160 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[No. 252 



the property of the B d family, whose mansion 



of R n within a mile of it is still (strange to 



say for Ireland) inhabited by a member of the 

 family, as it had been for the last three hundred 

 years, was destroyed by lightning: most of the 

 inhabitants had time to make their escape, but the 

 heir of the family, a young child, was left behind, 

 and more than a week afterwards was discovered 

 alive and unhurt under the great table which stood 

 in the great hall, and which now groaned under 

 the mass of ruins instead of the rich banquets 

 which used to grace its ample surface. This event 

 took place only about sixty or seventy years ago. 

 I have conversed with persons cognizant of the 

 fact. Fkancis Robert Davies. 



GEAT AND STEPHEN BUCK. 



It may appear somewhat surprising that Gray 

 was in any way indebted for a notion to Queen 

 Caroline's thrasher poet, but I cannot help think- 

 ing that such was the fact. 



In the Midsummer Wish, printed in the Gentle- 

 man! s Magazine for February, 1731, speaking of 

 Windsor, Duck says: 



" Where tufted grass and mossy beds 



Afford a rural, calm repose — 

 His crystal current Thames displays, 



Through meadows sweet by flowers made, 

 Along the smiling valleys plays, 



And bubbling springs refresh the glade." 



These lines are somewhat similar to those in Gray's 

 Poem, " On a distant Prospect of Eton College." 

 " And ye that from the stately brow 

 Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below 



Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey ; 

 Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 

 Wanders the hoary Thames along 

 His silver-winding way." 



But in the lines which, in both poems, almost 

 immediately follow, there is a still greater re- 

 semblance : and if Gray was not indebted to Duck 

 in this instance, it is a curious coincidence. Speak- 

 ing of the Thames, Duck says : 



" Where'er his purer stream is seen 



The god of health and pleasure dwells. 

 Let me thy pure, thy yielding wave. 

 With naked arm once more divide : 

 In thee my glowing bosom lave 

 And gently stem thy rolling tide." 



So in Gray, we find a succession of the same ideas, 

 sprightUness or health, pleasure, and cleaving the 

 wave : 



" Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen 

 Full many a sprightly race, 

 Disporting on thy margent green. 



The paths of pleasure trace, 

 Who foremost now delight to cleave 

 With pliant arm thy glassy wave ? " 



And then, to make the resemblance more complete, 

 Duck has " herbage green " to rhyme with " stream 



is seen," while Gray employs a similar rhyme. In 

 1731 Gray was a boy at Eton, in his fifteenth or 

 sixteenth year. He no doubt was well acquainted 

 with Duck's poem, and, when composing his ode 

 in after years, may have unconsciously been in- 

 fluenced by the train of ideas succeeding in the 

 Aymes which he had committed to memory in his 

 boyish days. Henby T. Rilet. 



" Old Bogie" not a fictitious Character. — Many, 

 no doubt, still remember among their earliest 

 impressions, the terror produced by the nurse's 

 threat of sending for " Old Bogie : " such vulgar 

 errors are now happily discarded from nursery 

 discipline. Infants of the present day are taught 

 arts, and sciences, and philosophy. They are no 

 longer to be intimidated by phantoms of the 

 imagination. In the spirit of the age they would 

 ask (if they were able), Who is Old Bogie ? As 

 some children of a larger growth may be curious 

 to learn who was Old Bogie, we copy from an old 

 writer what we believe to be the original of the 

 myth that for so many years helped to keep un- 

 ruly brats in order. 



In the year 1664 (?) Surat was "pillaged and 

 burnt by a certain robber named Bogie." Our 

 author states that in this conflagration the houses 

 of the Dutch merchants escaped through the espe- 

 cial intervention of Providence in favour of that 

 most virtuous and industrious little republic, 

 Holland. 



The extirpation of Bogie is not perhaps to be 

 ascribed so much to the march of intellect, as to 

 individual good sense and the force of example : 

 for it is worthy of remark, that Bogie's irrevocable 

 expulsion from the nursery, and his extinction as 

 a myth, may be dated from the birth of the present 

 heir apparent to the English throne. Timon. 



Academical Degrees, especially in Law. — The 

 newly devised degree of Master of Laws is a great 

 anomaly. The old academical system recognises 

 two degrees in every faculty : first. Bachelor ; 

 secondly, Master or Doctor. These last, I sub- 

 mit, are terms essentially synonymous : both 

 meaning diSaaKoKos, or teacher, though Doctor is 

 employed in the higher faculties as a name of 

 greater dignity. The degrees in the faculty of 

 Arts — the pathway, according to our ancient 

 system, to all other faculties — are B.A. and M.A. 

 In the civil law, the degrees are B.C.L. and 

 D.C.L. : for S.C.L., though commonly regarded 

 as a degree, and having its peculiar hood, is not, I 

 think, in strictness a degree, but merely an indi- 

 cation that the person bearing it has been ad- 

 mitted to the study of the civil law ; which, 

 however, implies that he has the standing of a 



