2°J S. VIII. Aug. 6. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Ill 



that he had been kept awake during the greater part of 

 the night by thinking of the story and laughing at it, and 

 that he had turned it into a ballad." This occurred -in 

 October, 1782. The ballad was sent to Mr. Unwin, and 

 was first printed in The Public Advertiser on November 

 14, 1782. Mr. William West, formerly a bookseller in 

 London and Cork, who died in the Charter House, Nov. 

 17, 1854, in his eightj'-fifth year, relates as a fact not 

 generally known, that the distinguished personage im- 

 mortalised by the poet, was no other than Mr. Beyer, an 

 eminent linendraper, superlatively polite, who figured in 

 the visible order of things at the top of Paternoster Row, 

 or rather at the corner of Cheapside. Quoth Mr. John 

 Gilpin — 



" I am a linen-draper bold 

 As all the world doth know." 



West adds, writing in 1839, "I had the assurance fifty 

 years ago, from John Annesley Colet, who knew Beyer 

 better than I did, and also Mr. Cowper and some of 

 his connexions." (Aldine Magazine, p. 19.) Mr. Beyer 

 died on May 11, 1791, at the good ripe age of ninety- 

 eight] 



S. John the Evangelist. — Why is S. John the 

 Evangelist sometimes represented in pictures as 

 holding a chalice, from which a serpent is issuing? 



F. L. 



[Mrs. Jameson informs us, that " St. John is always, in 

 Western Art, young, or in the prime of life, with little 

 or no beard ; flowing or curling hair, generally of a pale 

 brown or golden hue, to express the delicacy of his na- 

 ture ; and in his countenance an expression of benignity 

 and candour. His drapery is, or ought to be, red, with a 

 blue or green tunic. He bears in his hand the sacramen- 

 tal cup, from which a serpent is seen to issue. St. Isidore 

 relates, that, at Rome, an attempt was made to poison St. 

 John in the cup of the sacrament : he drank of the same, 

 and administered it to the communicants without injury, 

 the poison having by a miracle issued from the cup in 

 the form of a serpent, while the hfred assassin fell down 

 dead at his feet. According to another version of this 

 story, the poisoned cup was administered by order of the 

 Emperor Domitian. According to a third version, Aris- 

 todemus, the high-priest of Diana at Ephesus, defied 

 him to drink of the poisoned chalice, as a test of the 

 truth of his mission: St. John drank unharmed — the 

 priest fell dead. Others say, and this seems the more 

 probable interpretation, that the cup in the hand of St. 

 John alludes to the reply given by our Saviour, when the 

 mother of James and John requested for her sons the 

 place of honour in heaven, ' Ye shall drink indeed of my 

 cup.' As in other instances, the legend was invented to 

 explain the symbol. When the cup has the consecrated 

 •wafer instead of the serpent, it signifies the institution of 

 the Eucharist." — Sacred and Legendary Art, i. 159. edit. 

 1857.] 



Mount St. Michael. — Where will the best ac- 

 count be found of this curious monument on the 

 coast of Cornwall, and of the corresponding Mount 

 St. Michael on the coast of Brittany ? Are there 

 any separate works on the subject of either of 

 them ? A. D. C. 



[The most complete account of Mount St. Michael off 

 the coast of Cornwall, will be found in a supplementary 

 paper (pp. 28.) to vol. iii. of Polwhele's History of that 

 county (4to. Lond. 1816). See also Borlase's Antiquities 

 of Cornwall (fol. Oxf. 1754), pp. 350-51, for a briefer de- 

 scription of the same spot, and an admirable illustration 



of the Mount; and Murrav's excellent Hand-Book of 

 Devon and Cornwall, 4th e'dit. 1859, pp. 191—194. We 

 are not aware that any separate work has been published 

 on the subject. Perhaps some correspondent will be able 

 to refer to works relating to the corresponding Mount off 

 the coast of Brittanj'. ] 



SRcplteS. 



ON STYLE IN GENERAL, BIBLIOGEAPHY, TYPOGEA- 



PHY, TKANSLATION, AND SEVE^gf, OTHER THINGS, 



(^Apropos of Buff on' s popular axiom " Le style," etc.') 



(2"" S. vi. 308. ; vii. 502. ; viii. 37. 54. 98.) 



What are the true meaning, the wording, and 

 the general import of Buffon's axiom — "Le style 

 est I'homme mcme" — is a mooted point, on which 

 your several learned correspondents, now four in 

 number — an American gentleman; M. C. J. B. ; 

 Mr.Macray, whose name is evidently Scotch; Mr. 

 Andrew Steinmetz, whose name is German ; and 

 another one — entertain different opinions. To 

 complete the bibliographic council, I beg leave to 

 add ray modest French name to the list of the 

 debaters. 



The point is one of literary, and even philoso- 

 phical interest ; and let it be said, to the great 

 honour of the " N. & Q," it is absolutely new, 

 even in France. Your correspondents started the 

 question, and proposed the problem, which they 

 had no chance to settle and to solve, wanting the 

 necessary elements, and proceeding as they did 

 from false or inexaot " premisses." Allow me to 

 state the facts. 



In the year 1753, the Count of Buffon was 

 elected one of the members of the French Aca- 

 demy. His reception took place in the month of 

 August. It was solemn, rather than popular. 

 That Monsieur de Buffon, a most pompous gen- 

 tleman of the Johnsonian or rather Porsonian 

 school, possessed great talents, an admirable and 

 harmonious flow of language, large mental and 

 scientific acquirements, nobody gainsaid. Vol- 

 taire's free and easy manner, Montesquieu's 

 pointed and shining epigrams, were much more in 

 accordance with the general current and the new 

 desires of the rising generation. Literature has 

 its flow and reflux. One felt cloyed with Fonte- 

 nelle's elegance, and Massillon's honeyed and 

 magniloquent diction. Some even approved of 

 Baculard's slip-shod style ; and Diderot's senti- 

 mental frenzy had many admirers. A particular 

 group of literati contended that in facts, not m 

 style, resides the true value of books : these dis- 

 dained all order, care, arrangement, method, or- 

 namentation, and even the artistic development of 

 thought, as being mannered, rhetorical, useless, 

 and boyish. Natural parts were all in all, said 

 the Diderotians. Facts, realities and experiments, 

 give us nothing else, cried the Lamettrians and 



