2* d S. IX. Feb. 18. 'CO.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



117 



quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia," — that was 

 an apt quotation, in so much as it confirmed his 

 argument by the testimony of one who was long 

 conversant with public affairs as a statesman. 

 Lord Clarendon's K-nj^d is oei selected from Thu- 

 cydides as the motto of his History was apt, and 

 somewhat arrogant, but time has sanctioned it. 

 Very often quotations are, not arguments, but 

 illustrations, or they point out direct likenesses or 

 differences. A late tourist, Mr. C. Weld, com- 

 pares the chesnuts of the Limousin with those in 

 Virgil's Eclogue : — 



" Sunt nobis mitia poma, 

 Castanese molles " — 

 and contrasts the tuneful Cicala of the neighbour- 

 hood of Arcachon with the Cicada of the same 



poet : — ■ 



" Et cantu querula rumpent arbusta cicadse." 



Apt quotations might be produced on a vast 

 variety of subjects, their aptness consisting in 

 this, that the words are applied in the same 

 sense in which they were first employed. But 

 the excellence of a witty quotation is exactly the 

 reverse : the secondary sense differs from the 

 first ; and the ingenuity is greater in proportion 

 as the two senses are more remote. It is the 

 essential property of wit to discover points of 

 likeness in things apparently dissimilar. 



I do not doubt that many of the readers of "N. 

 & Q., whose scholarship is more fresh than mine, 

 and their range of reading wider, could, if they 

 were so disposed, enlarge a collection of which the 

 following sentences are specimens : — 



1. Dr. Samuel Parr shall have the first place. 

 Ek Aios a.pxun«T8u. 



In 1822 I dined with him at Hatton : the con- 

 versation turned on many of the great men of his 

 day ; and of Edmund Burke he said, " I have 

 heard him on many subjects, political and reli- 

 gious, but never did he appear to me greater than 

 on one occasion when he talked about Free-Ma- 

 sonry." One of the company asked if he spoke in 

 favour of the fraternity or against them. " Sir," 

 said Parr, " he conversed wisely and eloquently 

 on both sides :" — 



" Tv8«i£t)»> 6' ovk ac Yyoojs iror^potct neTetrj." — II. c. 85. 



2. The same " old man eloquent " told me also 

 the following story. In his time there was at 

 Cambridge a barber who, by his skill and civility, 

 became a favourite with the young men ; so they 

 presented him with a silver bowl bearing this in- 

 scription : — 



" Radit iter liquidum." — Virgil. 



3. As Burke has been introduced as the subject 

 of one witty quotation, he shall appear as the 

 author of another. After a contested election the 

 successful candidate was chaired by his political 

 friends amidst the acclamations of the multitude. 

 Iknke's attention was drawn to the scene. I see 

 him ; he said, — 



" Xumerisque fertur 

 Lege solutis." — Horace, Ode 4. 2. 11. 



4. The following story is perhaps from Athe- 

 naeus. I heard it from Richard Kidd, a scholar 

 of eminence in his day. At Athens a carpenter 

 and a potter quarrelled about a fair damsel, and 

 as each of the suitors threatened to carry her off, 

 the father brought the case before the magistrate. 

 He listened to the parties, and then said to the 

 carpenter, — 



" M^re trii tovS', aya$6s nep cu>v, a7roai'peo Kovprjv" 



And to the potter, — 



" M>JTe av IlTjAeiST)."— 77. a. 277. 



5. Wit is sometimes pathetic, not always jocose 

 When Julian, the nephew of Constantine the. 



Great, was invested with the purple, he repeated 

 to himself the following line fiom his favourite 

 Homer, at once descriptive of his ftais and pro- 

 phetic of his fate : — 



"*EAAoj3€ irop<f>upeos Bdiaros Kal p.o7pa Kparaiij." — II. e. 63. 



(See Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 188.) 



6. In the years 1808 and 1809 the Edinburgh 

 Tleview contained two very severe criticisms on the 

 educational system pursued at the University of 

 Oxford. A reply was published by Copleston 

 (late Bishop of Llandaff), an answer to that reply 

 by the reviewers in their April number, 1810, and 

 the whole controversy was ably discussed by the 

 Rev. John Davison, then Fellow of Oriel College, 

 Oxford, in the Quarterly Revieiu for August, 1810. 

 In these several publications may be found speci- 

 mens of all the weapons of literary warfare, lawful 

 and unlawful, from the most polished satire which 

 "makes the dangerous passes as it smiles" down 

 to vulgar personal abuse. We are concerned only 

 with the witty quotations introduced by the de- 

 fendant, the aggressor, and the judge : — 



Defendant. " 'A*EYAEI Si Ttpot a<cp.oii XAA- 

 KEYE yXuo-orai'." — Pindar. 



Aggressor. '• Tale tuum nobis carmen, divine Poeta, 

 Quale sopor." — Virgil. 



Judge. In order to appreciate the third quota- 

 tion (the happiest of all in my judgment) one 

 must recollect that the articles in the Edinburgh 

 Review were supposed (by some persons) to have 

 been the joint production of Playfair, Payne 

 Knight, and Sydney Smith. Be this as it may ; 

 at all events the number of the aggressors is 

 assumed by the Quarterly reviewer to be th-ee: his 

 quotation is from Lucretius (Lib. v. 94.) : — 



" Horum naturam triplicem, tria corpora, Memmi, 

 Trcs species tara dissimiiee, tria talia texta, 

 Una dies dedit* exitio." 



7. It is likely that many classical witticisms might 

 be found in the writings of Sydney Smith, the 

 greatest humorist of modern times. 1 give one 



* The word is "dabit" iu Lucretius. 



