138 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Aug. 25. 1855. 



which the hero of Defoe sheltered himself in his 

 island from the ardour of a tropical sun. 



It was the advice of a quaint old friend, often 

 repeated for the guidance of his friends through 

 this rainy world, to provide an umbrella when it 

 was fine, and to do as they liked when it was wet. 

 He had too " little Latin " to be aware that Mar- 

 tial had given congenial counsel before him : 



" Panula Scortea, 



" Ingrediare viam ccelo licet usquo sereno 

 Ad subitas nunquam scortea desit aquas." 



Epiff., lib. xiv. cxxx. 



Another couplet may be cited from the same 

 author : 



« Umhella. 



" Accipe quaa niinios vincant umbracula soles ; 

 Sit licet et veatus te tua vela tegent." 



Lib. xiv. xxviii. 



The poet gives us good advice ; and that all 

 may be enabled to follow it, I conclude by sub- 

 mitting the following epigram to the consideration 

 of those who may wish to make seasonable advice 

 to their friends : • 



" Pour etrenne on veut k I'envie 

 Du frais, et du neuf, et du beau ; 

 Je dis que c'est un parapluie 

 Que I'oa doit donner en cas d'eau!" (en cadeati.) 



William Bates. 

 Birmingham. 



A MILTON NOTE. 



Mk. Hunter has shown (Vol. xi., p. 477.) that, 

 in my Life, §-c. of Milton, I had fallen into an 

 error with respect to the date of the death of the 

 Marchioness of Winchester. I will now give the 

 origin of that error ; but I must previously state, 

 in explanation of, not in excuse for, this and other 

 errors in that work, that while it was in a frag- 

 mentary condition a domestic calamity occurred, 

 which nearly paralysed my mental energies. My 

 first impression was that I ought to abandon my 

 task, and perhaps it would have been the part of 

 wisdom to have done so ; but I finally resolved to 

 persevere and complete the volume. 



In one of his notes on the poem Warton says : 



" Mr. Bowles remarks that her death was celebrated by 

 Sir John Beaumont and Sir W. Davenant. See Beau- 

 mont's Poems, 1629, p. 159. ; Davenant's Works." 



From this I naturally inferred that she must have 

 died before 1629; and, from the cause above as- 

 signed, I did not carefully examine Beaumont's 

 poem, where I should have seen at once that the 

 subject of it must have been a different person. 

 I cast, by the way, no imputation on the sagacity 

 or good faith of Ma. Huntek, of whom 1 have 

 unilbrmly spoken with the respect to which he is 

 entitled, 

 JSTo. 304.] 



From a letter accompanied with facsimiles of 

 the signatures of Milton and his wife and daugh- 

 ters, with which Mr. Marsh of Warrington has 

 kindly favoured me, I find that Anne Milton could 

 not write even her name, and that Mary mis- 

 spelt it ; but Deborah's handwriting is good. He 

 has, however, proved to my satisfaction that she 

 is not one of the writers in the Cambridge MS. 

 In fact she was not six years old when the last 

 poem in that MS. — the sonnet on the death of 

 his second wife — was composed. 



As I do not happen to have any books printed 

 in the sixteenth century, and my memory is be- 

 come somewhat treacherous, I have, in one 

 instance stated as a peculiarity of Spenser's, that 

 which was the ordinary orthography of the time. 



In my remarks on Milton's first sonnet there 

 are some inaccuracies. His was not, as I state, 

 " the earliest English specimen of a sonnet formed 

 on the Italian model," for Donne's Holy Sonnets 



— which, however, were not published till 1633 



— are similar in construction to his Italian 

 sonnets and to that to Cromwell. Moreover,, 

 they had Italian authority for this structure ; for 

 among the thousand sonnets of T. Tasso there are 

 two similarly formed, Amando, ardendo, and Tw 

 parti, o rondi nella. In what I said of the French 

 sonnet I had only the poets of the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries in view ; but the sonnet 

 was a favourite form with those of the sixteenth 

 century. Ronsard, whom his countrymen seem 

 rather to underrate, has left a great number, and 

 speaking of that age Boileau says : 



" A peine dans Gombaut, Mainard et Malleville 

 En peut-oii admirer deux ou trois entre mille." 



There are doubtless many other errors and inac- 

 curacies in my work, but it may suffice to have 

 noticed these. Thos. Keightley. 



Chiswick. 



house of commons temp. ELIZABETH AND JAMBS. 



On running over the pages of the Commons' 

 Journals, many a little characteristic incident 

 turns up, which you may possibly deem suitable 

 to your pages. 



Coughing down a Member not allowed. — " Who- 

 soever hisseth or disturbeth any speech hereafter, 

 shall be called to the bar. Growing upon Sir 

 Lewis Lewknor's speech," — that is, the practice 

 gained strength during his speech. (2 James I., 

 June 20.) 



Absenteeism. — This was most rigorously denied, 

 except by special leave for attending assizes or 

 other public matters. The following permission 

 being accompanied by a stipulated honorarium 

 suggests, that the cause of absence was regnrded 

 by the House as frivolous : " Sir Rob. Wroth hath 



