Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/271

 9"-s.v.Ap E iL7,i90o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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tributed tone of it in the respective contrasts is different.

14. In the same poem, towards the end, the line

And though I hope not hence unscathed to go is, perhaps, an intentional echo of Scott (' Marmion,' vi. 14),

And hop'st thou hence unscathed to go ? but the usual marks of quotation are want- ing. Twenty previous lines of the satire are concerned with this poem of Scott's.

15. 'Childe Harold,' iv. 127. "Cabined, cribbed, confined," is verbatim from 'Mac- beth,' III. iv., and probably used, with the freedom commonly exercised in the employ- ment of Shakspearian phrases, as a sort of household word.

16. ' The Dream,' part ii. :

He had ceased To live within himself : she was his life.

What Byron says of his first love, Wordsworth had said of " the influence of natural objects " on the Boy supposed to represent himself :

His spirit drank

The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form, All melted into him ; they swallowed up His animal being ; in them did he live, And by them did he live ; they were his life.

1 Excursion,' book i.

The * Excursion ' was published in 1814. The date of Byron's poem is 1816.

17. The opening words of the same poem : Our life is twofold : Sleep hath its own world

recall Wordsworth's line in the third of the sonnets on * Personal Talk ' :

Dreams, books, are each a world, &c. ; but the resemblance is probably a simple coincidence.

18. Macaulay, in his essay on Moore's 'Life of Lord Byron,' has some interesting remarks on this poet as compared with Wordsworth. He thinks that Byron founded what may be called an exoteric Lake school, and was the interpreter between Wordsworth and the multitude. We cannot help regret- ting that frequent "sneering" at Wordsworth, to which Macaulay also alludes. Examples of this may be seen in ' Don Juan,' iii. 93-100; in ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' ; in an epigram on p. 574 of Murray's 'Byron' ; and in ' Versicles ' on p. 569 of the same work.

Matthew Arnold, in his ' Memorial Verses, April, 1850,' says of Byron :

He taught us little ; but our soul Had felt him like the thunder's roll.

The same poem contrasts the "force" of Byron with the " sage mind " of Goethe and the "healing power" of Wordsworth.

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

REGIMENTAL NICKNAMES OF THE

BRITISH ARMY. (Concluded from p. 226.)

The "Old Sixteenth" is a name for the Bedfordshire Regiment.

"Old Straws" is a name for the 7th Hussars. " Old Stubborns " was the nick- name of the 45th (Sherwood Foresters).

The "Old Toughs" was the nickname of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

"Orange Lilies" was a name for the former 35th, which was largely recruited in Ulster, but is now part of the Royal Sussex Regiment.

The 4th Hussars were sometimes styled "Paget's Irregular Horse." "This," says Col. Cooper King, "was from its loose drill after its return from India." They were with Lord George Paget in the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.

The armour of the Household Cavalry is responsible for their nickname of " Patent Safeties."

" Peacemakers " was a name given to the Bedfordshire Regiment when it had, for a long time, not been on active service.

"Piccadilly Butchers" was the nickname given to the Household Cavalry, for their share in the suppression of a riot early in the century.

" Pigs " was the name given to the 76th, now the Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment. This designation was not in- tended to be disrespectful, but arose from a resemblance, real or fancied, of the Indian badges of the elephant to animals better known in this country.

The men of the Lincolnshire Regiment were nicknamed the " Poachers " no doubt in allusion to the famous old ballad of the ' Lincolnshire Poacher.'

The Royal Scots are known as "Pontius Pilate's Bodyguards," a designation which seems to claim somewhat undue antiquity even for a regiment that may have been formed from the bodyguards of the Scottish kings.

The " Poona Guards " is a name given to the East Yorkshire Regiment, on account of services at that place.

The Duke of Cambridge's Own Middlesex Regiment includes the former 77th, known as the " Pothooks," from the resemblance of bhe figures to the " pothooks " made in learn- ng to write.

The llth Hussars are "Prince Albert's 3wn," having formed his guard of honour [rom Dover to Canterbury before his mar- riage.