Mar. 10. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



189 



" ig-BSTEBIOOS SCRAWL IN QUEEK S COLLEGE 

 LIBBARY, OXFORD. 



(Vol. xi., p. 146.) 



Numberless inquiries have been made at various 

 times respecting the characters alluded to in the 

 lines quoted by your correspondent. Still, I do 

 not suppose that any will be seriously disappointed 

 to find that the library, though so rich in other 

 respects, cannot boast of the possession of any 

 such mysterious autograph. The report has arisen 

 from the circumstance that, in an appendix to a 

 Grammar by Th. Ambrose (a copy of which is in 

 the library), is what professes to be a. facsimile of 

 certain "diabolic characters" in the possession of 

 the author. The work is entitled Introductio in 

 Chaldaicam Linguam^ Syriacam. atque Armenicam 

 et decern alias Liriguas, and was printed in the 

 year 1539. Copies of it are contained in the 

 Bodleian and Grenville Libraries. The author of 

 it was Theseus Ambrosius, who describes himself 

 in the title-page as " Ex comitibus Albonesii, 

 I. U. Doct., Papiensis, Canonicus regularis Late- 

 ranensis, ac Sancti Petri in coelo aureo Papise 

 praepositus : " and I am unable at present to add 

 any farther particulars concerning him. As the 

 book is rare, perhaps I may be allowed to quote 

 a passage in which the author alludes to the 

 document in question. It occurs in a letter to 

 the famous orientalist, Postell, p. 199. 



" Habeo quas nullus forsan habet, Diaboli literas, De- 

 monis ipsius manuscriptas. Qui turn risus, qui cachinni, 

 quae admirationes exortas fuerint, tu nosti, et cum perti- 

 nacius insisterem, remque omnem et factum, ut fuerat, 

 recenserem. Visi fuistis omnes verbis meis fidem aliquam 

 praestare, postmodum discessimus. Nunc vero vos qui 

 tunc conveneratis docti homines, cum Diaboli literas ac- 

 ceperitis, legite si nostis, et discite Ambrosio credere vera 

 dicenti." 



The characters themselves, occupying seven lines, 

 and looking as much like a small boy's first attempt 

 at writing Chinese as anything, occur at p. 212 b. 

 The words of the spell (in Italian) which raised 

 the evil spirit are also given (the. object in view 

 being to obtain an answer to the question "Sel 

 Cavaliero Marchantonio figliolo de riccha donna 

 da Piacenza ha ritrovati tutti li dinari che laso 

 Antonio Maria, et se no in qual loco sono?"), and 

 tlie following account of what happened on the 

 occasion when the characters were written : 



" Non tarn cito pennam Magus deposuerat, quam cito 

 qui aderant, pennam Eandem corripi et in aera sustolli, 

 et in Eandem chartam, infrascriptos characteres velociter 

 scribere viderunt, scribentis vero manum nullus compre- 

 hendere poterat." 



Ambrose professes to have got the account from 

 one "qui cum multis praesens fuerat;" but he 

 has forgotten to tell us his name, and what the 

 amount of information was which was extracted 

 from all this " devilment." Let me conclude with 



Ambrose's sensible resolution : " Quid vero cha- 

 racteres illi insinuarent, quamve responsionem ad 

 quesita redderent, scire omnino non curavL" 



H. H. Wood. 



Queen's College, Oxon. 



PROPHECIES RESPECTING CONSTANTINOPLE. 



(Vol.x., pp. 147. 192. 374.; Vol.xi., p. 67.) 

 When stringing together the more remarkable 

 predictions relating to the fall of Mahomedanism 

 and the Turkish empire, I thought the following 

 quatrain of Nostradamus too vague and unintel- 

 ligible to merit insertion. As, however, the author 

 of the Almanack Prophetique for this year has 

 thought fit to include it in a curious compilation 

 on the same subject, it may be considered a not 

 unimportant link in the chain of destiny. It is 

 the 59th quatrain of the eighth century : 



" Par deux fois haut, par deux fois mis a bas, 

 L'Orient aussi, I'Occident foiblera. 

 Son adver.-»aire, api-fes plusieurs combats, 

 Par mer chasse au besoing foiblera." 



Les Propheties de Michel Nosti-adamus, 

 _ Lyons, 8vo., 1568. 



It is farther asserted, that Francois Quaresmiua, 

 a missionary, in an account of his travels in the 

 East {Elucidatio Terra Sanctce, 2 vols, folio, An- 

 twerpia, 1639), speaks of a prophecy written in 

 1604 by an astrologer of Valentia, Francisco Na- 

 varro, in a work entitled Discurso sobre la Grande 

 Conguncion, to the eifect that the various Maho- 

 metan sects, and the temporal empire of the Turks, 

 will come to an end after a period of two hundred 

 and fifty-one years. As Quaresmius wrote in 

 1 604, the addition of the prescribed period would 

 indicate the present year for the fulfilment of the 

 predicted events. 



I am also indebted to the same curious annual 

 for the following octave, ascribed to the eleventh 

 century, from the Memoires et Propheties du 

 Petit Homme Rouge, 1843 : 



" Envieux de Constantinopolis, 

 II enverra ses furieux Cosaques, 

 Turcs, Moldaves, et Valaques, 

 De Mahomet domptant les fils. 



" Bretagne, Autriche, et France uniea, 

 Chassant Russiens de Stamboul, 



■ Ceux-ci changeant de batteries, 

 Iront s'emparer de Kaboul." 



Of a different order to the preceding are those 

 prescient reflections upon the political future of 

 Europe, to which a profound study of the ten- 

 dencies and relations of its several governments 

 leads the philosophic historian. 



Many of these, illustrative of the present sub- 

 ject, might be collected ; but I will conclude 

 with the following remark of Montesquieu, rather, 

 however, as a specimen of the class to which I 



