Oct. 2. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



321 



that during the occupation of Paris In 1814 by the 

 Allied Powers, this queen's hotel was taken pos- 

 session of by the Prussians. " The floor," adds 

 the reviewer, " on which was situated her apart- 

 ment, was inhabited" &c., which is precisely the 

 reverse of the original : where inhabite, contrary 

 to Avhat would strike an English ear or eye, means 

 MJiinhablted, as it always does, and as the general 

 sense of the passage obviously proves. It was a 

 compliment to Hortense. 



In No. LVII. of the same review, the letter P. 

 prefixed to the name of Mathieu, is translated 

 Peter, designating the historian of Henry IV. ; 

 whereas, in fact, it meant Father (Pcre) Mathieu, a 

 Spanish Jesuit, and not Pier?-e, a very ditferent 

 person. In the following number, the poet Ducis 

 (at p. 411.), a sincere and constant Christian, is 

 transformed into Dupuys, the atheistical author of 

 L'Origine de tons les Cultes, a work which re- 

 solves the system of our belief into mere zodiacal 

 symbols. The assonance of name misled the 

 writer, as similarly the most audacious of atheis- 

 tical emanations, Le Sijsteme de la Nature, was by 

 many attributed to Mirabeau, the great revolu- 

 tionary protagonist, because the blasphemous 

 volume bore on the title-page as its author J. B. 

 Mirabaud, who again had never indited a word of 

 it ; but being dead, his respectable name was 

 usurped, and its identity of sound accredited its 

 composition to the powerful author. From the 

 title of this satanic publication {Le Systeme de la 

 Nature), I am not a little surprised to observe the 

 ascription to it in the Quarterly Review, vol. Ixxvii. 

 p. 531., of the concluding eulogy of science by La 

 Place, the modern Newton, in his Exposition du 

 Systeme du Monde. This exhortation to the cul- 

 ture of science, so recklessly assigned to the most 

 atrocious of human aberrations, is thus emphatically 

 urged : " Conservons avec soin, augmentons le 

 depot de ces hautes connaissances, les delices des 

 etres pensants ; " and since Newton's Principia, a 

 woi'k of more transcendent powers has not ap- 

 peared, or attracted more universal admiration. 



But reverting to mistranslation, I discover the 

 once celebrated poetic effusion of Mathias, The 

 Pursuits of Literature, travestied into French as 

 Les Hostdites Litteraires, by the now celebrated 

 French poet Victor Hugo, in his Tour on the 

 Rhine, wholly in misconception of the word pur- 

 suits. Well may Voltaire compare, as he does, 

 translations in general to the revers de tapisseries, 

 the wrong side of tapistry, as, indeed, he proved 

 himself in his versions of Shakspeare, whom, as 

 M. Villemain said, he translated in order to tra- 

 duce or pervert, " qu'il traduisait pour le tra- 

 vestir." The blunders of writers in the French 

 superior periodical, La Revue des Deux Mondes, 

 are frequent enough, and glaring too. Thus, in 

 the number for November, 1842, p. 612., Mr. Jo- 

 seph Sturge, of Birmingham, I believe, is quoted 



as characterising the English aristo(!racy as selfish, 

 and the church as rampant. The English is 

 printed, and the words are thus rendered, "I'aris- 

 tocracie egoiste, et I'eglise rampante." This un- 

 gracious designation could hardly be translated in 

 a sense more inverse to its meaning; but as in 

 French the word rampant signifies creeping, the 

 writer applied the epithet, written the same in 

 both tongues, in synonymous acceptation. The 

 blunder was M. Duvergier de Hauranne's, one of 

 the most distinguished men in France, the special 

 contributor to the Revue on British political sub- 

 jects. He was exiled by Louis Napoleon, but has 

 just been recalled. J. R. (Cork.) 



EMACIATED MONUMENTAL EFFIGIES. 



(Vol. vi., pp. 85. 252.) 



Among the many Replies to the oi-Iginal Query 

 on this subject, I am much surprised that none of 

 your correspondents have directed attention to 

 the examples of skeletons and shrouded figures 

 given in Cotman's Norfolk Sepulchral Brasses, in 

 which are figured : 



" 1. Thomas Childes, St. Laurence Church, Nor- 

 wich, 1452. 



2. John Brigge, Salle Church, Norfolk, 1454. 



.3. Richard Poringland, St. Stephen's Church, 

 Norwich, 1457. 



4. Jno. and Roger Yelverton, Roughara Church, 

 Norfolk, 1505. 1510. 



5. Jno. Symonds and wife (and family'), Cley 

 Church, Norfolk, 1518. 



6. Thos. Sampson and wife, Loddon Church, 

 Norfolk, 1546." 



It appears to me that the object and design of 

 these effigies is better defined by Cotman than by 

 any of your correspondents : 



" Though little can be said," he observes, " in favour 

 of the knowledge or execution displayed in these 

 figures, much may of the moral intention, which was to 

 remind men that the robes of pride will shortly be ex- 

 changed for the winding-sheet, and that beauty and 

 strength are hastening to the period when they will 

 become as the spectre before them." 



And this view is well illustrated by the Inscrip- 

 tion beneath the effigy No. 2., enumerated above, 

 and which runs as follows : 

 " Here lyth John Brigge Undir this Marbil ston, 

 Whos sowle our lorde ihu have mercy vpon, 

 For in this world worthyly he lived many a day, 

 And here his bodi is berried and cowched undir clay, 

 Lo, frendis, see, whatever ye be, pray for me i you 



pray, 

 As ye me see in soche dec/re So schall ye be another day." 



The figure is an emaciated one in a sheet. That 

 of Thomas Childes is a perfect skeleton, and 

 Cotman remarks upon it : 



" This species of memorial appeared in stone effigies 

 in the preceding century (the fourteenth) on the tomb 



