NOTES AND QUERIES : 



A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION 



FOE 



LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIUUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC. 



«• 'V^heii found, make a note of." — Captain Cuttle, 



No. 5£».]. 



Saturday, October 12, 1850. 



C Price Thrpcpence 

 ( Stamped Edition 4d. 



Page 



305 

 306 

 3f)fi 

 306 



30r 



307 



CONTENTS. 



Notes :— 



A Note on "Small Words " .... 



Gray's Elegy, by Bolton Cnrney . - . ■ 



Gray's Elrgv in Portufiuese _ - - . 



Further Notes on the Authorship of Hpnry VIII. 

 Queen Elizabeth and Sir Henry NcviU, by Lord Bray- 



brooUe ._----• 

 Minor Notes : — Whales — Bookbinding — Scott's Wa- 



verley — Satyavrata - - . - . 



Queries : — 



The Black Rood of Scotland , - - - 308 



Minor Queries : — Trogus Po-npeiiis — Mortuary Stanzas 



Laird of Grant — Bastille, Records of, — Orkney 



under Norwegians — Swift's Works — Pride of the 

 Jlorning — Bisliop Diirdent — Pope and Bishop Bur. 

 gess — Daniel's Irish Testament — Ale Draper — 

 Ku^'ene Aram — Latin Epigram — Couplet in Uefoe 

 — Books wanted to refer to —Watermarks in Writing- 

 paper — Puzzling Epitaph — Cornish MSS. — Bilder- 

 dijk the Poet— E'_'yptian MSS Scandinavian Priest- 

 hood — Thomas Volusemus , . - - 309 



Replies: — 



Curfew - "t - .» - - - 



Engelmann's Bihiiotheca Scriptorum Classicorum 

 Crozier and Pastoral Staff, t.y Rev. M. Walcott 

 Parsons, the Staffordshire Giant, by E. E. Rimbault, 



LL.D. 



Wormwood Wine, by;S. W. Singer, &c. - . - 



Replies to Minor Queries: — Feltham's Works — ITare- 

 findfr— Fool or a Physician— Papers of Perjury — 

 Pilgrim's Road — Captine of Henry VI. — Andrew 

 Beckett — Passage in Vida — Qiiem Ocus — Countess 

 of Desmond— Confession — Cavell, Meaning of,— Lord 

 Kingsborough's Mexico — Aijrostation — Concolinel 

 _ Andrewes's Tortura Tortij &c. . . - 



Miscellaneous: — 



Notes on Books, Sales, Catalogues, &c. - 

 Books and Odd Volumes Wanted 

 Notices to Correspondents - . - 



Advertisements .... 



311 

 312 

 313 



314 

 315 



31.5 



319 

 319 

 319 

 320 



A NOTE ON " 8MALI. WORDS." 

 " And ten small words creep on in one dull line." 



Most ingenious ! most felicitous ! but let no 

 man desiiise little wonls, despite of the little man 

 of Twickenliain. He himself knew belter, but 

 there was no resisting the temjitatioii of such a 

 line as that. Small words he says, in i)!ain jiro- 

 saic criticism, are generally " stiff an<l languishing, 

 but lliey may be beautiful to express melancholy." 



The English language is a language of small 

 words. It is, says Swift, " overstocked with mono. 



syllables." It cuts down all its words to the short- 

 est possible dimensions : a sort of half-Procrustes, 

 which lops but never stretches. In one of the 

 most magnificent passages in Holy AVrit, that, 

 namely, which describes the death of Sisera : — 



" Al her feet he bowed, he fell : at her feet he bowed, 

 he fell, he lay down : where he bowed, there he fell 

 down dead." 



There are twenty-two monosyllables to three of 

 greater length, or rather to the same dissyllable 

 thrice repeated ; and that too in common parlance 

 pronounced as a monosyllable. The passage in. 

 the Book of Ezekiel, which Coleri<lge is said to 

 have considered the most sublime in the whole 

 Bible, — 



" And He said unto me, son of man, can these bones 

 live? And 1 answered, O Lord God, thou knowest," — 



contains seventeen monosyllables to three others. 

 And in that most grand passage which commenc^es 

 the Gospel of St. John, from the first to the four- 

 teenth verses, inclusive, there are polysyllables 

 twenty-eight, monosyllables two hundred and one. 

 This it may be said is poetry, but not verse, and 

 therefore makes but little against the critic. Well 

 then, out of his own mouth shall he be confuted. 

 In the fourth epistle of his Essay on Man, a S])eci- 

 men selected purely at random from his works, 

 and extending altogether to three hundi'cd and 

 ninety-eight lines, there are no less than twenty-- 

 seven' (that is, a trifle more than one out of every 

 fifieen,) made up entirely of monosyllables : and 

 over and above these, there are one hundred and 

 fifteen which have in them oi\ly one word of greater 

 length ; and yet there ai-e few dull creepers aincng 

 the lines of Pope. 



The early writers, the " pure wells of English 

 undi'filed," are full of "small words." 



Hall, in one of the most ex(iuisite of his satires, 

 speaking of the vanity of " adding house to house, 

 and fiehl to field," I'iis these most beautiful lines, — 



" Fond fool ! six feet shall serve for all thy store, 

 And lie tliat cares for most shall find no more !" 



"What harmonious monosyllables!" says Mr. 

 GifTord ; and what critic will refuse to echo his 

 exclamation ';' The same writer is full of mono- 

 syllabic lines, and he is among the most energetic 



Vor-. IT.— No. 50, 



