482 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 85. 



"Felix quem/aciunt,'" Sfc. (Vol.iii., pp. 373. 431.). 

 — The passage cited by C. H. P. as assigned to 

 Plaiitus, find which he says he cannot find in that 

 authoi", occurs in one ot" the interpolated scenes 

 in the Mercator, which are placed in some of the 

 old editions between the 5th and 6th Scenes of 

 Act IV. In (he edition by Parens, printed at 

 Neustadt (Neapolis Nemetum) in 1619, 4to., it 

 stands thus: 



" Vetum id dictum est : Feliciter is sapit, qui peri- 

 culo alieno sapit." 



I was wrong in attributing it to Plautus, and should 

 rather have called it Plautine. By a strange slip 

 of the pen or the press, perieuZ?«?i is put instead 

 of pericuZo in my note. Niebuhr has a very 

 interesting essay on the interpolated scenes in 

 Plautus, in the first volume of his Kleine Historische 

 lind Philologische Schri/ten, which will show why 

 these scenes and passages, marked as supposititious 

 in some editions, are now omitted. It appears 

 that they were made in the fifteenth century by 

 Hermolaus Barbarus. See a letter from him to 

 the Bishop of Segni, in Angeli Politiani Epistola, 

 lib. xii. epist. 25. 



To the parallel thoughts already cited may be 

 added the following : 



" li qui sciunt, quid nliis acelderit, facile ex aliorum 

 (f^'entu, suis rationibus possunt providere." 



Rhetoric, ad Ilerennium, L. 4. c. t>. 



" r presi esetnpio de' lor stati rei, 

 Facendomi profitto V altrui male 

 In consolar i casi e dolor miei." 



Petrarca, Trionfo della Castitd. 



" Ben' e felice quel, donne mie care, 

 Ch' essere accorto all' altrui spese impare." 



Ariosto, Oil. Fur., canto X. 



S. W. Singer. 



The Saint Graal (Vol. iii., p. 413.). — I see that 

 ]\Ik. G. Stephens states, that Mons. Roquefort's 

 nine columns are decisive of Saint Graal being 

 derived from Sanota Cratera. I am unacquainted 

 with the word cratera, unless in Ducange, as 

 meaning a basket. But crater, a goblet, is the 

 word meant by llo(juefort. 



How should graal or great come from crater ? 

 I cannot see common sense in it. Surely that an- 

 cient writer, nearly, or quite, cotemporary with the 

 publication of the romance, Helinandus Frigidi- 

 montanus, may be trusted for the fact that graal 

 was French for " gradalis or gradale," which muant 

 "scutella lata et aliquantulum jn-ofunda in qua 

 preciosaj dapcs cum suo jure divitibus solent ap- 

 poni." (Vide Helinand. ap.Vincentium Bellovacen- 

 sem, (S/jecMZwm if)stor««Ze, lib. 43. (tap. 147.) Can 

 there be a more apparent and palpable etymology 

 of any word, than that graal is gradale ? See Du- 

 cange in Gradale, No. 3, and in Gradalis, and the 

 three authorities (of which Helinand is not one) 

 cited by him. A. N. 



Skeletons at Egyptian Banquet (Vol. iii., p. 424.). 

 — The interpretation of this is probably from Jer. 

 Taylor's own head. See, for the history of the 

 association in his mind, his sermon on the " Mar- 

 riage King." 



" It is fit that I should infuse a bunch of myrrh 

 into the festival goblet, and, after the Egyptian manner, 

 serve up a dead man's bones as a feast." 



Q.Q. 



Seioell (Vol. iii., p. 391.). — Allow me to refer 

 H. C. K. to a passage in the Letters on the Sup- 

 pression of the Monasteries, published by the 

 Camden Society, p. 71., for an example of the 

 word sexvelles. It is there said to be equivalent to 

 hlawnsherres. The scattered pages of Duns Scotus 

 were put to this use, after he was banished from 

 Oxford by the Royal Commissioners. 



The word is perhaps akin to the low Latin 

 snellium, threshing-floor, or to the Norman French 

 swele, threshold: in which case the original mean- 

 ing would be hounds or limits. C. H. 



St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge. 



Col-fahias (Vol. iii., p. 390.). — This word is a 

 Latinised form of the Irish words Cul-reabuj- 

 (cul-feabus), i.e. " a closet of decency," or "for 

 the sake of decency." Fea. Crossley. 



Poem from the Dighj MS. (Vol. iii., p. 367.) 



Your correspondent H. A. B. will find the lines 

 in his MS. beginning 



" You worms, my rivals," &c., 



printed, with very slight variations, amongst Beau- 

 mont's poems, in Moxon's edition of the Works 

 of Beaumont and Fletcher, 1840. They are the 

 concluding lines of "An Elegy on the Lady Mark- 

 ham." W. J. Bernhakd Sarixn. 



Umbrella (Vol. iii., pp. 37. 126.). — I find the 

 following passage in the fourth edition of Blount's 

 Glossogruphia, published as far back as 1674. 



" Uinbrello (Ital. Omhrdhi), a fashion of round and 

 broad Fans, wherewith the Indiana (and from them 

 our great ones) preserve themselves from the heat of 

 the sun or fire ; and hence any little shadow, Fan, or 

 other thing, wherewith the women guard their faces 

 from the sun." 



In Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo- Br itannicum, 

 1708, it is thus noticed — 



" Umbrella, or Umhrello, a kind of broad Fan or 

 Skreen, commonly us'd by women to shelter them from 

 Rain : also a Wooden Frame cover'd with cloth to 

 keep off the sun from a window." 



" Parasol {F.), a small sort of canopy or iimbrello, 

 which women carry over their heads." 



And in Phillips's Neiv World of Words, 7th ed., 

 1720 — 



" Umbrella or Umhrello, a kind of broad Fan or 

 Skreen, which in hot countries People hold over their 



