500 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 269. 



inward, whicli their subtil and active spirits doe excite 

 and quicken, for tlie works of their curious art and sin- 

 gular virtues In valour and magnanimitie they 



surpass all creatures . . . . ; in private wrongs and in- 

 juries done to their persons they are very patient ; but in 

 defence of their Prince and Commonwealth they doe most 

 readily enter the field Moreover, as skilful astro- 

 nomers thej' have foreknowledge of the ^veather 



Their chastity is to be admired : Integritas corporis vir- 



ginalis omnibus communis For cleanliness and 



neatness they may be a mirrour to the finest dames: 

 Mundissimum omnium hoc animal . . . . : and for their 

 persons (which are lovely brown) though they be not 

 long about it, yet are they curious in trimming and 

 smoothing them from top to toe." — Pp. 13 — 21. 



" These admired properties of Bees, knowledge, loyalty, 

 perpetuall concord and amity, order, government, art, 

 diligence, and other virtues, when the poet had declared 

 (^Geo)-g. rv.), he bringeth in others, concluding upon his 

 premises that the Bees doe participate divine reason and 

 celestial influenc:e : 



' His quidam signis, atque ha3C exempla secuti, 

 Esse Apibus partem Divinaj Mentis et haustus 

 ./Etherios dixere.' 



Which big conceipt is confirmed by their propheticall 

 presages of many and extraordinary events, and specially 

 of the sweet concuirence of man's sweetest ornaments, 

 learning and eloquence : as, namely, in Divine Plato, of 

 whom it is said that the Bees, resting upon his face in the 

 cradle, poured in honey into his lips The like pre- 

 sage had those witty, eloquent poets Pindar and Lucan, 

 as you may read in their lives The like is re- 

 corded of that learned, eloquent Father of the Ciiurch, S. 

 Ambrose This excellency, which the Bees fore- 

 showed to these men, they testified to Hippocrates after 



his death But none of them are more memorable 



than the Bees of Vives, in the Coll edge of Bees 



" When Ludovicus Vives was sent by Cai'dinal Wolsey 

 to Oxford, there to be the public professor of Rhetoric, 

 being placed in the Colledge of Bees *, he was welcomed 

 thither by a swarm of Bees ; which sweet creatures, to 

 signifie the incomparable sweetness of his eloquence, 

 settled themselves over his head, under the leads of his 

 study, where they have continued to this day. . . . How 

 sweetly did all things then accord, when in this neat 

 fiova-alov newlj' consecrated to the Muses, the Muses' 

 sweetest favorite was thus honored by the Muses' Birds." 

 — Pp. 21-3. 



Ancient writers placed Bees in the scale of 

 creation immediately after Man, and endowed 

 them with a cosmical, rational mind, reverence 

 and loyalty, purity and chastity. They consi- 

 dered, also, that they were in a certain sense 

 religious beings ; and that they were not only 

 symbols but loving prophets of Poetry and Elo- 

 quence ; thus they got their name of the Muses' 

 Birds. The ancients, moreover, believed that 

 thei'e existed a mysterious connexion between 



* « J. e. C. C. C. [Corpus Christi College] ; so called by 

 the founder in the statutes, whereupon Erasmus .... in- 

 scribed his epistle to the first president thus : ' Erasm. 

 Eot. Joanni Claymundo Collegii Apum Praesidi.' " 



It might be called the College of C"s ; but I cannot see 

 how this note accounts for its being called the College of 

 Bees, antecedently to, and indepeudentlv of, the storv of 

 Vives. 



Bees and Souls *, and they even sometimes used 

 the terms convertibly. I have read Legends also 

 in which the human Soul is represented as issuing 

 from the body in the visible form of a Bee. Por- 

 phyry, in his tract on the Cave of the Nymphs, 

 observes : 



" Since, therefore, honey is assumed in purgations, and 

 as an antidote to putrefaction, and is indicative of the 

 pleasure which draws souls downward to generation, it is 

 a symbol well adapted to aquatic Nymphs, on account of 

 the unputrescent nature of the waters over which they 

 preside, their purifying power, and their co-operation 

 with generation. For water co-operates in the work of 

 generation. On this account the Bees are said by the 

 poet to deposit their honey in bowls and amphorae, the 

 bowls being a symbol of fountains ; and therefore a bowl 

 is placed near to Mithra, instead of a fountain ; but the 

 amphorse are symbols of the vessels with which we draw 

 water from fountains; and fountains and streams are 

 adapted to aquatic Nymphs, and still more so to the 

 Nymphs that are Souls, which the ancients peculiarly call 

 Bees, as the efficient cause of sweetness. Hence Sojihocles 

 does not speak unappropriately when he says of souls, — 



' In swarms while wandering from the dead, 

 A humming sound is heard.' 



The priestesses of Ceres also, as being initiated into the 

 mysteries of the terrene Goddess, -were called by the 

 ancients Bees; and Proserpine herself was denominated 

 by them honied. The Moon likewise, who presides over 

 generation, was called by them a Bee, and also a Bull. 

 And Taurus is the exaltation of the Moon. But Bees are 

 ox-begotten. And this appellation is also given to Souls 

 proceeding into generation. The god likewise who is 

 occultl}' connected with generation is a stealer of oxen. 

 To which may be added that honey is considered a 

 symbol of Death, and on this account it is usual to offer 

 libations of honey -to the terrestrial gods ; but gall is con- 

 sidered as a S}-mbol of Life ; whether it is obscurely sig- 

 nified by this, that the life of the Soul dies through 

 pleasure f, but through bitterness the Soul resumes its 



* Curiously enough, this thought spontaneously oc- 

 curred to a child. I was staying at a friend's country 

 place, and in his garden was a large Beehive on the 

 model of a house. One day my friend's niece (a child of 

 nine years) was standing beside me contemplating the 

 busy throng in the hive ; at last she said to me, " What 

 are these?" I answered with some surprise, "Bees." 

 " No," replied she ; " we onh' call them so : they are 

 Fairies, or rather, they are Souls. If you had watched 

 them as I have, you would not say they were mere in- 

 sects." I afterwards inquired if there were any super- 

 stition to that effect in the neighbourhood, but I found 

 that there was not, and that the notion originated in the 

 imagination of my little friend, which I well know was as 

 wild and quaint as it was fertile. 



t Cosi vivo, piacer conduce a morte, as the Italians say. 



Boetius dwells on this in the 7th metre of the 3rd book 

 of the Consolations of Philosophy : 



" Habet omnis hoc voluptas, 

 Stimulis agit fruentis," &c. 



" Those who do Pleasure court, must find 

 That they will leave a pain behind ; 

 And as the busy Bee 

 Away doth fly when she 

 Hath honey given ; so they 

 Will with no person stay ; 



