Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/35

 _.___¢¢_ T ,__ _1 - ,_ .__ ~., ,_-_ _ _,..,,, #__ S. VI. JULY 14. 1900-1 NOTES AND QUERIES. 25 is father to the man ” is called “a proverb.” Learners accepting this will afterwards have difficulty in crediting Wordsworth with the line in its correct form :- The Child is father of the Man, and distinguishing it from the fine prototype in ‘ Paradise Regained,’ iv. 220 :- The childhood shews the man, As morning shews the day. On p. 242 Mr. Nesfield gives as an illustra- tion of metonymy these lines : -- The sick man’s prayer, the (glad divine’s theme, The young man s vision, an the old men’s dream. adding, in reference to this strange un- melodious medley, “The italicized words are all applied by Dryden to the Duke of Mon- mouth.” The students of his treatise will almost certainly conceive a false impression of Dryden’s command o rhythm from the lines as thus presented or their considera- tion, besides finding reason to think but lightly of the poets sense of antithetical structure. If some kindly guide should direct them to ‘Absalom and Achitophel,’ ll. 238-9, they will find this happily balanced couplet: The people’s prayer, the glad diviner’s theme, The young men’s vision and the old men’s dream. As a final specimen of Mr. N esfield’s method, the first line of Goldsmith’s ‘ Traveller ’ may bequoted from him as he offers it on p. 294 : Remote, unfriended, solitary, slow, where “solitary” does but indifferent duty for the poet’s expressive melancholy. Surely loose work of this kind, in a book of consider- able pretension and no little accomplishment, is totally inexcusable. At a time when the tendency is to leave standard authors unread, those w o write for students should not only give notable quotations-as all those are to which reference has just been made-but they should be absolutely certain that their form and accuracy are beyond cavil or dis- pute. ‘uoMAs BAYNE. Doc'rn1NE or PREVIOUS EXISTENCE. See 9"’ S. v. 428.)-I see t-his belief explain as from Plato ; but surely it was much older, having been adopted by t-he “nude” philo- sophersi from whom Plato borrowed it. We now cal them Jains, and under the name of “metempsychosis” it forms the basis of Buddhism. We read in the Jatakas that Sakya Muni could remember his own pre- vious existence as a pearl diver' also as a pious Brahman who surrendered his present existence to a famishing tiger during a drought, vulgo famine. It was the pursuit of Nirvana by means of a virtuous life that purchased the extinction of new births, each succeeding to a previous existence. When young I was muc interested in a so-called child’s book, ‘ The Transformations of Indra,’ which explains it all in realistic styleh H [We referred to Plato as a convenient source where the belief might be studied, not as the oldest manifestation of the doctrine.] MARRIAGE AS A MIALE Cmus'r1AN NAME.- A document has just passed through my hands in which the name Marriage for a man occurs. R. B-R. MoUN'rr1cnE'r CASTLE, BLAcKr1uAns.-In ‘ Old and New London,’ i. 200, it is stated :- “Mountfiquet Castle was pulled down in 1276, when Hubert de Burgh, Earl o Kent, transplanted a colony of Black Donnnican friars from Holborn, near Linco n’s Inn, to the riverside, south of Ludgate Hill. Yet so conservative is even Time in Eng and that a recent correspondent of Notes and Queries pointed out a piece of mediaeval walling and the frag- ment of a buttress, still standing at t e foot of the Times ofiice in Printing House Sllluare, which seems to have formed part of the strong old of the Mount- fiquets. This interesting relic is on the left hand of Queen Victoria Street, going up from the bridge, just where there was former y a pictures<Lue but dangerous descent by a flight of break-nec stone steps. At the ri ht-hand side of the same street stands an old rubble chalk wall, even older. It is just past the new house of the Bible Society, and seems to have formed part of the old city wall, which at first ended at Baynard’s Castle.” I have searched diligently in ‘ N. & Q. ’ but cannot find the correspondence referred to above. It is possible that I have not looked for it under the proper heading, and I should feel obliged if some reader with _more leisure than I have at disposal would kindly assist me in the search. It seems impsgibable that the wall and buttress descri. could have formed part of Mountfichet, but it is possible that they were fragments of the Dominican Priory, of which a portion has been recently discovered in Ire1and’s Yard, St. Andrew’s Hill. J onN HEBB. Canonburv Mansions. N. HANDBILL or A WELSH GUIDE, c. 1820.- To those readers of ‘N. & Q.’ who, like myself, have on foot exfplored and admired the natural beauties o Wales and of the other parts of “our own country ” noted for their delightful romantic scenery, the fol- lowing copy of a printed_ hand 111 in my possession (size 8§ in. by 71n., and probably the onl one now extant), undated but issued about the year 1829 bdy Richard _Pugh, of Dolgell, a poor and, in eed, findigent’ guide to Cader Idris and the neighbouring “1i0ng,” will suggest pleasant recollections