2»« S. VII. Feb. 10. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



153 



to have been not so much a name by which he 

 was generally known, as a complimentary appel- 

 lation, pardonable in a dedicator, and employed 

 solely by the author of the little volume which 

 your correspondent cites. 



In order to ascertain what was the author's 

 drift, in thus bestowing on L. Sforza the name of 

 Anglus, we must in the first place notice the name 

 usually given to the duke, which, as your corre- 

 spondent reminds us, was Morus. Just as a dis- 

 tinguished Spanish partisan was from the darkness 

 of his complexion vernacularly called el Empe- 

 cinado (the pitchy or pitch'd), so L. Sforza was 

 on account of his swarthiness styled Morus or 

 Maurus, the Moor : " surnomme le Maure, h, cause 

 de son teint basane " {Biog. Univ.) ; and accord- 

 ingly we find him repeatedly called in French 

 " Louis le Maure." 



Such was the duke's popular agnomen or so- 

 briquet. The dedicator, however, instead of adopt- 

 ing it, and addressing him as " Ludovicus Sfortia, 

 Mo7'us,'' flatteringly styles him " Ludovicus Sfor- 

 tia, Avglus ;" as if he would say, "not a Moor, 

 as you are commonly called, but an Englishman ;^' 

 i. e. not a black but a white, not dark but fair. 



This complimentary selection of the particular 

 term Anglus, as antithetical to Morus, was not 

 without a reason. The English have generally 

 been noted amongst Europeans, as distinguished 

 by the fairness of their complexion. Compara- 

 tively speaking, call it an advantage or call it a 

 defect, we are, as the Red Man would say, a na- 

 tion of " Pale Faces." From this complexional 

 characteristic of our race, we find the Rev. Thomas 

 White, a priest of the seventeenth century, who 

 appears to have taken delight in 'a plurality of 

 synonyms, rejoicing in the various titles of " Can- 

 didus," " Albius," " Bianchi," and " Anghis;" as if 

 the last implied v}hile, as well as the other three. 

 JN^ay, even the Jew of England, says the Encyc. 

 Brit., is white ; while the Portuguese Jew is 

 swarthy, the Armenian olive, and the Arabian cop- 

 per-coloured, — each taking the indigenous tint. 



It is remarkable that a compliment, precisely 

 similar to that paid in the case now before us to 

 L. Sforza Maurus, is paid in Shakspeare to Othello 

 the Moor : — the Doge saying to Desdemona's fa- 

 ther, " Your son-in-law is far more fair than 

 black " (Act I, Sc. 3.). Thus, in the language of 

 laudation, Othello is not so black as he is fair ; 

 and Sforza is no Ma/ums but an Anglus, no Afri- 

 can but a spn of Albion, no blackamoor but a white. 



Thomas Bots. 



Ne^ro Slaves sold in England (2"^ S. vi. 267.) 

 — Without contradicting the statement quoted 

 from the Stamford Mercury, I may perhaps be al- 

 lowed to state that some contemporary publica- 



tions do not confirm the public sale of a slave in 

 England at a period quite so advanced as the end 

 of 177L Granville Sharp's crusade against slavery 

 was then in much agitation, and the well-known 

 case of the negro Somerset beginning to excite 

 attention. Slaves were probably disposed of by 

 private arrangement both then and previously, but 

 it may be inferred that the actual number of pub- 

 lic sales in this country has been extremely few ; 

 indeed the only instance I have met with appears 

 to have occurred in 1763, and it is thus announced 

 in the Gentleman's Magazine : — 



" Friday, 28 January. 



" At the sale of Rice the broker's effects, a Negro boy 

 was put up hy auction, and sold for 321. Perhaps the 

 first instance of the kind in a free country." 



In England the "institution" of slavery was 

 never popular, and at the period in question 

 black servants were considered a great nuisance. 

 In 1764, it was computed that in London alone 

 upwards of twenty thousand of them were domi- 

 ciled, and the newspapers of the day speak of 

 them as " ceasing to consider themselves slaves in 

 this free country," as declining " to put up with 

 inequality of treatment ;" as "not more willingly 

 performing the laborious oflSces of servitude than 

 our own people ; " and, if compelled to labour, 

 as being "generally sullen, spiteful, treacherous, 

 and revengeful." We may therefore assume that 

 the system was tending towards its own extinction, 

 and that public opinion was not ill-prepared to 

 receive in 1772 Lord Mansfield's ever-memorable 

 judgment in Somerset's case, affirming the prin- 

 ciple that " As soon as any slave sets his foot on 

 English ground he becomes free." 



Robert S. Salmon. 



Newcastle - on-Tyne. 



Pythagoras on Beans (2°^ S. vii. 125.) -—In the 

 note of Henry Stephens on the passage which 

 Bayle cite^ from Sextus Empiricus are these 

 words : — 



" Respicit notos Scholse PythagoricsB versiculos, quos 

 Empedocli plerique, alii, ut Didymus libro 2 Geoponicon, 

 cap. 35. Orpheo tribuunt : 



" AeiAol, navSeiKoi,, KvafiMV aTri x^'P<*S e\e<r8ai' 

 1(701' TOi (tvojiAovs Tpwyeii' /ce(^aAas re to/c^oii'." 



The latter line, though not in the Oolden 

 Verses, has often been quoted as belonging to 

 them; and it was not therefore any gross error 

 of memory in De Quincey to have believed he 

 had read it there. 



But the explanation, as being a symbolical 

 prohibition against political voting, is not derived 

 from a German author, but from the Gallus (sect. 

 4, 5.) and the Vitarum Audio (sect. 6.) of Lucian; 

 dialogues read in all schools, and very familiar to 

 Eton scholars. But when one recollects how long 

 a time Pythagoras passed in Egypt, where this 

 superstition was most rife (as appears in Herod, ii. 

 37., as well as in Sextus Empiricus), one may well 



