Sept. 15. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



207 



Passage in Milton. — Can you or any of your 

 correspondents furnisli me with an explanatory 

 comipent on the following lines from book iii. of 

 Milton's Paradise Lost? 



" They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed, 

 And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs 

 The trepidation talked, and that first moved." 



HfiNRr Hardcastle. 

 Grasmere. 



[Dr. Newton has the following note to this passage : — 

 " Milton speaks here according to the ancient astronomy, 

 adopted and improved by Ptolemy. ' They pass the 

 planets seven,' our planetary or solar system, and beyond 

 this ' pass the fixed,' the firmament or sphere of the fixed 

 stars, and beyond this ' that crystalline sphere,' the crys- 

 talline heaven, clear as crystal, to which the Ptolemaicks 

 attributed a sort of libration or shaking (the 'trepidation' 

 so much talked of) to account for certain irregularities 

 in the motion of the stars, and bej-^ond this ' that first 

 moved,' the primum mobile, the sphere which was both the 

 first moved and the first mover, communicating its mo- 

 tion to all the lower spheres ; and beyond this was the 

 empj-rean heaven, the seat of God and" the angels. This 

 passage may receive some farther light and illustration 

 from another of the same nature in Tasso (cant. ix. st. 60, 

 61.), where he describes the descent of the archangel Mi- 

 chael from heaven, and mentions this crystalline and all 

 the other spheres, but only inverting the order, as there 

 the motion is downwards, and here it is upwards : 



" Passa il foco, e la luce,' &c. 



♦ He pass'd the light, and shining fire assign'd 

 The glorious seat of his selected crew, 

 The mover first, and circle crystalline. 

 The firmament where fixed stars all shine. 



' Unlike in working than in shape and show, 

 At his left hand, Saturn he left and Jove, 

 And those untruly errant call'd, I trow. 

 Since he errs not who them doth guide and move.' "] 



Blue-thong Knights. — In the Lives of the 

 Queens of England of the House of Hanover, 

 recently published, vol. i. p. 183. (a work remark- 

 able for the total absence of any authority for its 

 statements), occurs the following : 



"When Richard was about setting out for Acre, he 

 instituted the order of the blue thong, the insignia of 

 which was a blue band of leather, worn on the left leg, 

 and which appears to me to be the undoubted original of 

 the order of the garter. There were twenty-four knights 

 of the order, with the king for master, and the wearers 

 pledged themselves to deserve increased honours by 

 scaling the walls of Acre in company." 

 Can any of your friends refer to any authority for 

 this statement, or to any work where an account 

 of this order, and any of its twenty-four knights, 

 may be found ? T. D. S. 



[A similar statement is given in Strickland's Queens of 

 England, vol. i. p. 298., edit. 1854, upon the authority of 

 Hoveden and Sir Egerton Bridges, which we have not 

 been able to discover. In the preface to Liber Niger, 

 compiled in the reign of Henrv VIII., it is there alleged 

 (but upon what authority, if any, the researches of Selden 

 had not discovered) that King Richard L, whilst his 

 forces were employed against Cyprus and Acre, had, 

 through the mediation, as he imagined, of St. George, 

 been inspired with fresh courage and the means of ani- 



mating his fatigued soldiers, by the device to tie about 

 the legs of a chosen number of knights a leathern thong 

 or garter, in order that, being thereby reminded of the 

 honour of their enterprise, they might be encouraged to 

 new efibrts for victory. See the passage in Anstis's 

 History of the Garter, vol. ii. p. 23.] 



Verses to Hogarth's Pictures. — Did Hogarth 

 employ a penny-a-liner of the day to write the 

 verses which, a la Callot, were suffixed to his 

 plates ? or were the illustrative verses the addi- 

 tions of a subsequent publisher ? \Vho wrote the 

 verses to " The Harlot's Progress ? " 



C. Mansfield Ingleby. 



Birmingham. 



[In Hogarth's Works, by Nichols and Steevens, vol. ii. 

 p. 104., it is stated that "the verses to 'The Harlot's Pro- 

 gress ' made their first appearance under the earliest and 

 best of the pirated copies published by Bowles. Hogarth, 

 finding that such a metrical description had its eff'ect, re- 

 solved that his next series of prints should receive the 

 same advantage from an abler hand."] 



Connor or O ' Connor's " History of Poland.'^ — 

 Can any of your readers give me inlbrmation re- 

 specting this author ? Who and what was he ? 

 Was he any relation to Dr. O'Connor, the Stowe 

 librarian, or to the author of the Chronicles of 

 Eri ? Alpha. 



Westminster. 



[Bernard Connor was bom in 1666, in the county of 

 Kerry, studied medicine at several of the continental uni- 

 versities, and at length obtained the appointment of first 

 physician to John Sobieski, King of Poland. Towards 

 the close of the seventeenth century he settled in London, 

 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and, having 

 joined the Church of England, lectured publicly in medi- 

 cine at Oxford. His lectures he afterwards printed under 

 the title of Disquisitiones Medico-Physica. He was also- 

 the author of a History of Poland, and a singular treatise 

 on the miracles of Scripture, entitled Evangelium Medici^ 

 or the Physician's Gospel. He died in October, 1698, in the 

 thirtv-second year of his age. See his Funeral Sermon, 

 preached bv Dr. William Hayley in the parish church of 

 St. Giles's, 'London, 4to., 1699; and Kippis's Biographia 

 Britannica."] 



" Lays of the Minnesingers.'" — Who were the 

 authors oi Lays of the Minnesingers or German 

 Troubadours, London, Longman & Co., 1825 ? 

 The Advertisement commences, — 



" Though this little work is sent into the world anony- 

 mously, it may be proper to state that it is the joint pro- 

 duction of two authors." 



Eden Warwick. 



Birmingham. 



[The principal editor was Edgar Taylor, Esq., F.S.A., 

 who died August 19, 1839 ; and we believe that his co- 

 editor was Mrs. Austin, who is understood to have been 

 associated with him in his first and most admirable trans- 

 lation of Grimm's German Popular Stories."] 



Epitaph. — In the parish church of Kendal, the 

 following epitaph is inscribed on a brass plate to 

 the memory of Ralph Tyrer, B.D., a former vicar, 

 who died June 4, 1627 ; and it is said to have 



