Nov. 23. 1850.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



423 



free, flexible, and idiomatic character of the versi- 

 fication, so exactly like that of Dryden ; but prin- 

 cipally to the description the Essay vpon Satire 

 contains of the Earl of Mulgrave himself, be- 

 ginning, 

 " INIulgrave had much ado to scape the snare, 



'though learn'd in those ill arts that cheat the fair ; 



For, after all, his vulgar marriage mocks, 



With beauty dazzled Numps was in tlie stocks;" 

 And ending : 

 " Him no soft thoughts, no gratitude could move ; 



To gold he fled, from beauty and from love," &c. 



Could Mulgrave have so written of himself; or 

 could he have allowed Dryden to interpolate the 

 character. Earlier in the poem we meet with a 

 description of Shaftesbury, which cannot foil to 

 call to mind Dryden's character of him in Absalom 

 and Achitophel ; which, as we know, did not 

 make its appearance, even in its first shape, until 

 two years after Dryden was cudgelled in Kose 

 Street as the author of the Essay xipon Satire. 

 Everybody bears in mind the triplet, 



" A fiery soul, which working out its way, 

 Fretted his pigmy body to decay, 

 And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay ; " 



And what does Dryden (for it must be he who 

 writes) say of Shaftesbury in the Essatj upon 

 Satire ? 

 " As by our little Machiavel we find, 

 That nimblest creature of the busy kind ; 

 His limbs are crippled, and his body shakes, 

 Yet his bard mind, which all this bustle makes, 

 No pity on its poor companion takes. "_ 



If Mulgrave wrote these lines, and Dryden only 

 corrected them, Dryden was at all events indebted 

 to Mulgrave for the thought of the inequality, and 

 disproportion between the mind and body of 

 Shaftesbury. Moreover, we know that Pope ex- 

 punged the assertion subsequently made, that 

 Dryden had been "pimished" (iwt beateii, as "D." 

 quotes the passage) " for another's rhimes," when 

 he was bastinadoed, in 1G7!), at the instigation of 

 Rochester, for the character of him in the Essay 

 upon Satire. 



It might suit Mulgrave's purpose afterwards to 

 claim a share in this production ; but the evidence, as 

 far as lam acquainted with it, seems all against it. 

 There may be much evidence on the point with 

 which I am nrrt acijuainted, and perhaps some of 

 your readers will be so good as to point it out to 

 me. The questi(m is one that I am, at this mo- 

 ment, especially interested in. 



The Hermit op Holvport. 



Miliar iSmtxiti. 



JEneax Silviiis (^Pope Pius II.). — A broadsheet 

 was publisheil in 1461, containing the excommu- 



nication and dethronement of the Archbishop and 

 Elector Dietrich of Mayence, issued and styled in 

 the most formidable terms by Pius II. This broad- 

 sheet, consisting of eighteen lines, and printed on 

 one side only, appears from the uniformity of its 

 type with the Rationale of 1459, to be the product 

 of Fust and Schijjfer. 



No mention whatever is made of this typogra- 

 phical curiosity in any of the standard bibliogra- 

 phical manuals, from which it seems, that this 

 broadsheet is unique. Can any information, 

 throwing light upon this subject, be given ? 



Querist. 



November,' 1 850. 



"Please the Pigs" is a phrase too vulgarly 

 common not to be well known to your readers. 

 But whence has it arisen ? Either in "Notes 

 AND Queries," or elsewhere, it has been explained 

 as a corruption of "Please the pix." Will you 

 allow another suggestion ? I think it possible that 

 the pigs of the Gergesenes (Matthew viii. 28. el 

 seq.) may be those appealed to, and that the in- 

 vocation may be of somewhat impious meaning. 

 John Bradford, the martyr of 1555, has within a 

 few consecutive pages of his writings the following 

 expressions : 



" And so by this means, as they save their pigs, 

 which they would not lose, (I mean their worldly 

 pelf), so tliey would please the Protestants, and be 

 counted with them for gospellers, yea, marry, would 

 they."— Writings of Bradford, Parker Society ed., p. 390. 



Again : 



" Now are they unwilling to di.nk of God's cup of 

 afflictions, which He ofTereth common with His son 

 Christ our Lord, lest they shouldlove their pigs with 

 the Gergenites." p. 409. 



Again : 



" This is a hard sermon : ' Who is able to abide it?' 

 Therefore, Christ must be prayed to depart, lest all 

 their pigs be drowned. The devil shall have his dwell- 

 ing again in themselves, rather than in their pigs." 

 p. 409. 



These, and similar expressions in the same 

 writer, without reference to any text upon the 

 subject, seem to show, that men loving their pigs 

 more than God, was a theological phrase of the 

 day, descriptive of their too great worldliness. 

 Hence, just as St. Paul said, " if the Lord will," 

 or as we say, " please God," or, as it is sometimes 

 written, "D.V.," worldly men would exclaim, 

 " please the pigs," and thereby mean that, pro- 

 vided it suited their present interest, they would 

 do this or that thing. Alfred Gatty. 



Ecclesfield. 



[We subjoin the following Query, as one so closely 

 connected with the foregoing, that the explanation of 

 the one will probably clear up the obscurity in which 

 the other is involved.] 



