Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/381

 s. V.MAY 12, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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hours' quarrels, family jars, and the like. The last time I heard it was when a person was de- scribing "a falling-out." There " was words, an' then a regular pillillew" when the fighting began. But to have u apillillew"itisnotalways necessary that there should be a fight, as a wrangle in which a number take part is " a pillillew." The queer word has also another meaning, for a person who has run himself out of breath pulls up "all of a pillillew."

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop.

QUEEN CHARLOTTE AS AN AUTHOR. In one of Mr. G. P. Johnston's interesting catalogues recently issued I find the fol- lowing entry :

" Freylinghausen, J. A. Abstract of the Doctrine of the Christian Religion. A. Wilson, 1804. 8vo.

original can gut/. Translated by Queen Charlotte, and edited by Bishop Porteous. Beautifully printed from stereotype plates on a fine thick paper. The first book stereotyped by the new (Earl Stanhope's) process. Prefixed are the 'Standing Rules of the Stereotype Office,' among which are : (1) Nothing is to be printed against religion ; (2) Everything

is to be avoided upon the subject of politics whic

I

is offensive to any party ; (3) The characters of individuals are not to be attacked ; (4) Every work is to be composed with beautiful types, &c." There is no reference to this royal effort in the notice of the queen in the * Dictionary of National Biography.'

WILLIAM E. A. AXON. Moss Side, Manchester.

PARALLEL PASSAGES. Perhaps the follow- ing resemblances have not been noticed hitherto :

1. O fatal love of fame ! O glorious heat, Only destructive to the brave and great !

Addison, ' The Campaign.' Maudite ambition ! detestable manie ! Dont les plus g6nreux souffrent la tyrannic. Corneille, 'TheCid.'

2. Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

Addison, ' The Campaign.' Ride the air In whirlwind. Milton, ' Paradise Lost,' book ii. 11. 545, 546.

Their life

A storm whereon they ride. Byron, * Childe Harold,' canto iii. stanza 44.

3. With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid Of cheerful look, and lovely to behold ;

In silken samite was she light arrayed, And her fair locks were woven up in gold : She always smiled.

'Spenser, 'Faerie Queene,' book iii

canto xii. stanza 13.

Collins, who undoubtedly was remembering this canto when he wrote his ode to the 1 Passions,' has the line,

And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golder hair.

\. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the

sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. Gray's ' Elegy.'

Collins, who wrote first, has expressed him- self somewhat so; but the likeness is not very strong, and Gray has done best :

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short, shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,

Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn.

' Ode to Evening.'

The flight of the bat and the beetle " with his drowsy hums " indicates the approach of night in ' Macbeth.'

5. In Churchill's ' Rosciad ' are these lines :

With that dull, rooted, callous impudence, Which, dead to shame and every nicer sense, Ne'er blushed unless, in spreading Vice's snares, She blundered on some virtue unawares.

A very similar thought to that in the last couplet may be found in Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield ': " They only blush at being detected in doing good." The sentence has reference to vicious people who have no desire or intention to act virtuously. ' The Vicar of Wakefield ' was written some con- siderable time before it was published, but it came out after ' The Rosciaa.' There is a passage not very unlike the above in the 'Hard Times' of Charles Dickens. It is there said of Mr. James Harthouse :

" What was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would not have owned on any account, and the only one that made him feel ashamed of himself."

6. In Churchill's poem 'The Farewell' I read the following :

Be England what she will, With all my faults, she is my country still !

It seems to me very clear, not only from the lines themselves, but also from the lines which precede them, that Churchill wrote, or intended to write, " With all her faults." This alteration would make Churchill's thought coincide exactly with that of Cowper, quoted by Byron :

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still.

7. Who, if some blockhead should be willing To lend him on his soul a shilling, A well-made bargain would esteem it, And have more sense than to redeem it.

Churchill, ' The Ghost.'

This is manifestly an imitation of what Shakspeare has written :

"Sir, for a quart d'ecu he will sell the fee-simple of his salvation." 'All 's Well that Ends Well,' IV. iii.