10 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No, 192. 



bishops, who proposes to send a ship, by the force of 

 steam, with all the velocity of a ball from the mouth of 

 cannon, and who pretends by the power of his steam- 

 ii.. elled oars to beat the waters of the ocean into the 

 hardness of adamant ; or to the burning-glasses of 

 Archimedes, recorded in their effects by credible 

 writers, actually imitated by Proclus at the siege of 

 Constantinople with Archimedes' own success, yet 

 boldly pronounced by some of our best judges, demon- 

 strably impracticable in themselves, and lately de- 

 monstrated by some faint experiments to be very prac- 

 ticable, the skill of the moderns only going so far as to 

 render credible the practices of the ancients." — The 

 Course of Hannibal, by John Whitaker, B, D., 1794, 

 vol. ii. p. 142. 



Who. was the earl whose universality of genius 

 is described above by this "laudator teniporis 

 acti?" H.J. 



[Charles Earl Stanhope, whose versatility of talent 

 succeeded in abolishing the old wooden printing-press, 

 •with its double pulls, and substituting in its place the 

 beautiful iron one, called after him the " Stanhope 

 Press." His lordship's inventive genius, however, 

 failed in the composing-room ; for his transmogrified 

 letter-cases, with his eight logotypes, once attempted 

 at The Times'' office, were soon abandoned, and the old 

 process of single letters preferred.] 



Dissimulate. — Where is the earliest use of this 

 word to be found ? It is to be met with in Ber- 

 nard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, 1723 ; but is 

 not to be found, I think, in any dictionary. I was 

 once heavily censured at school for using It in my 

 theme ; but I have more than once of late seen it 

 used in a leading article of The Times. 



H. T. Riley. 



[_Dissimulate occurs in Richardson's Dictionary, with 

 the two following examples : 



" Under smiling she was dissimulate, 

 Prouocatiue with blinkes amorous." 



Chaucer, The Testament of Creseide. 



" We commaunde as kynges, and pray as men, that 

 al thyng be forgiuen to theim that be olde and broken, 

 and to theim that be yonge and lusty, to dissimulate for 

 a time, and notbyng to be forgiuen to very yong chil- 

 dren." — Golden Bohe, c. ix.] 



ISit^Mti. 



BISHOP KEN. 



(Vol. vii., p. 526.) 



By converting a noun into a surname, Dodsley 

 has led J. J. J. into a natural, but somewhat 

 amusing mistake. The lines quoted are in Horace 

 Wal pole's well-known epistle, from Florence, ad- 

 dressed to his college friend T[homas] A[shton,] 

 tutor of the Earl of Plymouth]. 



In Walpole's Fugitive Pieces, printed at Straw- 

 berry Hill, 1758 (the copy of which, now before 



me, was given by Walpole to Cole in 1762, and 

 contains several notes by the latter), the passage 

 stands correctly thus : 



" Or, with wise ken, judiciously define, 

 Wlien Pius marks the honorary coin, 

 Of Caracalla, or of Antonine." 



Your correspondent refers to an edition 'of the 

 Collection of Poems of 1758, In a much later 

 edition of that work, viz. 1782, the line is again 

 printed — 



" Or with wise ken," &c. 



It is strange that the mistake was not corrected, 

 at the instance of Walpole himself, during this long 

 interval. 



Turning to Bishop Ken, I would observe that In . 

 his excellent Life of this prelate, Mr. Anderdon 

 has given the three well-known hymns " word for 

 word," as first penned. These, Mr. A. tells us, are 

 found, for the first time, in a copy of the Manual 

 of Prayers for the Use of the Winchester Scholars^ 

 printed In 1700. The bishop's versions vary so 

 very materially from those to which we have been 

 accustomed from childhood, that these original 

 copies are very Interesting. Indeed, within five 

 years after their first appearance, and during the 

 author's life, material changes were made, several 

 of which are retained to the present hour. It must 

 be admitted that some of the stanzas, as they first 

 came from the bishop's pen, are singularly rugged 

 and Inharmonious, almost justifying the request 

 made by the lady to Byrom (as I have stated else- 

 where"'), "to revise and polish the bishop's poems." 

 How came these hymns, so far the most popular of 

 his poetical works, to be omitted by Hawkins in 

 the collected edition of the poems, printed in 

 4 vols., 1721 ? 



My present object is, to call your attention to a 

 " Midnight Hymn," by Sir Thomas Browne, which 

 will be found In his works (vol. il. p. 113., edit. 

 Wilkin). Can there be a question that to it Ken 

 is indebted for some of the thoughts and expres- 

 sions in tv/o of his own hymns ? 



The good bishop's fame will not be lessened by 

 his adopting what was good in the works of the 

 learned physician. He doubtless thought far more 

 of the benefit which he could render to the youth- 

 ful Wykehamists, than of either the originality or 

 smoothness of his own verses. 



Sir Thomas Browne. 

 " While I do rest, my soul advance ; 

 Make my sleep a holy trance : 

 That I may, my rest being wrought, 

 Awake into some holy thought. 

 And with as active vigour run 

 My course as doth the nimble sun. 



" Sleep is a death : O make me try. 

 By sleeping, what it is to die ! 



* Sketch of Bishop Ken's Life, p. 107. 



