484 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. No 77., June 20. '67. 



" Page 6. The Passage of the Note which names M*" 

 de Verdelin must be suppress'd. 



"Page 18. Read on condition only that the Affair should 

 rttnain a kind of secret, 



"Page 21. Instead of out of regard to me, read agreeably 

 to the usual Politeness and Humanity of his Character. 



" Page 34. There is a Note omitted here, which should 

 be restor'd from the French Edition. 



" Page 38. In the Note, instead of is equally contempt- 

 ible, read is equally mistaken. 



" Page 70. Add to my Note these Words : Since the pub- 

 lication of the first Edition, I received a Letter from a 

 Foreigner, residing in London, who expresses his extreme 

 Surprize at Mr. Rousseau's ascribing the Piece to me, to- 

 gether with that mentioned in page 65. For this Gentleman, 

 whom I never saw, confesses that he wrote both for his 

 JLmusement : He then conceaVd his Name, because he did 

 not care to appear as the Author of such trifles : But he 

 very genteely offers to allow me to publish his Letter, if I 

 think it necessary for the Vindication of my Character : But 

 really I do not think it necessary, and I do not judge it 

 proper to take the Gentleman from his Retreat by givirig his 

 Name to the Public. Nothing but new defiances on the part 

 of M. Rousseau shall oblige me to make use of the Freedom, 

 which the Gentleman allows me. 



" Page 71. Omitt the Translator's Note. 



"Page 79. Add to my Note these Words: JfM. Rous- 

 seau consult his Plutarch, he will find, that when Themistocles 

 fled into Persia, Xerxes was so pleas'd with this Event, that 

 lie was heard to exclaim several times in his sleep, I liave 

 Themistocles, I have Themistocles. Why will not M. Rous- 

 seau understand my Exclamation in the same Sense ? 



" Page 86. Omitt M''^ de Bouffler's Name. 



" Page 99. Kead on whom the public Suspicions have 

 never fallen. 



" I am. Sir, your most humble Servant, 

 "David Hume." 



It is undated, but seems to have been written 

 in 1767 or 1768. Edward Foss. 



Tlie Burning of Tiberius. — Sir Thomas Browne, 

 in his brief, but complete and splendid piece, — 

 " The Hydriotaphia,' alludes to the funeral of 

 Tiberius. He says that — 



"Abject corpses" (were) " huddled forth and carelessly 

 burnt without the Esquiline Port at Rome, which was an 

 affront continued upon Tiberius, while they but half- 

 burnt his body, and in the amphitheatre, according to the 

 custom in notable malefactors," &c. 



There is a note referring to Suetonius. Now 

 the words of the latter are — 



"Corpus ut moveri a Miseiio ccepit, conclamantibus 

 plerisque, Atellam potius deferendum, et in Amphitheatre 

 semiustulandum ; Romam per milites deportatum est, 

 crematumque publico funere." 



Atella was in Campania, and was famous for its 

 amphitheatre. The translation of the above pas- 

 sage is, I think, correctly rendered in the edition 

 of Suetonius, in English, published in 1692, "for 

 Samuel Briscoe, over against Will's Coffee House, 

 in Russel Street, Covent Garden," and which is 

 to this effect : 



" When the body was to be removed from Misenum, 

 they cried out uU together, ' that Atella was the properest 



place to have him to, to be half-burnt there in the the- 

 atre,' yet the soldiers brought him to Rome, where he 

 was burnt with the usual solemnities." 



Thus, he was not half burnt, in the amphitheatre, 

 as Browne seems to assert. J. Doean. 



Large Oaks. — I enclose a cutting from a local 

 newspaper, the Macclesfield Courier., which I think 

 is well worth preservation in the interesting pages 

 of'N. &Q.": — 



" The ancient oak now standing in the little village of 

 Marlon, near Congleton, is described as being finer than 

 the Cowthorpe Oak, of which the present dimensions are 

 said to be : circumference at the ground 50 feet ; at a 

 yard from the ground, 45 feet ; girth of the largest limb, 

 10 feet. The Marton Oak is described as having a cir- 

 cumference at the root of 58 feet; at a yard from the 

 ground of 47 feet ; and at 5 feet from ditto of 42 feet ; the 

 girth of the largest limb was stated to be 11 feet 6 inches ; 

 and the diameter of the hollow inside, 5 feet. Why this 

 tree is not generally known is a marvel. Perhaps be- 

 cause no one expects to find great trees in Ciieshire ; at 

 any rate a traveller through the county would see none. 

 There should be accurate measurements and photographs 

 taken of the largest oaks in England. How many are 

 now standing of 40 feet girth at a man's height from the 

 ground? How long will they stand? 'Mr. Blackshaw, 

 of the Big Oak,' as he is called in the neighbourhood, 

 said that pieces had often fallen out of the tree within a 

 few years as large as a man could carry. This oak, most 

 probabl}^ the largest in England, is within an easy walk 

 of Congleton, on the North Staffordshire Railway. The 

 suggestion that photographers should at once lend the 

 assistance of their marvellous art to the preservation of a 

 faithful record of such noble ruins as still remain in Great 

 Britain is one that will, we trust, be powerfully seconded. 

 To nothing could photography be better applied, for it 

 alone is capable of representing with unerring accuracy 

 the features of those mighty relics of former ages which 

 are now rapidly passing into annihilation. An oak was 

 felled at Morle^', in Cheshire, which produced upwards of 

 1,000 feet of measureable timber. It girthed 45 feet. Its 

 existence could be traced back for 800 years, and it was 

 supposed to be one of the largest trees in England. The 

 hollow trunk had, for some years before it was cut down, 

 been used for housing cattle." 



When 1 visited the Marton Oak, some years 

 ago, it was fast hastening to decay, and had been 

 converted to the useful purpose of a pig-sty. 

 Pei'haps some correspondents may be induced to 

 communicate particulars of dimensions of other 

 large trees to "N. & Q." The "brave old oak" 

 at Marton is situated in quite an out-of-the-way 

 place, at no great distance from the antique little 

 church, which is built of timber and plaster, and 

 one of the few ecclesiastical structures of that de- 

 scription remaining in England. Oxoniensis. 



P.S. Where is Cowthorpe ? 



[Cowthorpe is in the Upper Claro wapentake, West 

 Hiding of Yorkshire, three miles north east of Wetherby, 

 on the river Nidd. Some interesting articles on celebrated 

 oaks appeared in our First Series. See the General Index, 

 art. Oaks.] 



Plato and Oxford, — Professor Blackie spems 

 to construct his views of Oxonion Platonism on 

 somewhat a priori principles. Not only is Mr. 



