Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/605

 vi. DIC. 29, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 501 LONDON. SATURDAY, DECEMBER », 1900. CONTENTS. —No. 157. NOTES:— Talmudic Proverbs and Stories, 501—Municipal Churches, 603—Carriage) v. Pack-saddles-"Trunk" or " Box," 60S—County Gulde-Books— Lang's 'PrinceCharles E<lward '—Sir R. Astou-SI-an Fu-King Arthur In Corn- wall—A Case of Trance, 504-" Blackstrap "—Epitaph at Leigh— Mahoun, 605 — Early Lines on Cricket — Seven- teenth-Century Dutch and English Manners—" Cluzzom " —Vanishing London, 508. QUERIES i—Sir R. Moray—" Desight "—Horse Toll Free- Arrow — Agar — Qoltre — Author of Verses — Reynes — —Naunton Family—" Roger's blast"—Age of Matricula- tion— "Heaf" — Senator at Rome — Stewart Family — Shrewsbury Guild -Duke of Bolton's Regiment— Citizens of London — Easier Maglant— "King Degnan," 808 — "Moggy" — Brasenose, Oxford — Authors of Books — Visitation of Suffolk in 1664, 509. REPLIES :—Bishop Berkeley, 509— Young and Wordsworth —Atwood Family — " Mitnered " —Passage in Goethe— "Nothing like leather," 510—Exploits in Swimming— " Half Moon " and "Maypole," 511—Blackham Family— Agricultural Descriptive Rimes—Arnold of Rugby, 512— Whitgift'i Hospital, Croydon—"Go gaiters "—Broken on the Wheel, S13 — Tunstall Family — Wire Pond, 514 — Restoration at Lyme Regis Churcn—"The mading tub" — Governor Haynts's Grandfather, 515 — "Lobster"= Soldier—Time for killing Pigs—St. Marylebone Church, 516—Ruins at Roscoff — Dutton Family—" J'Wcock and Polito," 517—Burial-place of William, Son of Henry I.— Passage In Chaucer—' Masterman Ready '—The ' D.N.B.' —John Jackson, 518—The National Flag —Registers of Christ Church, Newgate Street—John Pearson, 519. NOTKS ON BOOKS: -Strange's "The Cathedral Church of Worcester ' — Perkins's * The Churches of Rouen '— ' Morto Arthure'—• Who '• Who' — Tovey's ' Letters of Thomas Gray '—Nutt's • Cuchulalnn '—Arnold's' Rigveda.' Notices to Correspondents. Volts. TALMUDIC PROVERBS AND STORIES. THE sundry dicta herein recorded and culled from the anthology of the Talmud are merely an eclectic, not an exhaustive list; yet it is hoped that their varied character may afford some indication of the richness of the soil whence they sprang. In these mighty tomesj awaiting the patient search of the botanist, there still he countless blooms of rare fragrance and beauty. Only a very few specimens can be displayed in these pages. Thus from Sota 47 comes "Let your left hand turn away what your right hand attracts," paralleled by our " Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth." From Baba Kama 92 we get " Cast no stone into the well you drank from," reminding us of our own " Speak no ill of the bridge that carried you safely over." From the same source we extract "The master buys the wine, but the butler takes the praise," re- calling Virgil's famous " Sic vos non vobis." From the same volume, p. 107, we are taught " to improve ourselves if we want to influence others ; in other words, "To command one must study to obey." In Sanhedrin 44 we read " The myrtle that grows among thorns is a myrtle still," equalling our own "The rose by any other name would smell as sweet." From Chagiga 9 we glean the following extra- ordinary epigram : " Suffering adorns the Jew as a red bridle a white horse." Did Shake- speare travel so far for his famous " Suffering is the badge of all our tribe"? In Sota 13 we learn that "the burden is equal to the camel's strength," reminding us of "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." In Sabbath 122 we are told that "light for one may be light for a hundred," recalling the dictum, " As shines a candle in the dark, so shines a good deed in a naughty world." In Yoma 86 we are told "Ambition destroys its possessor," which we can parallel by "Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself." In Aboth iv. 20 we are advised "to join the company of lions rather than assume the lead among foxes." Montaigne, I think, was of a contrary opinion—natural enough in so eccentric a personage. He preferred to be mayor of Perigord rather than a nobody in Paris. " In vino veritas " finds a counterpart in Erubin 65, " When the wine's in, murder will out." Our phrase " birds of a feather " is reflected in "sheep follow sheep" (Ketu- both 63). A similar thought, but differently phrased, is "Enough for the slave that he imitates his master (Berachoth 58), reflected in our mot, "Like master like man." The celebrated sentence, " Quern Deus vult perdere prius dementat," finds its parallel in "The angry shepherd blinds his bell-wether," with the result that the whole flock rushes on to perdition. The Latin saw, "Fiat justitia ruat cesium," is discovered em bedded in Sanhedrin 6 : "Let justice cleave the mountain, if need be." Again, "Truth lives; falsehood dies" (Sab- bath 104), reveals another link with the Romans in "Magna est veritas," <fec. The Greeks are not forgotten in Aboth 2 : " Trust not your own powers till the day of your death," while Solon has warned us "to call no man happy till he is dead." That Hope springs eternal" was known as well to the Rabbis as to Pope. They declared, "Though your neck be stretched to the axe, abandon not all hope of clemency" [Berachoth 10). In a similar strain they tell us in Sota 48, " Whoever has a slice of bread in his wallet, and yet takes any thought for the morrow, is a man of puny faith, which 'nduces me to remark that Carlyle in his Sartor Resartus' has given us this fine sus- taining thought: " Whoever has sixpence is ling or the world to the extent of sixpence." This leads indirectly to Chesterfield's advice x> his godson " to be always suaviter in modo
 * Boileau's pressness "—Monkeys—Rev. T. Campbell, 507