2««i.S. X Acq. 25. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



141 



LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 1800. .' 



5Jo. 243.— CONTENTS. 



NOTES: — Parnell's Poems, 141 — The Gunpowder Plot 

 Papers, No. 4, 142 — Isaac Mann, D.D., Bishop of Cork and 

 Boss. 143. 



MiNOE Notes : — Only Passport to England signed by Na- 

 poleon I. — Milton's Blindness — Fly-leaf Scribblings — 

 Tooth and Egg Metal— Surgeons and Apothecaries in the 

 Eighteenth Century — Irish Oflacers in Foreign Service — 

 Accidents from Ligntning, 143. 



QUERIES :—Trigueras, Writings of— Open Town-Fields 



— Mosheim and Morgan— Ghost in the Tower— Paint- 

 ings — Bishop Bayles — " Every Man is convinced " — Rev. 

 Benj. Rudge — Sir John Hawkwood — Dryden's Poems — 

 Windsor Registers — Sugar — Red-hot Guns — Oxford 

 Authors — Pavement —Massena— Reference in Bartholi- 

 nus — North Sea — Testing the Strength of Canon] by 

 superheated Steam — Beattie the Poet — Essentialists, 145. 



QUEEIES WITH A^'SWEES: — Platform (?) an Americanism 



— Shamrock— Pussie-Puck Fiste— St. James of Calatrava 



— Claude Du Val— Marriages before Noon, 148, 

 REPLIES:— The Rommany, or Gypsies, 149 — Libraries 



built up in Walls, 150 — Carnival at Milan, 151 — Bishop 

 Bedell — Heraldic Visitations of Irish Counties, 153 — 

 Coronation of Edward IV, — Rev. George Watson — 

 Withered Violets — Horn Books — Excommunication since 

 the Reformation — Acts of the Scottish Parliaments — 

 Figures in Weston Church — Confessions in Verse— Mil- 

 ton's " Paradise Lost "— Frances C, Barnard — Longevity 



— Richard, Seventh Earl of Anglesey — Tomb Records — 

 Aunt Sally — Senex's Maps — River, Jordan— John Wy- 

 thers — American Rivers — Clerical Incumbencies — 

 Pooms by Burns and Lockhart — Meaning of "End" in 

 Bunyan — Salt Mines, &c., 153. 



Notes on Books, 



PARNELL'S POEMS. 

 Every one of course is aware that the graceful 

 and elegant poetry of Parnell has met with a con- 

 genial editor in Mr, Willmott. This is, I believe, 

 the first critical edition, and it is in no unkind 

 spirit that I offer the following attempt at sup- 

 plying what appear to me to be its deficiencies. 

 They arise, in the usual manner, from the want of 

 universal knowledge in the editor — a knowledge 

 to which few, if any, can lay ^laim, and so one 

 may be able to make up for the short-comings of 

 another. 



I begin with the celebrated Fairy Tale. For 

 this Mr. Willmott is filled with just and well- 

 merited admiration. Indeed he seems to give it 

 one praise — that of original invention — to which, 

 as I shall now show, it has no claim whatever. 



Mr. Willmott — to his shame be it spoken — 

 appears to be totally unacquainted with the Fairy 

 Mythology. For if he had read that book he 

 would have seen that the late Mr. Crofton Croker 

 had in the Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland 

 given this very legend under the name of the 

 . *' Legend of Knock Grafton," and both there and 

 in the Fairy Mythology its being the probable 

 origin of Parnell's tale is stated. He would also 

 have seen that Wm. Steward Eose, in his review 

 of the Fairy Legends in The Quarterly, had no- 



ticed a similar Spanish legend, given afterwards 

 at full by Mr. Thoms in his Lays and Legends of 

 Spain, on the authority of Sir John Malcolm ; 

 and that, finally, there is a similar Breton legend, 

 which resembles Parnell's tale more than either of 

 the others, the genuineness of which is not to be 

 doubted. 



I think Parnell's account of the mode of his 

 learning the legend is the true one : it was told 

 him by his nurse, and the^^moral perhaps was hers 

 too. As far as 1 am aware, it is now known only 

 in Munster, but it doubtless was at that time — 

 perhaps still may be — known also in Leinster, 

 where Parnell was born and bred. 



On the Allegory on Man Mr. Willmott makes 

 no remark whatever, of course regarding it as al- 

 together Parnell's own invention. Here, again, he 

 is guilty of not having read a book he should have 

 read, namely. The Mythology of Ancient Greece 

 and Italy. If he had performed that duty he would 

 have known that, as is there pointed out, Parnell's 

 beautiful poem is founded on a fable narrated by 

 Hyginus the Latin mythographer. 



The Hermit Mr. Willmott follows Warton in 

 deriving from the Gesia Romanorum, but through 

 the medium of H. More's Platonic Dialogues ; but 

 neither of them can trace it any higher. Warton 

 says : " Pope used to say that it was originally 

 written in Spanish. This I do not believe ; but 

 from the early connexion between the Spaniards 

 and Arabians this assertion leads to confirm the 

 suspicion that it was an Oriental tale." As War- 

 ton was, and Mr. Willmott is, a clergyman, I 

 wonder neither of them was ever tempted to look 

 into the Koran. If they had done so they would 

 have found in the eighteenth Surat of that book 

 this very legend, but with different circumstances ; 

 the parts of the Hermit and the Angel being as- 

 signed to Moses and that mysterious personage 

 named Khidr. As the prophet invented none of 

 the narratives given in the Book of his Law, and 

 indeed in general rather spoiled them, I think he 

 may have been indebted for this to the Jewish 

 Rabbin. 



Mr. Willmott has a note on the following pas- 

 sage in the Hermit, in which he gives the opinions 

 of Johnson, Boswell, and Malone, along with his 

 own respecting its meaning : — 



"To clear this doubt, to know the world by sight, 

 To find if books or swains report it right ; 

 For yet by swains alone the world he knew." 



It appears to me that all difficulty will be re- 

 moved if we suppose or in the second line to have 

 taken the place of and, by that ordinary printer's 

 error of which I have given so many instances in 

 one of the Final Notes in my edition of Milton's 

 Poems. The third line merely means that these 

 swains were the only persons belonging to the 

 world with whom he had had an opportunity of 

 conversing. 



