Za darmo

Notes and Queries, Number 09, December 29, 1849

Tekst
Autor:
Oznacz jako przeczytane
Czcionka:Mniejsze АаWiększe Aa

SONG IN THE STYLE OF SUCKLING—THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

The song in your second number, furnished by a correspondent, and considered to be in the style of Suckling, is of a class common enough in the time of Charles I. George Wither, rather than Suckling, I consider as the head of a race of poets peculiar to that age, as "Shall I wasting in Despair" may be regarded as the type of this class of poems. The present instance I do not think of very high merit, and certainly not good enough for Suckling. Such as it is, however, with a few unimportant variations, it may be found at page 101. of the 1st vol. of The Hive, a Collection of the most celebrated Songs. My copy is the 2nd edit. London, 1724.

I will, with your permission, take this opportunity of setting Mr. Dyce right with regard to a passage in the Two Noble Kinsmen, in which he is only less wrong than all his predecessors. It is to be found in the second scene of the fourth act, and is as follows:—

 
"Here Love himself sits smiling:
Just such another wanton Ganymede
Set Jove afire with," &c.
 

One editor proposed to amend this by inserting the normative "he" after "Ganymede;" and another by omitting "with" after "afire." Mr. Dyce saw that both these must be wrong, as a comparison between two wanton Ganymedes, one of which sat in the coutenance of Arcite, could never have been intended;—another, something, if not Ganymede, was wanted, and he, therefore, has this note:—"The construction and meaning are, 'With just such another smile (which is understood from the preceding 'smiling') wanton Ganymede set Jove afire." When there is a choice of nouns to make intelligible sense, how can that one be understood which is not expressed? It might be "with just such another Love;" but, as I shall shortly show, no conjecture on the subject is needed. The older editors were so fond of mending passages, that they did not take ordinary pains to understand them; and in this instance they have been so successful in sticking the epithet "wanton" to Ganymede, that even Mr. Dyce, with his clear sight, did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the passage will read thus:—

 
"Here Love himself sits smiling.
Just such another wanton," (as the aforesaid smiling Love) "Ganymede
Set Jove afire with," &c.
 

The third act of the same play commences thus:—

 
"The duke has lost Hippolita; each took
A several land."
 

Mr. Dyce suspects that for "land" we should read "laund," an old form of lawn. "Land" being either wrong, or having a sense not understood now, we must fall back on the general sense of the passage. When people go a hunting, and don't keep together, it is very probable that they may take a several "direction." Now hand means "direction," as we say "to the right" or "left hand." It is not, therefore, probable, that we should read "a several hand?"

SAMUEL HICKSON

"GOTHIC" ARCHITECTURE

It would require more space than you could allot to the subject, to explain, at much length, "the origin, as well as the date, of the introduction of the term 'Gothic,' as applied to pointed styles of ecclesiastical architecture," required by R. Vincent, of Winchester, in your Fourth Number. There can be no doubt that the term was used at first contemptuously, and in derision, by those who were ambitious to imitate and revive the Grecian orders of architecture, after the revival of classical literature. But, without citing many authorities, such as Christopher Wren, and others, who lent their aid in depreciating the old mediæval style, which they termed Gothic, as synonymous with every thing that was barbarous and rude, it may be sufficient to refer to the celebrated Treatise of Sir Henry Wotton, entitled The Elements of Architecture, 4to., printed in London so early as 1624. This work was so popular, that it was translated into Latin, and annexed to the works of Vitruvius, as well as to Freart's Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the Modern. Dufresnoy, also, who divided his time between poetry and painting, and whose work on the latter art was rendered popular in this country by Dryden's translation, uses the term "Gothique" in a bad sense. But it was a strange misapplication of the term to use it for the pointed style, in contradistinction to the circular, formerly called Saxon, now Norman, Romanesque, &c. These latter styles, like Lombardic, Italian, and the Byzantine, of course belong more to the Gothic period than the light and elegant structures of the pointed order which succeeded them. Felibien, the French author of the Lives of Architects, divides Gothic architecture into two distinct kinds—the massive and the light; and as the latter superseded the former, the term Gothic, which had been originally applied to both kinds, seems to have been restricted improperly to the latter only. As there is now, happily, no fear of the word being understood in a bad sense, there seems to be no longer any objection to the use of it in a good one, whatever terms may be used to discriminate all the varieties of the style observable either at home or abroad.

