106 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



L2nd s. No 32., Aug. 9. '56. 



"It is well." (Washington.) 

 « Valete et Plaudite ! " (Augustus.) 

 " Give DayroUes a chair." (Chesterfield.) 

 " It matters little how the head lieth." (Raleigh.) 

 « I'm shot if I don't believe I'm dying." (Thurlow.) 

 " God preserve the Emperor ! " (Haydn.) 

 " Be serious." (Grotius.) 

 " The artery ceases to beat." (Haller.) 

 « What, is there no bribing Death ? " (Cardinal Beau- 

 fort.) 

 "I have loved God, my father, and liberty." (De 



Stael.) 

 " I pray you, see me safe up, and for my coming down, 



let me shift for myself." (Sir Thomas More.) 

 " Don't let that awkward squad fire over my grave." 



(Burns.) 

 " A dying man can do nothing easy." (Franklin.) 

 " Let me die to the sounds of delicious music." (Mira- 



beau.) 

 " We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is of the 

 company." (Gainsborough.) 



Some of your correspondents, I have no doubt, 

 could greatly enlarge this collection. H. E. W. 

 York. 



A Real " Skimpole:' — The tales of Charles 

 Dickens are distinguished for queer characters 

 with queer names. Some of his critics have said 

 that such names and such characters never ex- 

 isted. However, in a former number of " N. & 

 Q.," "■ an attempt was made to trace the cogno- 

 mina of some of the Pickwickians to a book of a 

 very different kind, the Annual Register. 



If it be true that the novelist borrows his proper 

 names from books, may he not be indebted to the 

 same sources for at least the elements of his 

 characters ? In reading Marmontel's Memoirs, 

 I have stumbled upon what seems to me the very 

 prototype of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. 

 The biographer is describing a pair of worthies 

 called Galet and Panard. Of the latter he says : 



" Le bon homme Panard, aussi insouciant que son ami, 

 aussi oublieux du passe et negligent de I'avenir, avoit 

 plutot dans son infortune la tranquillite d'uu enfant, que 

 I'indifFerence d'un philosophe. Le soin de se nourrir, de 

 se loger, de se vetir, ne le regardoit point : c'etoit I'affaire 

 de ses amis, et il en avoit d'assez bons pour meriter cette 

 confiance," &c. — Memoires de Marmontel, livre vi. 



' All he (Skimpole) asked of society was to let him live. 

 That wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the 

 papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, 

 fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a 

 little claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child 

 in the world, but he did not cry for the moon. He said 

 to the world, ' go your several waj'S in peace, .... only 

 let Harold Skimpole live ! ' 



" All this, and a great deal more, he told us with a 

 certain vivacious candour, speaking of himself as if it were 

 not at all his own atfair," &c. — Bleak House, pp. 49, 50. 



F. 



Passage in " The Widkirh Miracles." — In The 

 History of Dramatic Poetry, Mr. Collier quotes 

 that remarkable farce which forms the twelfth 



• 1»' S. xi. 443. 



pageant of the Widkirk Series of Miracles at con- 

 siderable length, and helps the reader by eluci- 

 datory notes. In the course of the play the 

 following passage occurs : 



" Whilk catell bot this 

 Tame nor wylde 

 None, as have I blys, 

 As lowde as hesmylde." 



To which Mr. Collier appends this note : 



" This is one of the expressions I am unable to inter- 

 pret. Possibly we should read ' as lewde as he smelde,' 

 i. e. as wicked as he smelt.' " 



May not the following provincialism throw some 

 light on this obscure phrase? Something more 

 than a month ago, I overheard part of a conver- 

 sation in a street of a midland town. The inter- 

 locutors were labourers; and their subject, the 

 one theme of the day, Palmer's trial. The one 

 having dwelt upon the difficulties of conviction, 

 the other replied : " I'll never believe he's not 

 guilty ; his life stinks aloud of murder." I at 

 once thought of this passage, and made a note for 

 reference, having never before heard the phrase 

 used in this manner ; although " aloud" is the ad- 

 verb generally used by the uneducated of this 

 district to strengthen very emphatically the verb 

 " to stink." 



I suppose the line quoted to be correct as it 

 stands, "lowde" being the true reading. And in 

 accordance with the first use of the words, the 

 passage would mean " strong as were the suspi- 

 cions attending Mak's conduct, he does not appear 

 to be guilty." Or accepting the more common, 

 and less metaphorical use of the phrase, " though 

 the smell of slaughtered meat in Mak's cottage 

 was very strong," we can't find any. C. M. 



Leicester. 



Dr. Forster on Periodical Meteors. — Can you 

 find space for the following extract from The 

 Times of Tuesday the 5th ? It forms a part of a 

 letter calling the attention of astronomers and 

 meteorologists to the probability that Sunday 

 next, the 10th August, will be marked by an un- 

 usual number of those remarkable meteors which 

 caused that day to be called " dies meteorosa " in 

 the old calendars; and records the writer's cor- 

 rection of what he believes an erroneous opinion 

 formerly advanced by him as to their origin. 



"As I was the first person who called the attention of 

 astronomers to the apparently planetoid and periodical 

 nature of the meteors of the 10th of August and 13th of 

 November, in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine, as 

 long ago as 1824, I think it right and honest now to de- 

 clare that I was wrong in then supposing that these 

 bodies might have revolving periods. I am convinced hy 

 all my subsequent observations that they are either mere 

 electrical phenomena, as Pliny and Aratus thought, and 

 indicate only the autumnal fall of temperature, or else 

 that they are columns of inflammable vapour set on fire 

 iu the higher regions of the air, as M. De Luc used to 



