Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/347

 9- s. via OCT. 26, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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copy of this translation of St. Gregory, but the Catalogue does not identify " P. W."

At the back of the title-page is an elaborate engraving, armorial or symbolical, and under- neath is the verse :

In earthe longe life, with happie state : Queen Anne, Christ lesu sende.

In heauen that blisse amongst his Saintes :

Which never shal haue ende. The dedication, "To the Highe and Excellent Princes Anne : by Gods singvlar prouidence, Quene of greate Brittaine, Fraunce and Irelande," is a curious testimony to the Rome ward inclinations with which the royal lady was credited. The author places these very early, "for I haue bene credibly en- formed," he says,

" how at that very tyme, in the middest of those meeting ioyes : and the very throng of those terres- trial pleasures : you sent for out of England, such principall bookes of piety and deuotion, as were there to be founde."

As princes rarely have faithful reprovers, it is desirable, he intimates, that thej r should find them in books. He recommends St. Gregory on account of his love to the English people, and pointedly refers to the letter written by the saint to Queen Aldeberga, encouraging her to "labour the conversion of the King and his people." The translator also says that, whilst many books had been dedicated to James I., and one to " our yonge prince " (Prince Henry, who died in 1612), " so none at all for ought that I can learne, much less that professeth the religion of S. Gregorie, hath hitherto presented any book to your Princely person."

This and the appropriate season decided him to make his book a new year's gift to the queen. The dedication is dated " The first of lanuarie, 1608." WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

DESTRUCTION OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. The following passage, which I quote from an article in the August number of the Month 155) entitled ' Catholic Antiquities of sham,' deserves the wider publicity that its appearance in * N, & Q.' will give. We have long been accustomed to important parish papers perishing or being lost on account of the carelessness of their custodians, but one would hope that of late years they have seldom been destroyed out of sheer wantonness :

" Many interesting and valuable documents relating to the history of Bosham, together with the registries [sic], have unfortunately perished. They were in existence until the middle of the last century, however, and were kept in the ancient chest, with a very curious lock, still seen in the

vestry. But unfortunately the ignorance and wanton destructiveness of the parish clerk Kervell, who seems to have had the care of them when Mr. How was vicar, was the cause of their irretrievable loss. We have it on the best authority that one winter's evening this rustic philistine carried out into a neighbouring yard all the books, parchments, and documents with ancient seals attached, long prior to the dissolution of the monastery, and deliberately made a bonfire of them by applying his lantern to the pile. Strange to say, the vicar seems to have inflicted no penalty for this barbarous destruction, and the antiquarian alone is left to mourn the loss of these invaluable records."

K. P. D. E.

ZECHARIAH HEYWARD : GUY OF WARWICK. There is a chap-book, ' The Noble and Re- nowned History of Guy, Earl of Warwick,' the twelfth edition, London, printed by T. Sabine, No. 81, Shoe Lane, no date, 12mo, ending on p. 144. It contains many rude cuts, one of which is really a picture of Sancho Panza being tossed in a blanket. Much of the prose reads like blank verse ('D.N.B.,' xxiii. 388). The dedication, signed G. L., is to Mr. Zechariah Hey ward, citizen of London, who has a love for his native country and its ancient heroes, and from whom G. L. has received many favours. Mr. Heyward has a ' virtuous lady " and many children, chief of whom is "Mr. Hyde Hey ward, a very hopeful young gentleman." In Col. Chester's 'Mar- riage Licences,' ed. Foster, 1887, col. 660, we find that on 19 June, 1680, Zachary Hay ward, of St. Catherine Creechurch, London, widower, had a licence to marry Anne, daughter of Richard Hyde, of Shinfield, Berks, gent, (a spinster, aged twenty-one), at Yately, South- ampton. W. C. B.

A SAYING OF SOCRATES. The saying of Socrates that all he knew was that he knew nothing is of ten advanced (even by intelligent people) as an argument against the acquisition of knowledge, or in favour of ignorance. Aristophanes would scarcely have under- stood it in this sense. It seems to me that Socrates only meant that what he knew was as nothing to what he did not know. Mill ('Examination of Hamilton') suggests a much more ingenious explanation, which is this : "The say ing...... expresses a conceivable and

not inconsistent state of mind. The only thing he felt perfectly sure of may have been that he was sure of nothing else." In which case, however, if he knew even this much with certainty, he could not say that he knew nothing. Now the most important thing (so considered by many) in the teaching of Socrates was that a man's acts were in accordance with the amount of knowledge which he had acquired that vice, in fact, was