296 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 204. 



Three more sonnets by this illustrious man are 

 printed, by Salvini in his Fasti, of which he says : 



" I quali essendo parto di si gran mente, mi con- 

 cedera la gloria il benigno lettore, chc io, ad lionore 

 della Toscana Poesia, gli esponga il primo alia publica 

 luce." 



Dr. Fellowes was not singular in confounding 

 Dati and Deodati ; it had been done by Fen ton 

 and others : but that Dr. Symmons, in his Life of 

 Milton (p. 133.), should transform La Tina into 

 -a ivine-press, is ludicrously amusing. La Tina is 

 the rustic mistress to whom the sonnets are sup- 

 posed to be addressed ; and every one knows that 

 rusticale and contadinesca is that naive and pleas- 

 ing rustic style in which the Florentine poets 

 delighted, from the expressive nature of the patois 

 of the Tuscan peasantry ; and it might have been 

 said of Malatesti's sonnets, as of another rustic 

 poet: 



" Ipsa Venus laetos jam nunc migravit in agros 

 Verbaque Aratoris Rustica discit Amor." 



I may just remark that the Clementillo of Milton 

 should not be rendei-ed Clementini, but Chimentelli. 

 As Rolli tells us, — 



" Clementillus fu quel Dottore Valeria CMmenteUi 

 di cui leggesi una vaghissima Cicalata nel sesto volume 

 delle Prose Fiorentine." 



S. W. Singer. 



Mickleham. 



ATTAINMENT OF MAJORITY. 



(Vol.viii., pp.198. 250.) 



I greatly regret that there should be anything 

 in the matter or manner of my Query on this sub- 

 ject to induce Mr. De Morgan to reply to it 

 ■more as if repelling an oifence, than assisting in 

 the investigation of an interesting question on a 

 subject with which he is supposed to be especially 

 conversant. I can assure him that I had no other 

 object in writing ninth numerically instead of 

 literally, or in omitting the words he has restored 

 in brackets, or in italicising two words to which I 

 wished my question more particularly to refer, 

 than that of economising space and avoiding need- 

 less repetition ; and in the use of the word 

 " usage " rather than " law," of which he also 

 complains, I was perhaps unduly influenced by the 

 title of his own treatise, from which I was quoting. 

 But however I may have erred from exact quo- 

 tation, it is manifest I did not misunderstand the 

 sense of the passage, since Mr. De Morgan now 

 repeats its substance in these words, — 



" I cannot make out tbat the law ever recognised a 

 day of twenty-four hours, beginning at any hour ex- 

 cept midnight." 



This is clearly at direct issue with Ben Jonson, 

 whose introduced phrases, " pleaded nonage," 



" wardship," " pupillage," &c., seem to smack too 

 much of legal technology to countenance the sup- 

 position of poetic license. 



But had I not accidentally met with an in- 

 teresting confirmation of Ben Jonson's law of 

 usage, or usage of law, I should not have put 

 forth my Query at all, nor presumed to address it 

 to Professor De Morgan ; my principal reason 

 for so doing being that the interest attaching to 

 discovered evidence of a forgotten usage in legal 

 I'eckoning, must of course be increased tenfold if 

 it should appear to have been unknown to a gen- 

 tleman of such deep and acknowledged research 

 into that and kindred subjects. 



In a black-letter octavo entitled A Concordancie 

 of Yeares, published in and for the year 1615, and 

 therefore about the very time when Ben Jonson 

 was writing, I find the following in chap. xiii. : 



" The day is of two sorts, natural and artificiall : the 

 natural day is the space of 24 hours, in which tiir.e the 

 sunne is carried by the first Mover, from the east into 

 the west, and so round about the world into the east 

 againe." 



" The artificiall day continues from sunne-rising to 

 sunne-setting : and the artificiall night is from the 

 sunne's setting to his rising. And you must note that 

 this natural day, according to divers, hath divers be- 

 ginnings : As the Romanes count it from mid-night to 

 mid-night, because at that time our Lorde was borne, 

 being Sunday ; and so do wc account it for fasting 

 dayes. The Arabians begin their day at noone, and 

 end at noone the next day ; for because they say the 

 sunne was made in the meridian; and so do all as- 

 tronomers account the day, because it alwayes falleth 

 at one certaine time. The Umbrians, the Tuscans, the 

 Jewes, the Athenians, Italians, and Egyptians, do begin 

 their day at sunne-set, and so do we celebrate festivall 

 dayes. The Babylonians, Persians, and Bohemians 

 begin their day at sunne-rising, holding till sunne- 

 setting ; and so do our lawyers count it in England." 



Here, at least, there can be no supposition of 

 dramatic fiction ; the book from which I have 

 made this extract was written by Arthur Hopton, 

 a distinguished mathematician, a scholar of Ox- 

 ford, a student in the Temple ; and the volume 

 itself is dedicated to " The Right Honourable Sir 

 Edwai-d Coke, Knight, Lord Chiefe Justice of 

 England," &c. A. E. B. 



Leeds, Sept. 10. 



JOHN FREWEN. 



(Vol. viii., p. 222.) 



He is supposed to have been the son of Richard 

 Frewen, of Earl's Court, in Worcestershire, and 

 was born either at that place or in its immediate 

 vicinity in the early part of the year 1558. Richard 

 Frewen purchased the presentation to Northiam 

 rectory, in Sussex, of Viscount Montague, and 

 presented John Frewen to it in Nov. 1583 ; and 



