18 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 89. 



History of tlie county, is also a repertory of this 

 kind of instruction, as far as portraits are con- 

 cerned. Privately printed books are entirely 

 unrecorded in this and most other localities. 

 Without the publication now mentioned, pei'sons 

 having no personal knowledge of Mr. Turner's 

 ample stores would be not only unacquainted with 

 that gentleman's wonderful Norfolk collection, but 

 also ignorant that through his liberality, and the 

 elegant genius and labours of several members of 

 his family, the portfolios of many of his fiiends 

 have been enriched by the addition of portraits of 

 many persons of great virtues, attainments, and 

 learning, with whom he had become acquainted. 

 In Suffolk, the veteran collectors, Mr.ElishaDavy, 

 of UlTord, and Mr. William Fitch, of Ipswich, have 

 compiled lists of portraits belonging to that county. 

 These .are, however, in manuscript, and therefore 

 comparatively useless ; though, to the honour of 

 both these gentlemen let it be said, that no one 

 ever asks in vain for assistance from their col- 

 lections. 



I trust it can only be necessary to call attention 

 to this source of knowledge, to be supported in a 

 view of the necessity of a record open to all. I 

 have taken the liberty to name the "Notes and 

 Queries" as the storehouse for gathering these 

 scattered memorabilia together, knowing no means 

 of permanence superior, or more convenient, to 

 literary persons, although I am not without fears 

 indeed, jjcrhaps convictions, that your present 

 space would be too much burthened thereby. 



As the volume of "Notes and Queries" just 

 completed has comprised a large amount of intel- 

 ligence respecting the preservation of epitaphs, the 

 present would, perhaps, be appropriately opened 

 by a new subject of, 1 am inclined to think, nearly 

 equal value. John Wodderspoon. 



Norwich. 



SARDONIC SMILES. 



A few words on the TeKws crapSdvios, or Sardonlus 

 Risus, so celebrated in antiquity, may not be 

 amiss, especially as the expression " a Sardonic 

 smile" is a conmion one in our language. 



We find this epithet used by several Greek 

 writers ; it is even as old as Homer s time, ibr we 



read in the Odl/ssei/, /ueiorjcre Sh 8vfj.w aap^dviov ixd\a 



roiov, " but he laughed in his soul a very bitter 

 laugh." The word was written indifferently 

 trapSai/ioj and (TopSoVios ; and some lexicograpliei s 

 derive it from the verb a-aipco, pf. fffarjpu, "to show 

 the teeth, grin like a dog:" especially in scorn 

 or malice. The more usual derivation is fiom 

 crapZoviov, a plant of Sardinia (2ap5w), which was 

 said to distort the face of the cater. In the En- 

 glish of the present day, a Sardonic laugh means 

 a derisive, fiendish laugh, full of bitterness and 

 mocking ; stinging with insult and rancour. Lord 



Byron has hit it off in his portraiture of the Cor- 

 sair, Conrad : 



" Tliere was a laughing devil in his sneer, 

 That rais'd emotions both of rage and fear." 



In Izaak Walton's ever deliglitful Complete 

 Avgler, Venator, on coining to Tottenham High 

 Cross, repeats his promised verse : " it is a copy 

 printed among some of Sir Henry Wotton's, and 

 doubtless made either by him or by a lover of 

 angling." Here is the first stanza : — 

 " Quivering fears, heart-tearing cares, 

 Anxious sighs, untimely tears, 

 Fly, fly to courts, 

 Fly to fond worldlings' sports. 

 Where strained Sardonic smiles are glosing still, 

 And Grief is forced to laugh against her will; 

 Where mirth's hut mummery, 

 And sorrows only real he." 



In Sir J. Hawkins's edition is the following note 

 on the word " Sardonic" in these lines : 



" Feigned, or forced smiles, from the word Sardnn, 

 the name of an herb resembling smallage, and growing 

 in Sardinia, which, being eaten by men, contracts the 

 muscles, and excites laughter even to death. Vide 

 Erasmi Adar/ia, tit. Ilisus." 



Sardonic, in this passage, means " forced, 

 strained, unusual, artificial ;" and is not taken in 

 the worst sense. These lines of Sir H. Wotton's 

 bring to mind some of Lorenzo de Medici's in a 

 platonic poem of his, when he contrasts the court 

 and country. I quote Mr. Roscoe's translation : — 

 " AVhat tlie heart thinks, the tongue may here disclose, 

 Nor inward grief with outward smiles is drest ; 

 Not like the world — "here wisest he who knows 

 To hide the secret closest in his breast." 



The Edinburgh Review, July, 1849, in an article 

 on Tyndale's Sardinia, says : 



" The Sardonic smile, so celebrated in antiquity, baf- 

 fles research much more tlian the intcmperie ; nor have 

 modern physiologists thrown any light on the nature 

 of the deleterious plant which produces it. Tlie tradi- 

 tion at least seems still to survive in tlie country, and 

 Mr. Tyndale adduces some evidence to show that the 

 Ranunculus scehratus was the herb to which these exag- 

 gerated qualities were ascribed. Some insular anti- 

 quaries have found a difflrcnt solution of the ancient 

 proverb. The ancient Sardinians, they say, like many 

 barbarous tribes, used to get rid of their relations in 

 extreme old age by throwing them alive into deep pits; 

 which attention it was the fashion for the venerable ob- 

 jects of it to receive with great expressions of delight: 

 whence the saying of a Sardinian laugh (vulgo), 

 laughing on the wrong side of one's mouth. It seems 

 not impossible, that the phenomenon may have been a 

 result of the eflfects of ' Intemperie ' working on weak 

 constitutions, and in circumstances favourable to phy- 

 sical depression — like the epidemic chorea, and similar 

 complaints, of wliich such strange accounts are read in 

 medical books." 



Geronimo. 



