454 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



t2«>« S. v. 127., June 5. '58. 



in your pages ; if a hoax, as I hope and believe, 

 perhaps you have some correspondent who will 

 prove it to be such : 



" Buried Alive. — A rich manufacturer, named Oppelt, 

 died about 15 years since at Reichenberg, in Austria, and 

 a vault was built in the cemetery for the reception of the 

 body by his widow and children. The widow died about 

 a month ago, and was taken to the same tomb ; but when 

 it was opened for that purpose the coffin of her husband 

 was found open and empty, and the skeleton of the de- 

 ceased discovered in a corner of the vault in a sitting 

 posture. A commission was appointed b)- the authorities 

 to examine into the affair, when they gave their opinion 

 that M. Oppelt was only in a trance when buried, and 

 that on coining to life he had forced open the coffin." 



K. P. D. E. 



Byron and ^schyliis. — It is perhaps not gene- 

 rally known that the celebrated passage in Eng- 

 lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers, commencing — 



" So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain " — 



is probably a plagiarism, pure and simple, from 

 .^schylus. The passage of -3]schylus, apparently 

 imitated by Byron, is numbered 123. in Dindorf's 

 edition of the Fragments, and is as follows : — 



" 'fls 5' e<TTl jxvBiav Twv At^vo'TiKiav Aoyos* 

 Jl\rjyevT arpaKTw to^ikw toi/ alerbv 

 EiTTCii' iSovTo. (u.iJxai'Tjf TTTepw^taros, 

 TdS' oiix vtt' aWuv aWd. toi? avT(Sv Trrepot? 

 'AXuTKOfxecrOa." 



As Byron was scrupulously candid in acknow- 

 ledging his obligations to the Greek and Latin 

 Classics, this imitation, if it were such, must have 

 been left by accident unacknowledged. Possibly, 

 however, it is a remarkable coincidence of ideas. 

 But as we know that Byron had a great admi- 

 ration for ^schylus, the probability is that he 

 had read the fragment and forgotten having read 

 it. J. R. 



^fn0r Queries. 



Poet quoted hy Izaak Walton. — In the Complete 

 Angler, part i. ch. ii., Walton says, — 



" 1 know what the poet says, which is worthy to be 

 noted by all parents and people of civility : 



' Many a one 

 Owes to his country his religion : 

 And in another, would as strongly grow. 

 Had but his nurse or mother taught him so.' " 



Who is the poet ? These lines were imitated 

 by Dryden, as quoted in "N. & Q.," 1^' S. xii. 19. 



J. JL • 



George Barnwell. — Can any of your readers 

 solve the discrepancies which confuse the old 

 story of George Barnwell ? The unhappy youth 

 is said to have figured in the criminal annals of 

 the time of Queen Elizabeth ; but I have never 

 met with any authenticated notice of his trial and 

 condemnation. Lillo's tragedy makes the scene 

 of the uncle's murder to lie within a short dis- 

 tance of town, and tradition places it in the 



grounds formerly belonging to Dr. Lettsom, and 

 now those of the Grammar School at Camberwell. 

 Maurice, the historian of Hindostan, admits this 

 recognition into his poem of Camberwell Grove; 

 and the song-writer and pantomime-concoctor of 

 later years follow in the same wake. The ballad, 

 however (in Percy's Collection), tells us that the 

 ungrateful and barbarous deed was done at (or 

 near) Ludlow in Shropshire. The Guide- Book 

 of that locality notices the circumstance as tradi- 

 tional there ; and the very barn and homestead, a 

 short distance on the left before entering Ludlow 

 from the Hereford road, are still pointed out as 

 the ancient residence of the victim. Lillo's drama 

 shows us the culprit, in companionship with his 

 heartless seducer, led from a London prison to 

 the scaffold ; and some few years since an old 

 parochial document was said to have come to 

 light, showing that George Barnwell had been 

 the last criminal hanged at " St. Martin's in the 

 Fields," before the Middlesex executions were, 

 more generally than before, ordered at Tyburn; 

 yet the ballad, of much older date than the play, 

 says that Barnwell was not gibbeted here, but 

 sent " beyond seas ; " where he subsequently suf- 

 fered capital punishment for some fresh crime. 



Edward F. Rimbault. 



Naming of Roman Women. — It is well known 

 to all students of Roman antiquities that during 

 the time when a Roman citizen bore at least three 

 names, the praenomen, the gentile name, and the 

 family name, his daughters received no prasnomen, 

 and did not inherit the family name, but each 

 took the gentile name with a feminine termina- 

 tion. For instance, each of the daughters of Mar- 

 cus Fabius Ambustus would be called Fabia ; 

 each of the daughters of Publius Cornelius Scipio 

 would be called Cornelia ; each of the daughters 

 of Caius Julius Caesar would be called Julia; each 

 of the daughters of Marcus Tullius Cicero would 

 be called Tullia. In order to distinguish them, 

 they were designated either Prima, Secunda, 

 Tertia, and so on ; or, if there were only two, 

 Major and Minor (Livy, vi. 34.). A Claudia 

 Quinta, the fifth daughter of P. Claudius Pulcher, 

 is celebrated in connexion with the transportation 

 of the Idaean Mother to Rome (Livy, xxix. 14. ; 

 Ovid, Fast iv. 305.). 



Mr. C. Merivale, in the fifth volume of his 

 History of the Romans under the Empire, p. 11., 

 traces this custom to the horrid practice of expo- 

 sure and infanticide, which was prevalent in anti- 

 quity. " The fact (he adds) that women bore, at 

 least in later times, no distinctive praenomen is 

 terribly significant. It seems to show how few 

 daughters in a family were reared." 



Is it apparent that the absence of a praenomen 

 is connected with the small number of daughters 

 in a family ? The custom of distinguishing them 

 by numerals provided for any extent, as in the 



