2^ S. IX. Jan. 7. "60.] 



XOTES AXD QUERIES. 



9 



This Carthaginian marble is very beautiful ; it Las 

 dark red veins on a light brown. A. J. Du>ki> t . 



Swift's Cottage at Moor Park. — A short 

 time ago, being at Waverley Abbey, I was invited 

 to see a cottage which was said to have been inha- 

 bited by Swift. It is a very small low building, 

 at the end of Moor Park (which, as is well known, 

 was formerly the seat of Sir William Temple), 

 and appears to have been the house of some of the 

 labourers. Over the door of one of the rooms the 

 following lines are painted : — 



" Plerunique grata divitibus vices ; 

 Mundteque parvo sub lar.e pauperum 

 Coenae, sine aulajis et ostro, 

 Sollicitam explicuere frontem." 



These lines, which you will remember are from 

 Horace, Carm. iii. 29., seem ill to accord with that 

 spirit which never was at ease but among coronets 

 and mitres. They are said to have been placed 

 there by Swift's order ; but if so, the inscription 

 must have been renewed, for, from the appearance 

 of the paint, it can scarcely be twenty years old. 

 Sir William Temple died 1699, and Swift, as it 

 appears from a letter to Stella, Sept. 1710, was 

 afterwards on bad terms with the family. From 

 its appearance it seems difficult to believe that he 

 ever inhabited the cottage ; though such is the 

 tradition. Can any reader of " N". & Q." give any 

 farther information on the subject ? A. A. 



Poets' Corner. 



eaucrtc£. 



REV. THOMAS BAYES, ETC. 



Before I make my Query let me second the 

 proposal made in p. 456. preceding, that decision 

 should not be announced on subjects which cannot 

 be discussed. It is not to the credit of our age 

 that abstinence on this point is necessary lor 

 peace : but it cannot be denied that on all subjects 

 on which men think warmly it is openly avowed, 

 by four persons out of five at least, that opinions 

 contrary to their own are offensive. A century 

 and a half ago opinions might be openly stated, 

 and opinions about opinions as openly : we have 

 rescinded the second permission, and are there- 

 fore obliged to rescind the first. We are a tender 

 and ticklish race. I forget what illionth of an 

 inch Newton found for the thickness — or rather 

 thinness — of a soapbubble; but the skin of an 

 educated man will beat it in time, if we go on as 

 now. 



Unquestionably no banner of any side in reli- 

 gious or political controversy has ever been dis- 

 played in "N. & Q." Whether this be due to 

 the discretion of contributors or to the suppres- 

 sion of the editor is among the secrets of the edi- 

 tor's desk ; and had better remain so. But there 

 is a diminutive of the banner called a banderol or 



bannerol, of which I believe each knight had one 

 for himself: and this is sometimes half unfurled ; 

 and more frequently of Iafe than in former years. 

 In the very admonition which I now second there 

 is a division of the members of one church into 

 " High Churchmen and Puritans," which is very 

 like a banderol : though perhaps all that is meant 

 is, as in Swift's celebrated case, that the piebald 

 horses of all degrees of mixture shall by common 

 intendment be included under black and white 

 horses. 



There are many ingenious ways of unfurling the 

 banderol. A person may contrive to let us know 

 that he thinks &c. is &c. and not &c. by his mode 

 of informing us that " the pages of ' N. & Q.' are 

 not the place to discuss whether &c. be &c. or &c." 

 Again, there are clever modes of eliminating all 

 but the opinion which is to be insinuated. 

 " Grandmamma," said the little boy, " I wish one 

 of us three was hanged ; I don't mean pussy ; and 

 I don't mean myself." This little boy, now grown 

 up, has written several articles in " N. & Q.," and 

 some of no mean merit : and he writes under more 

 than one signature. 



Your journal is a kind of public pic-nic, at 

 which each person is expected to present his dish 

 quite plain, without any condiment except salt. 

 There are difficulties about any other arrangement. 

 " Ah ! " said an epicure at a public table, " Peas ! 

 the first this season ! Capital ! " — shaking pep- 

 per over them all the time. His opposite neigh- 

 bour thereupon scattered the contents of a little 

 box over the dish, quietly observing, " Sir ! 

 you like pepper ; I like snuff." Nee lex justior 

 ulla. 



I was led to these reflexions by a Query which I 

 havf to make, in which, by very little manage- 

 ment, I might have shaken the flag of heresy in 

 the faces of the orthodox of all varieties. In the 

 last century there were three Unitarian divines, 

 each of whom has established himself firmly 

 among the foremost promoters of a branch of 

 science. Of Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley, in their 

 connexion with the sciences of life contingencies 

 and chemistry, there is no occasion to speak: their 

 results are well known, and their biographies are 

 sufficiently accessible. The third is Thomas Bayes, 

 minister at Tunbridge Wells, where he died in 

 1761. Whiston belongs to an older period, though 

 he must have been long the contemporary of 

 Bayes : and so does Humphrey Ditton. It might 

 be made a query which wrote most, Whiston or 

 Priestley. I see Priestley's writings set down as 

 making seventy octavo volumes ; and the Whis- 

 ton list was too long for the Biographia Britan- 

 nica ! Could any good references be given for 

 complete lists of the writings of both ? 



To return to Bayes. I want to find out more 

 about him : and therefore state all I know. He 

 first turns up, in 173C, as one of the writers in the 



