Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/65

 9. s. vn. JAN. 19, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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professors in the appendix (p. 17) t Hustler's * Graduati Cantabrigienses,' 182 In the same appendix (p. 12) Pearson is mac Bishop of Chichester (instead of Chester) i 1672 (i.e., 1672/3). I am glad that I have thu unintentionally been driven to point ou the need of a thoroughly revised and com plete edition of our lists of Cambridg graduates. Our present lists begin with 165 and end with 1884, and are very carelessl compiled, at least as far as the seventeent century goes. I may notice that W. L. Manse for twelve years held the mastership o Trinity with a bishopric.

JOHN E. B. MAYOE.

LANGUAGE TO CONCEAL THOUGHT (9 th S. vi 368, 432, 476). It is difficult to name with absolute certainty the writer who, in modern times at least, first made use of this phrase which is worthy of Machiavelli and remind us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador, " Legatus est vir bonus peregr missus ad mentiendum Reipublicae causa," a we find it in Izaac Walton's sketch of the knight. The biographer gives the following translation: "An Ambassador is an hones man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his Country," and adds, " But the word for lye (being the hinge upon which the Conceit was to turn) was not so exprest in Latine, as would admit (in the hands of an Enemy espe- cially) so fair a construction as Sir Henry thought in English." But eight years after- wards " Jasper Scipppius, a Romanist, a man of a restless spirit, and a malicious Pen,' coming across the sentence and taking the words as they were written, made some bitter remarks against the king and his ambassador, who was then at Venice. James was very angry with Sir Henry, and the latter had much ado in regaining the royal favour, which he only accomplished after writing two apologies, one in the "universal lan- guage" and another in the vernacular, ad- dressed to King James. It seems rather hard, however, on Scioppius to blame him for failing to see that there was a play upon words in the English translation of the Latin sentence. From one ambassador let us turn to another. That the phrase is now so well known is to be attributed to Talleyrand, who became ac- quainted with it as follows. " I learn," says Forster ('Goldsmith/ book iii. chap. i. note),

the valuable and well-conducted Notes and Queries (i. 83) the curious fact, that four years after this remark had thus been made by Goldsmith, it was repeated by Voltaire (from whom, no doubt, lalleyrand afterwards stole it) in his satiric little dialogue of 'Le Chapon et la Poularde' (' CEuvres Completes,' xxix. 83, 84, ed. 1822), where the capon,

complaining of the treachery of men, says, 'Us n'emploient les paroles que pour deguiser leurs pensees.' "

This extract clearly shows whence the dip- lomatist derived the expression which he has made notorious.

I have now to make known an interesting discovery. The third number of Goldsmith's Bee, which treats of the use of language and contains the phrase under discussion, is dated 20 October, 1759, the very year, strange to say, in which Butler's 'Remains' first ap- peared, as MR. APPERSON has informed us. But what is still more remarkable, and con- clusively shows whence Goldsmith derived his inspiration, is the fact that he had re- viewed this same work, only four months before, in the Critical Review for 1 July, 1759 (Forster, book ii. chap. vi.). It is impossible to resist the conviction that he borrowed the idea from the author he had so recently been studying, though Young's lines had been published many years before this date.*

That Young was indebted to Dr. R. South is manifest from a passage quoted from one of his sermons, the last sentence of which is this :

In short, this seems to be the true, inward udgment of all our politick sages, that speech was riven to the ordinary sort of men whereby to com- municate their mind ; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it,"

'which Young, speaking of precisely the same court influences, afterwards condensed nto this couplet :

When Nature's end of language is declined, And men talk only to conceal their mind." Torster (book iv. chap, xiv.) does not mention when this particular sermon was delivered. According to Lowndes, a collected edition of South's sermons was not published until 1823. 3ut several of them must have been printed n pamphlet form soon after they were de- ivered, as was the fashion of the time. I >ossess a goodly number of such discourses n two large volumes, and very interesting eading they afford, for they are, with scarcely n exception, much more political than re- igious. One of them is "A Sermon Preach'd Before the Queen, and both Houses of Parlia- ment : at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul's, Nov. 12, 1702. Being the Day of Thanks- iving," &c., "by the Right Reverend Father n God Jonathan, Lord Bishop of Exeter." It 'as "printed for Tho. Bennet at the Half- Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1702," and

Young's Works, 4 vol. 1762," and " South's Ser- ons, 4 vol." ; no date given in catalogue of sale. See Forster,
 * In the list of Goldsmith's books we find he had