26 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 89. 



wants of man, in all the varied stations in which 

 he may be placed on eartli, independent of its 

 assurance of a better state hereafter. With child- 

 like meekness, and earnest sincerity, the once 

 contemner and reviler of Christianity testified to 

 me that all his hope for the future was in the 

 great atonement made to reconcile fallen man to 

 his Creator. 



Before we parted, I was anxious to possess his 

 autograph, and asked him for it ; as I had made 

 some collection towards illustrating his Every 

 Day Booh, to which it would have been no in- 

 considerable addition. After a moment of deep 

 thought, he presented me with a slip of paper 

 inscribed as follows, in his small and usual very neat 

 hand : — 



" ' He that increaseth knowledge 

 iiicreastth soiron'.'* 



" Think on this. 



" W. Hone. 



" 15 January, 1839." 



Shortly after his death, the following appeared 

 in the Ei^angelical Magazine, which I transcribed 

 at the time : — 



" The following was written l)y Mr. Hone on a 

 blank leaf in his pocket Bible. On a particular occa- 

 sion he displaced the leaf, and presented it to a gentle- 

 man whom we know, and who has correctly copied its 

 contents for publication. 



LINES 



Written before Breakfast, Sd June 1S,34, the Anniver- 

 sary of my Birthday in 1780. 



' The proudest heart that ever beat, 



Hatli been subdued in me ; 

 The wildest will tliat ever rose, 

 To scorn Thy cause, and aid Thy foes. 



Is quell'd, my God, by Thee. 



' Thy will, and not my will, be done ; 

 My heart be ever Thine ; 

 Confessing Thee, the mighty Word, 

 I hail Thee Christ, my God, my Lord, 

 And make Thy Name my sign. 



'iv. Hone.'" 



At the sale of ]\Ir. Hone's books, I purchased a 

 bundle of religious pamphlets ; among them was 

 Cecil's Friendly Visit to the House of Mourning. 

 From the pencillings in it, it appears to have 

 afforded him much comfort in the various trials, 

 mental and bodily, wliich it is well known clouded 

 his latter days. William Baeton 



19. Winchester Place, 

 Southwark Bridge Road. 



* Ecclesiastes, i. 18. 



SHAKSPEARE's "small lATIlS." HIS USE OF 



" TRIPLE." 



(Vol. iii., p. 497.) 



In reference to the observations of A. E. B., I 

 beg leave to say that, in speaking of Shakspeare as 

 a man who had small Latin, I intended no irreve- 

 rence to his genius. I am no worshipper of Shak- 

 speare, or of any man; but I am willing to do full 

 justice, and to pay all due veneration, to those 

 powers which, with little aid from education, ex- 

 alted their possessor to the heights of dramatic 

 excellence. 



As to the extent of Shakspeare's knowledge of 

 Latin, I think that it was well estimated by 

 Johnson, when he said that " Shakspeare had 

 Latin enough to grammaticize his English." Had 

 he possessed much more than was sufficient for 

 this purpose, Ben Jonson would hardly have called 

 his knowledge of tlie language small; for about 

 the signification of small there can be no doubt, 

 or about Ben's ability to determine whether it was 

 small or not. But this consideration lias nothing 

 to do with the appreciation of Shakspeare's intel- 

 lect: Siiakspeare might know little of Latin and 

 less of Greek, and yet be comparable to iEschylus, 

 Sophocles, and Euripides ; as Burns, who may be 

 said to have known no Latin, is comparable, in 

 many passages, even to Horace. " The great in- 

 strument of the man of genius," says Thomas 

 Moore, " is his own language," which some know- 

 ledge of another language may assist liira to wield, 

 but to the wielding of which the knowledge of 

 another language is by no means necessary. The 

 great dramatists of Greece were, in all probability, 

 entirely ignorant of any language but their own ; 

 but such ignorance did not incapacitate them from 

 using their own with effect, nor is to be regarded 

 as being, in any way, any detraction from their 

 merits. Shakspeare had but a limited acquaint- 

 ance with Latin, but such limited acquaintance 

 caused no debilitation of his mental powers, nor is 

 to be mentioned at all to his disparagement. I 

 desire, therefore, to be acquitted, both by A. E. B. 

 and by all your oilier readers, of entertaining 

 any disrespect for Shakspeare's high intellectual 

 powers. 



As to his usage of the word triple, that it is 

 " fairly traced tx) Shakspeare's own reading " 

 might not unreasonably be disputed. We may, 

 however, concede, if A. E. B. wishes, that it was 

 derived from his own reading, as no truce of its 

 being horroiced is to he fotind. But I am not 

 sure that if other writers had taken pains to 

 establish this use of the word in our t(mgue, its 

 establishment would have been much of a " con- 

 venient acquisition." Llad any man who has three 

 sisters, closely conjoined in bonds of amity, the 

 privilege of calling any one of them a triple sister, 

 I do not consider that he or his language would 



