2'"' S. No 115., Mau. 13. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



211 



'^Dont hurry, Hopkins !" — This is a Ken- 

 tucky expression applied to persons, I believe, 

 who show a dilatory spirit in matters of business. 

 It originated from the case of one Hopkins, wl;o, 

 having given one of his creditors a promissory 

 note in regular form, added to it this extraor- 

 dinary memorandum : " It is expressly agreed 

 that the said Hopkins is not to be hurried in 

 paying the above rote." Uneda. 



Philadelphia. 



Lathom and Knoicsley. — A curious instance of 

 the retention of a proverbial saying long after 

 the occasion of it has passed away, may be in- 

 stanced in Lancashire. It is a very common ex- 

 pression to say of a person having two houses, 

 even if temporarily, that he has " Lathom and 

 Knowsley." Formerly the Earls of Derby had 

 two splendid residences in Lancashire. One, 

 Lathom, on the death of the ninth earl, in 

 1702, passed by descent to his daughter. Lady 

 Ashburnham, and ultimately, by sale, to the 

 Bootle fomily, the representative of which now 

 owns it. The other, Knowsley, passed with the 

 earldom to the heir male, and is now the seat of 

 the head of the Stanley family. Though separate 

 possessions for above 150 years, the expression 

 " Lathom and Knowsley " still survives. 



William Dobson. 

 Lamartine's Plagiarisms. — The following ex- 

 tract is taken from The Guardian newspaper of 

 Feb. 24. I should like to see it either refuted or 

 confirmed. One is naturally inclined to view a 

 statement of the sort with suspicion, as, from the 

 universal scepticism of the age, it is the fashion 

 to consider everything a sham, nothing real, 

 nothing genuine, every work borrowed, every 

 article of food adulterated. Besides, there are 

 men who seek a miserable notoriety by detract- 

 ing from exalted genius, and trying to fasten 

 deceit and imposture on great authors. Thus 

 they tell us that Shakspeare did not write his own 

 plays; that Coleridge was a mere transcriber of 

 Schelling, Schlegel, and other Germans ; that 

 Sir W. Scott was not the Great Magician after 

 all ; and so on : — 



" The plagiarisms of M. de Lamartine are now asserted 

 to be no longer confined to his History of the Reformation, 

 to the compilation of which the boolis of the Imperial 

 Library bear ample evidence bj' their pencil-marks — nor 

 to his Histonj of Russia, copied wholesale from M. Schnitz- 

 ler, or his History of Turkey, taken chiefly from the news- 

 papers. It is asserted now that even Graziella, over 

 whose true history so many female eyes have wept, is no 

 souvenir of the tender feelings of M. de Lamartine's own 

 youth, but a souvenir, and rather too strong a one, of a 

 certain unknown romance of the Comte de Forbin, en- 

 titled Charles Barimore, and published, with little success, 

 some forty years before Graziella. The testamentary ex- 

 ecutors of a M. Brifant have recently published papers 

 entitled Passe-temps (Tun Reclus, in which this ' larceny ' 

 2"<i S. N" 115.] 



is severely laid to the charge of Lamartine; and the 

 critics having, with some ditficulty, got hold of a volume 

 of the pilfered work, of which only one hundred copies 

 were ever printed, find that almost every incident is 

 identical with those of Graziella, and the whole story a 

 real souvenir of M. de Forbin, but only a make-believe on 

 the part of Lamartine. What becomes, then, it is asked, 

 of the last touching lines in the book of the latter? 

 Graziella is to Nisieda (the heroine of De Forbin) what a 

 drop of dew is to a tear, more poetical, perhaps, but with- 

 out heart!" 



EiRIONNACH. 



Horse-taming. — Mr. Rarey's power in subduing 

 the untractableness of the horse being now very 

 much upon the tapis in the equestrian world, it 

 may not be unacceptable to your readers to give 

 some account of a remarkable feat of that kind, 

 accomplished at the instance of George IV. (then 

 Prince of Wales), at his riding-house in Pall-Mali, 

 early in November, 1803. 



At a grand entertainment given to his Excel- 

 lency Elfi Bey by his Royal Highness, the latter 

 said, " I have now in my stud an Egyptian horse 

 so wild and ungovernable that he will dismount 

 the best horseman in Elfi Bey's retinue." The 

 Bey replied to the Prince, " I shall gratify your 

 Royal Highness's curiosity tomorrow." The next 

 day at two o'clock the Prince and bis royal bro- 

 thers, attended by several noblemen, waited to 

 witness the management of the horse which never 

 could be ridden by anybody. A Mameluke's sad- 

 dle was fixed on the animal, and he was led into 

 the riding-house in so rampant and unmanageable 

 a state that every one concluded no one would 

 ever attempt to mount him . . . and his eyes were 

 so fiery and enraged as to indicate the greatest 

 danger to anyone so rash. Mahomet Aga, the 

 principal oflScer of Elfi Bey, vaulted on the back 

 of the animal in an instant, which gave loose to 

 his passion, and in the height of ferocity plunged, 

 but in vain, in every direction. The Mameluke 

 kept his seat during this proud distraction of the 

 horse, for more than twenty minutes, to the utter 

 astonishment of the Prince and every beholder ; 

 and the apparently ungovernable animal was at 

 last reduced to so tame and accommodating a 

 state, as to yield to the control of the very able 

 rider who had thus subdued him. Hipponomus. 



THE WALLS OP TROY. 



In a Welsh book on British history, intitled 

 Drych y Prif Oesoedd, and published a.d. 1740, 

 and also in other works relating to Wales, allusion 

 is made to a custom formerly prevalent among the 

 shepherds of the Principality, of cutting on the 

 turf a figure in the form of a labyrinth, which 

 they called Caerdroia, i. e. " the walls or citadel 

 of Troy." 



