438 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 210. 



* Non exorato stant adamante viae ;' Propert. iv. 11. 4., 

 'Mare scopulis inuccesswn ;' Plin. Nat. Hist., xii. 14. 

 It is in this sense that Jlexus is to be understood in 

 Virg. ^n., V. 500." 



The same employment of the past part, is 

 frequent in our old English writers, and I rather 

 think that they adopted it from the Latin. The 

 earliest instance which I find in my notes is from 

 Golding, who renders the tonitrus et inevitdbile 

 fvlmen of Ovid {Met. iii. 301.) : 



" With dry and dreadful thunderclaps and lightning to 

 the same, 

 Of deadly and unavoided dint." 



In Milton I have noticed the following participles 

 used in this sense : unmoved, abhorred, unnumbered, 

 unapproached, dismayed, unreproved, Unremoved, 

 unsucceeded, preferred. But as Milton was ad- 

 dicted to Latinising, I will give some examples 

 from Shakspeare himself: 



" Now thou art come unto a feast of death, 

 A terrible and unavoided danger." 



1 Hen. VL, Act IV. Sc. 5. 



" We see the very wreck that we must suffer, 

 And utiavoided is the danger now, 

 For suffering so the causes of our wreck." 



Rich. II., Act 11. Sc. 1. 



" All unavoided is the doom of destiny." 



Rich. Ill, Act IV. Sc. 4. 



" Inestimable stones, unvalued ievreAs." 



lb.. Act I. Sc. 4. 



" Tell them that when my mother went with child 

 Of that insatiate Edward."— 76., Act III. Sc. 5. 



" I am not glad that such a sore of time 

 Should seek a plaster by contemned revolt." 



King John, Act V. Sc. 2. 



" The murmuring surge 

 That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes." 



Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6. 



" O, undistinguished space of woman's will." — lb. 



I could give instances from Spenser and even 

 from Pope, but shall only observe that when we 

 say " an undoubted fact " we mean an indubitable 

 one. Thos. Keightley. 



P. S. — I am not disposed to quarrel with H. C. K.'s 

 derivation of awkward (Vol. viii., p. 310.), but I 

 must observe that the more exact correlative of 

 toward seems to be wayward. The Anglo-Saxons 

 appear to have pronounced their 5 as g- ; but after 

 the Conquest it was pronounced hard in some 

 cases, and so wayward and awkward may have 

 the same origin. 



Shakspeare Portrait. — Can any of your cor- 

 respondents state whether the sign of Shakspeare, 

 said to have been painted at a cost of 150Z., and 

 which in 1764 graced a tavern then in Drury 

 Lane, called " The Shakspeare," and in that year 



was taken down and removed into the country, 

 and used for a similar purpose, still exists, and 

 where ? and is the artist who painted such sign 

 known ? Charlecott. 



" Taming of the Shrew."" — I cannot help think- 

 ing that Christopher Sly merely means that he is 

 fourteenpence on the score for sheer ale, — no- 

 thing but ale ; neither bread nor meat, horse 

 housing, or bed. 



He has drunk the entire amount, and glories in 

 his iniquity, like a true tippler. G. H. K. 



Lord Bacon and Shakspeare. — Can any of those 

 correspondents of " N. & Q." who have devoted 

 attention to the lives of two of England's greatest 

 worthies, Francis Bacon and William Shakspeare, 

 account for the extraordinary fact that, although 

 these two highly gifted men were cotemporaries, 

 no mention of or allusion to the other is to be 

 found in the writings of either ? Bacon was born 

 in 1561, and died in 1626 ; Shakspeare, who was 

 born in 1563, and died ten years before the great 

 chancellor, not only loved 



" To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy," 



but breathes throughout every page of his won- 

 drous writings a spirit of philosophy as profound 

 as his imagination is unlimited ; yet nowhere, it is 

 believed, can he be traced as making the slightest 

 allusion to the great father of modern philosophy. 

 Bacon, on the other hand, whom one can scarcely 

 suppose to have been ignorant of the writings of 

 the dramatist, but who indeed may rather be be- 

 lieved to have known him personally, seems alto- 

 gether to ignore his existence, or the existence of 

 any of his matchless works. As the solution of 

 this problem could not but throw much light on 

 that m.ost interesting subject, — the history of the 

 minds of Shakspeare and Bacon, — I venture to 

 throw it out as a fit subject for the research of 

 some of your contributors versed in the writings 

 of these great spirits of their own age, no less than 

 of all time. Theta. 



Minax ^aXei, 



Decomposed Cloth. — In Mr. Wright's valuable 

 work on The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 308., 

 is mentioned the discovery at York of a Roman 

 coffin, in which were distinctly visible " the colour, 

 a rich purple," as well as texture of the cloth with 

 which the body it had contained had been covered. 



I should think that the colour observed was not 

 that of the ancient dye, but rather was caused by 

 phosphate of iron, formed by the combination of 

 iron contained in the soil or water, with phosphoric 

 acid, arising from the decomposition of animal 

 matter. It may often be observed in similar 

 cases, as about animal remains found in bogs, and 

 about ancient leather articles found in excava- 



