122 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 250. 



gratings seen from the street, having underground 

 apartments rarely found in that capital. 



B. B. WiTtEH. 

 ( To be concluded in our next.) 



" SILENCE " or THE SUN OB THE LIGHT. 



Dante uses this expression twice : 

 " Mi ripingeva \h. dove '1 sol tace." — Inf. i. 60. 

 And 



" I' venni in luogo d' ogni luce muto." — Inf. v. 28. 

 Pollock translates the first, — 



" She drove me back to where the sun was mute." 



So Carlyle : 



" To where the sun is silent." 



And Gary : 



" Drove me to where the sun in silence rests." 

 And Tarver : 



" Oil les rayons du soleil ne p^nfetrent point." 



The second is rendered by Gary, — 



" Into a place I came 

 Where light was silent all." 



And by Garlyle, — 



" I am come into a place void of all light ; " 



with which Tarver coincides. 



The obsolete poetical phrase, "il sol face," means, 

 it is said, in modern Italian, non risplende ; and luce 

 muto must have the same signification. 



The silence of the sun leads us to consider the 

 marginal reading of our Bibles on Jos. x. 12,, 

 where, instead of " Sun, stand thou still," the He- 

 brew may be read, " Sun, be silent." Both roots, 

 on and DDl, give the secondary sense of " silence," 

 the primary of the former being to stand, of the 

 latter, to cut off: so also the former means to stop 

 in speaking, and the latter, to cut off your speech; 

 ipwv)]v airoKfKo/xfiivoi and (puvfjs cnroKcm-fi. 



In reference to the sun, the word in Joshua is 

 explained by Dl, or *1 J (dom), meaning mid-day^ 



when the motion of the sun appears suspended, 

 and when, in hot countries, man, bird, and beast 

 retire from the oppressive heat, and 



<* When scarce a chirping grasshopper is heard 

 Through the dumb mead." — Thomson. 



The whole passage in Joshua x. 12-14.* being 



* 12. Then Joshua addressed Jehovah in the presence 

 of the children of Israel, upon the occasion of Jehovah de- 

 livering up the Amorites, saying, — 



" Let Israel see the sun in Gibeon stand ; 

 The moon within the vale of Ajalon. 



13. Suspend thy course, sun, and stay, O moon. 

 For vengeance of a nation 'gainst her foes." 



taken as poeticalj historical, and commentatory, 

 will dispense with the supposition of a miracle*, 

 which many critics attempt to extract by a mis- 

 apprehension of poetical phraseology. The in- 

 terpretation usually given is, that the day was 

 lengthened by a miracle ; and one mode has been 

 conjectured by Whiston, in a note on Josephus 

 {Ant. V. i. 17.), as a stoppage of the diurnal mo- 

 tion of the earth for about half a revolution, 

 which appears to be the notion generally enter- 

 tained. It is only necessary to call attention to 

 the fact that the lengthening of days is of common 

 occurrence, and is not made as Whiston suggests, 

 but by varying the angle of the equator with the 

 ecliptic, which might have been effected in Joshua's 

 time by the attraction of a comet deflecting the 

 earth from its regular motion, D*t?ri DV3 (Jos. x. 

 13.), translated " about a whole day," but mean- 

 ing "as on a regular (usual or ordinary) day.** 

 Taking, however, the non-miraculous view of the 

 question, it will not appear strange that the Is- 

 raelites should think the day unusually long, whea 

 we consider that they had been in forced march 

 all the previous night up-hill (Jos. x. 9.) ; had 

 been fighting all day, and ascending the mountain 

 in pursuit of the retreating foe in the evening ; 

 which ascent would protract the day, and give a 

 stationary appearance to the moon and the sun.")" 



T. J. BUCKTON. 



Lichfield. 



" A perse A." — In one of the martyr Bradford's 

 letters, addressed to the Lord Russell (Stevens's 

 Memoirs of Bradford, No. 20., Lond. 1832, p. 64.), 

 I find the following sentence : 



" In the one, that is for lands and possessions, you have 

 companions many ; but in the other, my good lord, yoa 

 are A per se A with us, to our comfort and joy unspeak- 

 able," &c. 



Has any other writer used this expression, " A per 

 se A," in a similar manner, to denote the standing 

 alone amid the circumstances of any position ? 



J. Sansom. 



It is thus written upon the corrected roll, that the sun 

 stood in mid-heaven, and retarded his usual course. 



14. Neither before nor since has Jehovah listened, as on 

 this day, to human voice ; for Jehovah fought for Israel. 



This is evidently supplementary and illustrative of the 

 narrative, Jos. x. 1 — 11. Compare the poetical phrase of 

 Deborah, " They fought from heaven : the stars in their 

 paths fought against Sisera," Jud. v. 20., with the narra- 

 tive of the preceding chapter. 



* Compare Hab. iii. 11. Ecclesiasticus, xlvi. 4., takes 

 the sense literally, and as making " one day as long as 

 two." 



t Sadler the elder, by ascending in his balloon just 

 after sunset, witnessed the sun rising out of the west, and 

 setting a second time that evening before he descended. 



