Sept. 6. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



181 



Swift is a singularly clear writer, but instances 

 may be cited to show that he lias not escaped the 

 national peculiarity ; such, for example, as his 

 enipliatic adjuratioti : 



" Therefore, I do most earnestly exhort you as Christ- 

 ians, as parents, and as lovers of your country, to read 

 this paper with the utmost attention, or get it read to you 

 by othem." — First U rapier's Letter. 



This reminds us of the well-known epitaph, 

 English 1 think, — 



" Eeader, if thou canst read," &c. 



The essence of a bull may be discovered in the 

 following remark of Goldsmith, another Irishman, 

 who, writing to Johnson, complains : 



" Whenever I write anyttiing, the public make a point 

 to know nothing about it." 



Writers of the class to which Mr. Gilfillan be- 

 lonics, " ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores," afford many 

 an instance in proof of the truth of Miss Edge- 

 worth's position. To take an illustration from 

 the " horticultural" pages of this author : 



" lie must have seen in a blaze of blinding light, the 

 vanity and evil, tlie folly and madness of the worldly or 

 selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested 

 and Christian life." — Bards oftlie Bible, p. 222. 



We may ask this " splendid " writer to describe 

 the process of seeing by means of that which de- 

 stroys the visual faculty : this may be pronounced 

 a genuine bull. 



Mr. Cunningham, for whose most interesting 

 notes to Johnson's Lives of the Poets we cannot 

 be too grateful, pronounces his author 



" The most distinguished of his cotemporaries." 



Preface, p. v. 

 We might ask how the Doctor could be his own 

 cotem})orary ; but Mr. Cunningham doubtless 

 used this phrase, as a figure of speech, advisedly, 

 and will defend himself with Milton's often 

 quoted — 



" Adam, the goodliest man of men since born 

 His sons, — the fairest of her daughters, Eve." 



Paradise Lost. 

 I notice a growing misuse of the logical term 

 " correlative," it being often employed as synony- 

 mous vvith " correspondent." Thus : 



" If a pictorial correlative must be found for Waller, let 

 him pair off vvith M. Petitot, the ftimous miniaturist in 

 enamel." — Bentky's Miscellany, Jan. 1855. 



A corruption of this kind in periodical literature 

 does not excite surprise ; I did not expect it, 

 however, from a " graduate : " 



I' Pediment and spire are precisely correlative terms, 

 being each the crowning feature in ecclesiastical edifices." 

 — Ruskin's Lectures, 1854, p. 52. 



An agreeable lady-writer gives us the follow- 

 ing extraordinary description of the Russian 

 capital : 



" The real and peculiar magnificence of St. Petersburg 

 Is^o. 306.] 



consists in thus sailing, apparently upon the bosom of the 

 ocean, into a city of palaces." — Sedgwick's Letters from 

 the Baltic. 



This is a landslip with a vengeance ! Warren, 

 again, is an extremely careless writer. Hear his 

 description of a cigar of Brobdignagian dimensions, 

 a,nd jointed, I suppose, like a flute, for convenience 

 of carriage ; 



" The astonished Yahoo, smoking, as well as he could, 

 a. cigar, with which lie had filled all his pockets!" — Ten 

 Thousand a- Year, ch. xiii. 



Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder 

 in one of his novels in making certain of his cha- 

 racters behold a sunset over the waters of a sea- 

 port, I think Montrose, situated on the eastern 

 coast of Scotland. Godwin, too, in his Caleb 

 Williams ; or Things as they are, by the prolonged 

 detention of his hero in prison, evidently regards 

 Habeas Corpus as a thing that is not. 



The following passage from Dr. Latham's En- 

 glish Language seems to me to require some ex- 

 planation ; speaking of the genitive or possessive 

 case, he says, — 



" In the plural numher, however, it is rare ; so rare, 

 indeed, that whenever the plural ends in s (as it always 

 does), there is no genitive." — P. 217. 



Some of the finest blunders that have been 

 perpetrated are to be found in necrological and 

 epitaphic records ; in a recent obituary of some 

 " oldest inhabitant," it was stated that the de- 

 funct had " continued to walk to church for the 

 last ten years without intermission." 



The anachronisms and other errors of painters 

 form an amusing chapter in every compilation on 

 the fine arts ; 1 have seen an engraving after 

 Morland, in which a plentiful crop of apples is 

 being gathered from the oak tree, in painting 

 which that inimitable and truly English artist was 

 facile princeps ; and when Hogarth, in his plate of 

 " Morning," represents an old lady proceeding to 

 her matutinal devotions, he indicates the earliness 

 of the hour by making the hands of the clock 

 point to seven minutes past five, an hour at which, 

 on a winter morning, it would be impossible to 

 discern either clock or lady. 



I might multiply instances, but as they occur 

 in the reading of every one, it would be a blunder 

 to increase the present list, which itself may not 

 escape the imputation. William Batbs. 



Birmingham. 



A POSSIBLE TEST OP AUTHORSHIP. 



The laio of average, as it may be called, is one 

 which has not been much studied until our own 

 day : nor has it yet been applied to all the sub- 

 jects which it is capable of illustrating. However 

 uncertain the individual cases may severally be, 

 one set of a thousand will generally bear a con- 



