Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/167

 9»s. vi. AUG. is, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 137 handled, especially in the technical point of striking the top-mast when the ship nad not sea-rooui. Special evidence of this kind ME. YARDLEY has already dismissed as worthless Shakespeare picked up the technicalities from a sailor, and that shows his ignorance! Clearly that point is settled. For the pas- sages which suggested ME. YARDLKY'S theory he has his own solution, and I would fain hope that it is unique. " A great poet, who is describing what he has never seen, may resort to hyperbole in order to disguise his ignorance" I envy this subtle intuition for detecting a great poet's vagaries. But if this is the explanation, it does not matter about experts : they would only mislead us, from a foolish habit of basing criticism upon facts and knowledge. Shakespeare, never having seen the sea, could not gauge with mathe- matical accuracy the maximum height to which waves rise in time of storm ; anxious not to be found out if he underestimated, he left a wide margin and made his billows splash the moon. Has not MR. YARDLEY contused the methods of a great poet with those of a modern journalist ? PERCY SIMPSON. "LiNNARD-FEEL" (9th S. yi. 27).—This ex- pression is still used in Milton Bryant and Lidlington, in Bedfordshire, to describe a feeling of faintness. E. MEIN. Blundellsands. " IRONY " (9«- S. v. 514).—When we speak of the "irony of fate" we mean, or should mean, if properly thinking, the " blessings " or " luck " that come to us when we have no heart or mind to enjoy or value the same. Translated into every-day speech it means " too late." To illustrate : A man has worked a lifetime to accumulate a competency so as to spend the remainder of his years in the study of microscopy, of which he was very fond, though he had neither time nor means to satisfy this supreme desire. On a sudden fate is kind to him ; he makes money, retires,'fits up a splendid observatory, puts in the latest and best instruments, and when he is ready to make the first examination his eyesight fails him, he is stricken blind—that is " irony of fate." An illustration less sombre is this. At twenty-five I had the best set of teeth and " the stomach of an ostrich," but lacked six- pence to buy a meal. I have now " money to burn," but have no teeth and a stomach that will not digest milk—that is " irony of fate." At twenty I loved a girl of a J unonic form, but had no money to provide for her. We agreed to wait. I went into a distant land, worked on, made "piles of money," never for- got my love, went back to her after twentv years, found her to be old, wrinkled, tooth- less, and sour-tempered. I am healthy, big, strong. Something is lost that never can be found again—that is " irony of fate." One last illustration. I was prospecting in Cali- fornia ; I was the cook of the party, but for days had nothing to cook. One day a moun- tain bock crossed our gulch; I seized my gun, hit the mark, hurrahed to my companions, threw away my gun, and ran tor the "sweet morsel." When 1 reached the elevation where the bock had fallen I saw a great big bear disappearing with our dinner. He had not toiled, neither had he spun, yet the Lord pro- vided for him, while we starved until a mule train came along two days later, and left, not only a lot of provisions, but some rough fellows who took our claim for the grub, and made us work like niggers. Do not you call this "the irony of fate" t The story is as old as the fable of Cain and Abel. ADOLPHE DANZIGER. San Francisco. Take the sentence "A power doth shape our ends rough-hew them as we may." Does not this illustrate the irony of fate, producing an unlooked-for result which is yet in the direction aimed at ? A. H. RONJAT, THE KING'S SERJEANT-SURGEON (9th S. v. 475 ; vi. 37).—It is gratifying to find that my solution of Ronjat (British Medical Journal, 2 June, p. 1392) as being a Shandean anagram upon the word tarpov is accepted by DR. J. FOSTER PALMER. But where, may I ask, does he discover the imagined allusion to fees and fleecing? GEORGE C. PEACHEY. Brightwalton, Wantage. MATTHEW WEBB (9th S. vi. 21, 43).—In MR. RALPH THOMAS'S note he quotes Sinclair and Henry as saying that Webb was born "at Irongate, near Dawley." Ironbridge is doubt- less intended, for there is no such place as [rongate in Shropshire. Ironbridge takes its name from the bridge of that material erected across the Severn in 1779 by the third Abra- ham Darby, of the Coalbrookdale works. This is reputedly the first iron bridge ever con- structed in Europe. According to local gossip " Capt. " Webb learned to swim in the Severn at Ironbridge when a boy. His birthplace, Dawley, is about four miles from the river. CHARLES HIATT. " ESK-HTS " (9th S. vi. 47).—I have not been able to find Esk-lits on the map, but this perhaps is not unlikely if it is the name of a spring. There is a place called High Eskeleth, near Arkengarthuale, and another named Hanlith, east of Settle. But with these excep-