Sept. 18. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



275 



at St. Paul's Cross in 1579, says : ' We that are bred 

 up in learning, and destined by our parents for the 

 ministry, suffer our childhood in the grammar school, 

 the torments of martyrdom. When we come to tlie 

 University, if we live of the college allowance, we are 

 needy of all things but hunger and fear.' " 



And after all this expenditure of time, body, 

 and spirits, substance and patrimony, he con- 

 tinues : 



" We must pay for a poor parsonage or vicarage of 

 50/. per annum to the patron, for the lease of a life 

 (a spent and outworn life), either in annual pension, or 

 above the rate of a copyhold, with the hazard and loss 

 of our souls by simony and perjury, and the forfeiture 

 of all our spiritual preferments in esse and posse, both 

 present and to come; what father, after a while, will 

 be so improvident, to bring up his son to his great 

 charge, to this necessary beggary ? What Christian 

 will be so irreligious to bring up his son in that course 

 of life which, by all probability and necessity, cogit ad 

 turpia, enforcing to sin, will entangle him in simony 

 and perjury : a beggar's brat, taken from the bridge, 

 where he sits a-begging, if he knew the inconvenience, 

 bad cause to refuse it." 



" If," adds Burton, " there be no more hope of 

 reward, no better encouragement, I say again, Frange 

 leves calamos, et scinde, Thalia, libellos ; let's turn 

 soldiers, sell our books, and buy swords, and guns, and 

 pikes, or stop bottles with them ; turn our philo- 

 sophers' gowns (as Cleantl:es did) unto millers' coats, 

 leave all, and rather betake ourselves to any other 

 course of life, than to continue longer in this misery." — 

 Burton's Anatomy of 3IdanchoIi/, Part I., sec. 2. 

 mem. 3. subs. 15. 



AY. W. E. T. 



Warwick Square, Belgravia. 



It will be seen, from the following passage, that 

 the degradation of the clergy, or at least of pri- 

 vate chaplains, must be dated farther back than 

 the seventeenth centurj'. The writer is Agobard, 

 Archbishop of Lyons, who died in 840 : 



" Fceditas nostri temporis omni lachrymarum fonte 

 ploranda, quando increbuit consuetude impia, ut poena 

 imllus inveniatur quantulumcunque proficiens ad 

 iionores et gloriam temporalem, qui non domesticum 

 habeat sacerdotem, non cui obediat, sed a quo inces- 

 santer exigat licitam simul atque illicitam obedientiam, 

 ita ut pleriqice inveniantur, qui aut ad mensas ministrent 

 aut saccata vina misceant, aut canes ducant, aut cahallos, 



quibus famince sedent, regant aut agellos provideaiit." 



De Privilegio et Jure Sacerdotii, c. xi. 



C. H. 



St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge. 



THE H^MONY OF MILTON. 



(Vol. ii., pp. 88. 141. 173. 410.) 



The identity of this plant not having yet been 

 determined, I beg to revive the question by oiler- 



ing a few observations on the communications of 

 your correspondents. 



Dr. Basham has given the lines from Comus 

 which describe the Haamony, but with the omission 

 of one important particular, which seems to denote 

 that the plant was common in our soil. The 

 entire passage is as follows : 



" Among the rest a small unsightly root, 

 But of divine effect, he cull'd me out; 

 The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, 

 But in another country, as he said. 

 Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil : 

 Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain 

 Treads on it daily, with his clouted shoon: 

 And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly, 

 That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave ; 

 He call'd it Haemony, and gave it me, 

 And bade me keep it as of sov'reign use 

 'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp. 

 Or ghastly furies' apparition." 



Here we have a plant so common amongst us, 

 that "the dull swain treads on it daily ;" it has a 

 " prickly leaf," -and though with us it does not 

 bring its blossoms to perfection, in other countries 

 it bears " a bright golden flower." 



K. P. D. E. refers us for the identification of 

 this plant to the Alyswn of Dioscorides, and quotes 

 Henry Lyte's translation of Rembert Dodoen's 

 Herbal, where it is described ; it is not, hoAvever, 

 " found in this country, but in the gardens of some 

 herboristes." Neither has it a prickly leaf, nor is 

 it called htemony. It has therefore no claim to be 

 thought the plant we are in search of, unless, in- 

 deed, the single circumstance that "the same 

 hanged in the house, or at the gate or entry, 

 kcepeth man and beast from enchantments and 

 witching," can be admitted. 



The Alysson of Dioscorides is the Farsetia 

 dypeata of modern botanists, a small cruciferous 

 plant with yellow flowers, indigenous to the south 

 of Europe. 



Kn. quotes Ovid's Metamorphoses for the word 

 HcBinony, where it occurs as an adjective, not as a 

 substantive, and therefore affords us no assistance 

 in our research. 



T. M. B. quotes a beautiful passage from Cole- 

 ridge, in which the mystical meaning of the word 

 is given, but no conjecture as to the plant which 

 bore the name of Hsemony. 



Lastly, Gr. M. of Guernsey would identify the 

 Hajmony of Milton with the Hemionion of Theo- 

 phrastus and Pliny ; there is nothing however but 

 a slight similarity in the sound of the words 

 Hajmony and Hemionion — certainly nothing in 

 their etymologies — which can justify this conjec- 

 ture : with equal reason the 'H/woj/ms of Dioscorides 

 might be said to be the Harmony. 



The Hemionion is thought to be the Scolopen' 

 drium ceterach, and the Hemlonitis the Scolopen- 

 drium Hemionitis ; neither of which bears the 



