April 15. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



347 



•' Ad hanc legem natus es ; hoc patri tuo accidit, 

 hoc matri, hoc majoribus, hoc omnibus ante te, hoc 

 omnibus post te, series invicta, et nulla mutabilis ope, 

 illigat ac trahit cuncta." 



" King You must know, your father lost a 



father ; 

 That father lost — lost his; .... 



To reason most absurd, whose common theme 

 Is death of fathers, and who still hath cry'd, 

 From the first corse, 'till he that died to-day, 

 This must be so." Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2. 



" 'Airb 5e tow /*■}/ exovros," &c. — Ante, Vol. viii., 

 p. 372. 



" Besides this, nothing that he so plentifully gives 

 me." — Shakspeare, As You Like It, Act I. Sc. 1. 



J. W. F. 



Having observed several Notes in different 

 Numbers of your interesting publication, in which 

 sentences have been quoted from the works of 

 ancient and modern authors that are almost alike 

 in words, or contain the same ideas "clothed in 

 different language, I would only add, that those 

 of your readers or correspondents who take an in- 

 terest in such inquiries will find instances enough, 

 in a work which was published in Venice in 1624, 

 to fill several columns of " N. & Q." The volume 

 is entitled II Seminario de Governi di Stato, et di 

 Guerra. W. W. 



Malta. 



Minax Jfcrtctf. 



Vallancey's Green Book. — Perhaps your readers 

 are not aware of the existence of the curious and 

 interesting volume mentioned in the following 

 cutting from Jones's last Catalogue (D'Olier St. 

 Dublin). It may therefore be worth making a 

 note of in your columns : 



■" lOOS. Vallancey's Green Book, manuscript, folio. 

 %* Vallancey's Green Book, so named from being 

 bound in green vellum, was the volume 

 in which the celebrated Irish antiquary, 



i General Charles Vallancey, entered the 



titles of all the manuscripts and printed 

 works relative to Ireland which he had oc- 

 casion to consult in his antiquarian re- 

 searches. The copy now offered for sale is 

 believed to be the only one extant. Bound 

 in the same volume is a collection of the 

 titles of all the manuscripts relating to 

 Ireland, which are preserved in the Arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury's library, at Lambeth, 

 London." 



T> TT 



Trin. Coll., Dublin. 



Herrings. — "The lovers of fish" may be glad 

 to learn what a bloater is, a mystery which I en- 



deavoured to unravel when lately on the Norfolk 

 coast. A bloater, I was informed, is a large, 

 plump herring (as we say a bloated toad) ; and 

 the genuine claimants of the title fall by their 

 own weight from the meshes of the net. 



The origin of the simile — "As dead as a her- 

 ring" — may not be generally known. This fish 

 dies immediately upon its removal from the native 

 element (strange to say) from want of air ; for 

 swimming near the surface it requires much, and 

 the gills, when dry, cannot perform their function. 



C. T. 



Byron and Rochefoucauld. — The following al- 

 most word-for-word renderings of two of Roche- 

 foucauld's Reflexions occur in the third and fourth 

 stanzas of the third canto of Byron's Don Juan. 

 I am not aware that any notice has been taken of 

 them beyond a note appended to the first passage, 

 in Moore's edition of Byron's Works, attributing 

 the mot to Montaigne : 



" Yet there are some, they say, who have had none, 

 But those who have ne'er end with only one." 



Byron. 



" On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu 

 de galanterie ; mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en 

 aient jamais eu qu'une." — Rochefoucauld's Maximes et 

 Reflexions Morales. 



" In her first passion, woman loves her lover, 

 In all the others all she loves is love." 



Byron. 

 " Dans les premieres passions les femmes aiment 

 l'amant ; dans les autres elles aiment l'amour." •— 

 Rochefoucauld's Maximes et Reflexions Morales. 



Sigma. 



Customs, London. 



'■'■Abscond." — This is a word which appears to 

 have lost its primary meaning of concealment, 

 apart from that of escape. Horace Walpole, how- 

 ever, uses it in the former sense : 



" Virette absconds, and lias sent M. de Pecquigny 

 word that he shall abscond till he can find a proper op- 

 portunity of fighting him." 



Chevereixs. 



Garlands, Broadsheets, 8fc. — Will you allow me 

 to suggest to your correspondents, that it would 

 be very desirable, for literary and antiquarian 

 purposes, to form as complete a list as possible of 

 public and private collections of garlands, broad- 

 sheets, chap-books, ballads, tracts, &c. ; and to 

 ask them to forward to " N. & Q." the names of 

 any such public or private collections as they may 

 be acquainted with. I need not say anything of 

 the importance and value of the ballads, &c, con- 

 tained in such collections, to the historical student 

 and the archaeologist, for their value is too well 

 known to require it ; but I would earnestly urge 

 the formation of such a list as the one I now 



