124 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 68. 



custom or law so clearly illegal bad ever occurred 

 within recent times, we should have assuredly 

 found some record of it in the annals of criminal 

 justice, as the executioner would infallibly have 

 been hanged. Th.e regulations ai-e probably an 

 attempt by some private hand to embody the 

 local customs of the district, so far as regards lead 

 miniiif; and they contain the sid)stance of the 

 usual customs jjrevalent in most metullie regions, 

 whc're mines have been worked ah antkjuo. The 

 fii-st report of the Dean Forest Commission, 1839, 

 f. 12., adverts to a similar practice among the coal 

 and iron miners in that forest. It seems to be an 

 instance of the Droit des arsins, or right of arson, 

 formerly claimed and exercised to a considerable 

 extent, and with great solemnity, in Picardy, 

 Flanders, and other ])laces ; but I know of no in- 

 stance in which this wild species of metnllifodine 

 justice has been churned to apply to anything but 

 the culprit's local habitation and tools of trade. I 

 need not add that the custom, even with this 

 limitation, would now be treated by the courts as 

 a vulgar error, and handed over to the exclusive 

 jurisdiction of the legal antiquaries and collectors 

 of the Juris amoenilates. E. Smirke. 



" Fronte capillata" c^-c. (Vol. iii., pp. 8. 43.). — 

 The couplet is much older tlian G. A. S. seems to 

 think. The author isDionysius Cato, — " Catoun," 

 as Chaucer calls him — -in his book, Distichorum de 

 A/oribus, lib. ii. D. xxvi. : 



" Rem tibi qiiam nosces aptaui, dlmittcre noli : 

 Fronte capillata, post est Occasio calva." 



Corp. Poet. Lut., Frankfurt, 1832, p. 1195. 



The history of this Dionysius Cato is unknown ; 

 and it has been hotly disputed whether he were a 

 Heathen or Clu-istian ; but he is at least as okl as 

 the fourth century of the Christian era, being men- 

 tioned by Vindicianus, chief physician in ordinary 

 to the empei'or, in a letter to Valentinian 1., 

 A. D. 365. In the illustrations of The Baptistery, 

 Parker, Oxford, 1842, which are re-engiaved from 

 the originals in the Via Vitce Eternce, designed by 

 Boetius a Bolswert, the figure of "Occasion" is 

 always drawn with the hair hanging loose in front, 

 act'oriling to the distich. E. A. D. 



Time when Herodotus wrote (Vol ii., p. 405. ; 

 Vol. iii., p. 30.). — The passage in Herodotus (i. 5.) 

 is certainly curious, and haJ escaped my notice, 

 until pointed out by your correspondent. I am 

 unable at present to refer to Smith's Dictionary of 

 Greek and Boman Biography and Mythology/ ; but 

 I doubt whether the reading of the poem or title, 

 in Aristotle's Rhetoric (ii. 9. §1.), has received 

 much attention. In my forthcoming translation 

 of the " Psendo-IIerodotean Life of Homer" pre- 

 fixed to the Odysseia (Bohn's Classical Library), 

 note 1., I have thus given it : — 



" This is the exposition of the liistorical researches 

 of Herodotus of Tlturium," &c. 



Now Aristotle makes no remark on the passage 

 as being unusual, and it therefore inclines me to 

 think that, at the time of that philosopher and 

 critic, both editions were in use. 



The date of the building of Thurium is b. c. 

 444, and Herodotus was there at its foundation, 

 being then about forty years of age. Most likely 

 he had published a smaller edition of this book 

 before that time, bearing the original date from 

 Halicarnassus, which he revised, enlai-ged, cor- 

 rected, and partly re-wrote at Thurium. I think 

 this would not be difficult to prove ; and I would 

 add that this retouching would be found more 

 apparent at the beginning of the volume than 

 elsewhere. This may be easily accounted fiir by 

 the feeling that modern as well as ancient authors 

 have, viz., that of laziness and inertness; revising 

 the first 100 pages carefull}', but decreasing from 

 that point. But to return : Later editors, I con- 

 ceive, erased the word Thuriiun used by Herodo- 

 tus, who was piqued and vexed at his native city, 

 and substituted, or restored, Halicarnassus ; not, 

 however, chanoinij the text. 



A learned friend of mine wished for the bdjlio- 

 gra])hical history of the classics. I told him then, 

 as I tell the readers of the " Notes and Queries" 

 now, " Search for that history in the pages of the 

 classics themselves; extend to them the critical 

 spirit that is applied to our own Chaucer, Shak- 

 speaie, and jNIihon, and your trouble will not be 

 in vain. The history of any book (that is the 

 general history of the gradual de\elopmint of its 

 ideas) is written in its own jjages." In truth, the 

 prose classics deserve as much attention as the 

 poems of Homer. 



Kenneth 11. H. Mackenzie. 



January 20. 1831. 



Herstmoncenx Castle (Vol. ii., p. 477.). — E. V. 

 asks for an explanation of certain entries in the 

 Fine Rolls, a.d. 1199 .and 1205, which I can, in 

 part, supply. The first is a fine for having seisin 

 of the lands of the deceased mother of the two 

 suitors, "William de Warburton and Ingelram de 

 JNlonceanx. As they claim as joint-heirs or par- 

 ceners, the land must have been subject to parti- 

 bility, and tlierefi)re of socage tenure. If the land 

 was not in Kent, the entry is a proof that the 

 exclusive right of primogeniture was not then 

 universally establisheil, as we know it was not in 

 the reign of Heni-y II. See Glunville, lib. vii. 

 cap. 3. 



The next entry records the fine paid for suing 

 out a writ de rationahdi parte against {versus) one 

 of the above coheirs. The demandant is either 

 the same coheir named above, viz. Ingelram, al- 

 tered by a clerical error into Waleram, — such 

 errors being of common occurrence, sometimes 

 from oscitancy, and sometimes because the clerk 

 had to guess at the extended Ibiin of a contracted 

 name, — or he is a descendant and heir of Ingelram, 