J.I.
Trinity College, Oxford.

DR. BURNEY'S MUSICAL WORKS

Mr. Editor,—On pp. 63. and 78. of your columns inquiry is made for Burney's Treatise on Music (not his History). Before correspondents trouble you with their wants, I think they should be certain that the books they inquire for have existence. Dr. Burney never published, or wrote, a Treatise on Music. His only works on the subject (the General History of Music excepted) are the following:—

"The Present State of Music in France and Italy. 8vo. 1771.

"The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces. 2 vols. 8vo. 1775.

"An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster Abbey, and the Pantheon, &c. in Commemoration of Handel. 4to. 1785.

"A Plan for the Formation of a Musical Academy, 8vo. n. d."

As your "NOTES AND QUERIES" will become a standard book of reference, strict accuracy on all points is the grand desideratum.

EDW. F. RIMBAULT.

P.S. I might, perhaps, have included in the above list the Life of Metastasio, which, although not generally classed among musical works, forms an admirable supplement to the General History of Music.

E.F.R.

ANCIENT INSCRIBED DISHES

Judging from the various notices in your Nos. 3, 5, and 6, the dishes and inscriptions mentioned therein by CLERICUS, L.S.B., &c., pp. 44. 73. 87., are likely to cause as much speculation here as they have some time experienced on the continent. They were there principally figured and discussed in the Curiositãten, a miscellaneous periodical, conducted from about 1818 to 1825, by Vulpius, brother-in-law of Göthe, librarian to the Grand Duke of Saxe Weimar. Herr v. Strombeck, Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal at Wolfenbüttel, first noticed them from a specimen belonging to the church of a suppressed convent at Sterterheim near Brunswick, and they were subsequently pounced upon by Joseph v. Hammer (now v. Purgstall), the learned orientalist of Vienna, as one of the principal proofs which he adduced in his Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum in one of the numbers of the Fundgruben (Mines) des Orients, for the monstrous impieties and impurities which he, Nicolai, and others, falsely attributed to the Templars. Comments upon these dishes occur in other works of a recent period, but having left my portfolio, concerning them, with other papers, on the continent, I give these hasty notices entirely from memory. They are by no means uncommon now in England, as the notices of your correspondents prove. A paper on three varieties of them at Hull was read in 1829, to the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society. In Nash's Worcestershire one is depicted full size, and a reduced copy given about this period in the Gentleman's Magazine, and Nash first calls them "Offertory Dishes." The Germans call them Taufbecken, or baptismal basins; but I believe the English denomination more correct, as I have a distinct recollection of seeing, in a Catholic convent at Danzig, a similar one placed on Good Friday before the tomb of the interred image of the Saviour, for the oblations for which it was not too large. Another of them is kept upon the altar of Boroughbridge Church (N. Riding of Yorkshire), but sadly worn down by scrubbing to keep it bright, and the attempt at a copy of the Inscription in a Harrowgate Guide is felicitously ludicrous: it is there taken as a relic of the Roman Isurium on the same spot. Three others were observed some years ago in a neglected nook of the sacristy of York Cathedral. At the last meeting of the Institute at Salisbury, a number of these were exhibited in St. John's House there, but I believe without any notice taken of them in its Proceedings; and another was shown to the Archæological Society, at their last Chester Congress, by Colonel Biddulph, at Chirk Castle; when more were mentioned by the visitors as in their possession, anxious as your correspondents to know the import of the inscriptions. They are sometimes seen exposed in the shops of Wardour Street, and in other curiosity shops of the metropolis.

