrations he reproduces from King, Moiitfaucou, and other authorities add greatly to the value and to the beauty of the book. Those who possess ' The Evil Eye ' will Aeed 110 bidding to put this work by it& side on the shelves, and all interested in the history of symbolism are bound to possess and study it. On some of the points discussed very little that is exact is known, and the study of the symbolic hand offers the greatest attraction to archaeologists as introducing them into what is to some extent a terra incognita.

A Complete Memoir of Richard Haines (1633-1685).

By Charles Reginald Haines, M.A. (Privately

printed.)

A FORGOTTEN Sussex worthy " Mr. Haines calls the ancestor whose life he has written, and whose seventh male descendant he is. Mr. Haines's book