86 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 36. 



flying from Alexander, fell into the hands of Bes- 

 sus. (See Selections from Gent. Mag., vol. ii. p. 199. 

 London, 1814.) C. Fobbes. 



This celebrated Latin verse, which has become 

 proverbial, has a very obscure authority, probably 

 not known to many of your readers. It is from 

 Gualtier de Lille, as lias been remarked by Ga- 

 leottus Martius and Paquier in their researches. 

 This Gualtier flourished in the thirteenth cen- 

 tury. The verse is extracted from a poem in ten 

 books, called the " Alcxandriad," and it is the 

 301st of the 5th book; it relates to the fate of 

 Darius, who, flying from Alexander, fell into the 

 hands of Bessus. It runs thus : — 



" Quo flectis inertem 



Rex periture, fugam? Nescis, heu perditc, nescis, 



Qiiem fugias ; hostes incunis duni fiigis hostem ; 



Jncidis in Sci/llam, cttjjiens vilnre Chari/bdhn." 



As honest John Buny an, to his only bit of Latin 

 which he quotes, places a marginal note : " The 

 Latin which I borrow," — a very honest way ; so I 

 beg to say that I never saw this " Alexandriad," 

 und that the above is an excerpt from ihe Mena- 

 gianri, pub. 1715, edited by Bertrand de la Mon- 

 noie, wherein may also be I'ound much curious 

 reading and research. James IL Fkiswell. 



A NOTE OF ADMIRATION ! 



Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Miss Joanna 

 Baillie, dated October 12, 1825, (Lockhart's Life 

 of Si?- W. S., vol. vi. p. 82.), says, — 



" I well intended to have written from Ireland, but 

 alas ! as some stern old divine says, ' Hell is paved with 

 good intentions.' There was such a wliirl of hiking, 

 and boating, and wondering, and shouting, and laugli- 

 ing, and carousing — " [He alUidcs to his visiting among 

 the Westmoreland and Cumberland lakes oti his way 

 home, especially] " so much to be seen, and so little 

 time to see it ; so much to be heard, and only two 

 ears to listen to twenty voices, that upon the whole I 

 grew desperate, and gave up all tboughts of doing what 

 was right and proper on post-days, and so all my epis- 

 tolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I 

 suppose, ' the burning marie ' of the infernal regions." 



How easily a showy absurdity is sidistituted fl-r 

 a serious truth, and taken for granted to be the 

 right sense. Without having been there, I may 

 venture to aflirm that "Hell is vot paved with 

 good intentions," such things being all lost or dropt 

 on the way by travellers who reach "that bourne;" 

 for, where " Hope never comes," "good intentions" 

 cannot exist any more tlian they can be formed, 

 since to fulfil them were impossible. The authentic 

 and cmphatical figure in the saying is, " The road 

 to hell is paved with good intentions ;" and it was 

 uttered by the " stern old divine," whoever he 

 might be, as a wai'ning not to let "good intentions" 



miscarry for want of being realised at the time 

 and upon the spot. The moral, moreover, is mani- 

 festly this, that people may be going to hell with 

 " the best intentions in the world," substituting all 

 the while ivell-meaniiig for well-doing. J. M. G. 

 Hallamshire. 



THE EAEL OF NORWICH AND HIS SON GEORGE LORD 

 GORING. 



As in small matters accuracy is of vital conse- 

 quence, let me correct a mistake which I made, 

 writing in a hurry, in my last communication about 

 the two Gorings (Vol. ii., p. 65.). The Earl of Nor- 

 wich was not under sentence of death, as is there 

 stated, on January 8, 1649. He was tlnm a pri- 

 soner : he was not tried and sentenced till j\Iarch.* 



The following notice of the son's quarrels with 

 his brother cavaliers occurs in a letter printed in 

 Carte's bulky appendix to his bulky Life of the 

 Dtike of Ormond. As this is an unread book, you 

 may think it worth while to print the passage, 

 which is only confirmatory of Clarendon's account 

 of the younger Goring's proceedings in the West 

 of England in 1645. The letter is from Arthur 

 Trevor to Ormond, and dated Launceston, Au- 

 gust 18, 1645. 



" Mr. Goring's army is broken and all his men in 

 disorder. He hates the council here, and I find plainly 

 there is no love lost ; tliey fear he will seize on the 

 Prince, and he, that they will take him : what will fol- 

 low hereupon may be foretold, without the aid of the 

 wise woman on the bank. Sir Jolni Coleiieper was 

 at Court lately to remove him, to the discoiUent of 

 many. In short, the war is at an end in the West ; 

 each one looks for a ship, and nothing more. 



" Lord Digby and ]\Ir. Goring are not friends ; 

 Prince Hupert yet goes with Mr. Goring, but how long 

 tliat will hold, I dare not undertake, knowing both their 

 constitutions." 



It will be observed that the writer of the letter, 

 though a cavalier, here calls him Mr. Goring, when, 

 as his father was created Earl of Noi wich in the 

 previous year, he was Loi-d Goring in cavalier ac- 

 ceptation. 



He is indiscriminately called Mr. Goring and 

 Lord Goring in jiassages of letters by cavaliers 

 relating to the campaign in the ^\'est of 1645, 

 which nccur in Carte's Collection of Letters (vol.i. 

 pp.59, 60. 81. 86.). 



A number of letters about the son, Lord Goring's 

 proceedings in the West in 1645 arc printed in 

 the third volnme of IMr. Lister's Life of Lord Cla- 

 rendon. 



The Earl of Norwich's second son, Chailes, who 

 afterwards succeeded as second earl, commanded a 



•Let me also correct a misprint. Banks, the au- 

 thor of the Dorviant and Exlinct Peerage, is misprinted 

 Buike. 