 

On their sunken centres all have religious types: the most common is the temptation of Eve; the next in frequency, the Annunciation; the Spies sent by Joshua returning with an immense bunch of grapes suspended betwixt them, is not unfrequent; but non-scriptural subjects, as the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, mentioned by L.S.B., is a variety I have not before observed.

The inscriptions vary, and are sometimes double in two concentral rings. The most usual is that alluded to by your correspondents, and though obviously German, neither old nor obsolete; having been viewed even by native decipherers, through the mist of a preconceived hypothesis, have never yet been by them satisfactorily accounted for. It is always repeated four times, evidently from the same slightly curved die; when, however, the enlarged circumference of the circle required more than this fourfold repetition to go round it, the die was set on again for as much of a fifth impression as was necessary: this was seldom more than four or five letters, which, as pleonastic or intercalary, are to be carefully rejected in reading the rest; their introduction has confused many expositors.

The readings of some of your correspondents who understand German is pretty near the truth. I have before said that the centre type of Eve's Temptation is the most common, and to it the words especially refer, and seem at the place of their manufacture (most probably Nuremburg) to have been used for other centres without any regard to its fitness. The letters, as I can safely aver from some very perfect specimens, are

DER SELEN INFRID WART;

in modern German "der Seelen Infried wort." To the German scholar the two latter words only require explanation. Infrid for Unfried, discord, disturbance, any thing in opposition to Frieden or peace. The Frid-stools at Beverley, Ripon, and Hexham, still bear the old theotise stamp. Wart, or ward, may be either the past tense of werden, to be (our was), or an old form of währen, to endure, to last: our English wear is the same word. The sense is pretty much the same in both readings alluding to Eve. In the first:

 
(By her) the soul's disturbance came (was).
 

By the second:

 
(Through her) the soul's disturbance continues.
 

I may here observe that the words ICH WART are particularly distinct on a helmet, pictured in the Journal of the British Archæological Association, which the Secretary, Mr. Planche, in such matters the highest authority, regards as a tilting helmet. It may there have been in the original ICH WARTE, meaning I bide (my time).

But the centres and this inscription are the least difficulty. A second, frequently met with, is by far more puzzling. I could not give your readers any idea of it without a drawing: however it is found imperfectly depicted on the plates I have before mentioned in Nash's Worcestershire, and the Gentleman's Magazine, and I think I recollect also a very rude copy in a volume of Hearne's Miscellaneous Works, which I examined in the Gottingen Library, but whether belonging to the work or a MS. addition I cannot now call to mind. The fanciful and flowery form of its letters gives great scope to the imagination in assigning them their particular position in the alphabet, and the difficulty of reading them is enhanced by the doubts of German archæologists whether they are initials or component parts of a sentence. Herr Joseph v. Hammer Purgstall, however, in his version RECORD DE SCI GNSI, or in full Recordamini de sancta Gnosi, deduces thence his principal proof of Gnostic heresy amongst the calumniated Templars, in which I am sorry to say he has been too servilely followed in England: e.g. by Mr. Godfrey Higgins, in his posthumous Anaclypsis (p. 830 note), as well as by E.G. Addison, The Temple Church (p. 57), and by Mr. R.W. Billings more especially, who tacks to his account of this building an "Essay on the symbolical Evidences of the Temple Church, where the Templars are proved Gnostic Idolators, as alleged by Edward Clarkson, Esq." Had the learnedly hypothetic Austrian seen the engravings of the Crypt at Canterbury Cathedral (Archæologia, viii. p. 74.), and Ledwick's remarks on it in conjunction with the carvings at Glendalloch (History of Ireland, p. 174.), or those of Grymbald's Crypt at Oxford, he might have been expected to have attributed their monstrosities to his order, with as little hesitation and as thorough a contempt of chronology, or proved connection, as he has the curious and innocent sculptures of the church at Schöngrabern in Bohemia (vide Curiositäten, vol. viii. p. 501.).

WILLIAM BELL, Phil. Dr.