202 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 200. 



n'anrait pas donne beaucoup d'argent.' The legislator, 

 in the wit, forgot the feelings of his heart." 



I have never been able to conceive what mean- 

 ing D'lsraeli could have attached to this quotation 

 from Montesquieu, so as to torture it into a hon 

 mot. Not only is there nothing of the kind in the 

 words he quotes, but there is not even an attempt 

 at it. The writer merely suggests a reason for the 

 preference given to the first three nights ; and in 

 doing so he expresses the sentiments of the barons, 

 and not his own. And yet, it is upon this strange 

 misapprehension of Montesquieu's meaning, that 

 D'Israeli lays at the door of that illustrious man 

 the imputation of being " infinitely French," and 

 of forgetting, for the sake of a hon mot, the feelings 

 of his heart ! Henry H. Bbeen. 



St. Lucia. 



" TO SPEAK IN LUTESTRING. 



(Vol. iii., p. 188.) 



The Query on the meaning of the phrase " to 

 speak in lutestring," used by Philo-Junius, has 

 remained so long without an answer, that to at- 

 tempt to give one now seems almost to require an 

 apology. I will however do so. In Letter XL VII., 

 dated May 28, 1771, Philo-Junius says : 



" I was led to trouble you with these observations 

 by a passage, which, to speak in lutestring, ' I met with 

 this morning in the course of my reading,' and upon 

 which I mean to put a question to the advocates for 

 privilege." 



Now we know, that if two lutes, or other 

 stringed instruments, be placed near each other, 

 when a chord of one of them is struck, the corre- 

 sponding chord of the other will vibrate in unison, 

 and give a similar note ; one lutestring will echo 

 tHe other. The story of the maiden who believed 

 that the spirit of her dead lover was near her, 

 because his harp sounded responsive notes to hers, 

 and who died heart-broken when she was unde- 

 ceived, is sufficiently well known. " To speak in 

 lutestring" is then to speak as another man's 

 echo ; and Philo-Junius here was the echo of the 

 Duke of Grafton, and used this affected phrase 

 derisively, as being a favourite, or at least well- 

 known expression of his. In a letter which is 

 appended as a note to Letter XX., and which is 

 dated six days previous to the one just quoted, 

 viz. May 22, 1771, he says : 



" But Junius has a great authority to support him, 

 which, to speak with the Duke of Graf/on, ' I acci- 

 dentally met with this morning in the course of my 

 reading.' It contains an admonition which cannot be 

 repeated too often," &c. 



I have not found the phrase " to speak in lute- 

 string" anywhere else ; but I think, from a com- 

 parison of these two quotations, that it must mean 



what I have supposed it to mean — to speak as the 

 echo or exact repeater of another man's words. 

 Where can instances be found of the Duke of 

 Grafton's using this expression, which Philo- 

 Junius ridicules ? W. Fraser. 

 Tor-Mohun. 



BURIAL IN UNCONSECRATED PLACES. 



(Vol. vi. passim.') 



So many interesting notices have been made by 

 your correspondents on the subject of peculiar 

 interments, — skipping about from one part of the 

 country to another, and dropping down from the 

 south into Lincolnshire, as if in search of far- 

 ther instances, — that I am induced to add to the 

 number of records, by stating the fact as to the 

 late Mr. Dent, of Winterton, whose body, at his 

 particular request, was deposited after his death 

 in his own garden, on the south of the house in 

 Winterton, where he not only lived but died. 



Friend Jonathan, as he was familiai-ly called, 

 was a man of shrewd understanding, and possessing 

 strong common sense ; yet, like others, he had his 

 failings, and amongst them the amor nummi was 

 not the least obtrusive. As a very wealthy man he 

 was looked up to by a little aspiring community of 

 Quakers in the neighbourhood ; and his own dress, 

 when in a better suit, exhibited an appearance of 

 his connexion with that fraternity. 



The Quakers had a small burial-ground at 

 Thealby, in the parish of Burton-upon-Stother, 

 which I some years ago had the curiosity to in- 

 spect, but such a forlorn lost place for such a sober 

 and serious purpose I never in my life before 

 looked upon ; it is posited at a little distance from 

 the public road entering Thealby from Winterton, 

 where no doubt at one time stood a lot of cottages 

 and crofts, surrounded by common stone walls, 

 made from the flat stone of the neighbourhood. 

 But so small and so neglected was this burial 

 place, that I could compare it to nothing better 

 than an old parish pinfold ; it had been so little 

 attended to when I visited it, that the whole area 

 was under a most luxuriant crop of flourishing 

 nettles, six or seven feet high. And as to graves, 

 or the purport of its occupation, we could see 

 nothing ; and yet its position was such that with 

 ordinary attention it might have been even a 

 picturesque spot, having three or four large trees 

 overlooking it. 



Upon an after Inquiry I was told that a funeral 

 had lately taken place here, at which Friend Jona- 

 than was the presiding attendant. But in pre- 

 paration for this ceremony they had found so much 

 difficulty in stubbing up the strong nettles, and 

 digging the roots to form a decent grave ; and 

 it°was after all so difficult to find comfortable 

 standing-room about the grave, that I have ever 



