368 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2' d S. IX. May 12. '60. 



ventilated by some one writing under the nom-de- 

 guerre of the Hebrew letter Lamed, in p. 395. of 

 the British Magazine for the last half of 1842. It 

 will perhaps be satisfactory to your readers, con- 

 sidering the importance of the subject, especially 

 in these days of parliamentary motions for revi- 

 sion of the Liturgy, &c, if I transcribe the greater 

 part of the letter. 



" I suspect the versicles — 11. 'The Father, of an in- 

 finite majesty;' 12. 'Thine honourable, true, and only 

 Son;' 13. 'Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter,' — 

 to be an interpolation, occasioned by the fraud or in- 

 judicious zeal of some firm believer in the doctrine of 

 the Trinity. They appear out of place. The hymn is 

 addressed to our Lord Christ, not, as our English Trans- 

 lation would at first mislead us to suppose, to God the 

 Father. The first versicle in the Latin is ' Te Deum (not 

 Dens') laudamus ; te Dominum confitemur' ; which should 

 have been translated, ' We praise Thee as God, we 

 acknowledge Thee to be Lord,' (Phil. ii. 11.) 2. 'Te 

 reternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur.' ' The Father 

 everlasting' is applied to Christ, Isa. ix. 6., *T1T*IIX 

 The ' Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominu3 Deus Sabaoth,' 

 is addressed to Christ. (See Isa. vi. 3., compared with 

 John xii. 41.) All the versicles from 1 — 10., and from 

 14. ad fin., are applicable to our Lord, and the tenour of 

 the hymn appears to me to be broken and disjointed by 

 the interposition of versicles 11 — 13. 



" Again, the hymn, according to the venerable testi- 

 mony of antiquity, is amcebcean : St. Ambrose (or with us 

 the minister) led the first verse ; St. Augustin (or with 

 us the congregation) made the response. Now it will be 

 found, that, if these three versicles be retained, no re- 

 sponse will be given to the last ; if they are omitted, the 

 alternation will be regular. There was no need, on this 

 occasion, for the profession of faith in the Holy Trinity ; it 

 was already declared in the form of baptism by St. Am- 

 brose (Matt, xxviii. 19.), and avowed by St. Augustin 

 at his immersion in the 'laver of regeneration.' See 

 Tertul. adv. Praxean and De Corona." 



To these arguments I may add another, which 

 has just suggested itself to me, viz. that, suppos- 

 ing the hymn addressed, not to God the Father, 

 but to the Holy Trinity, the words ceternum Pa- 

 trem are not only inapplicable, but would be stu- 

 diously avoided. The rubric in our own Liturgy 

 particularly directs the words " Holy Father" to 

 be omitted before the proper preface for Trinity 

 Sunday. I cannot remember from what source I 

 derived the comparison with the hymn stated by 

 Pliny to have been sung by the early Christians, 

 secam invicem Christo quasi Deo. 



Me. Boys fairly enough reduces Lamed 's argu- 

 ment from the amabaan nature of the hymn from 

 a categorical to a hypothetical one ; but neither 

 he nor Mr. Jebb offer the slightest reply to the 

 main points of his letter, which are: (1.) That 

 Te Deum laudamus = We praise Thee, as God 

 (not O God) ; which is not good sense as applied 

 either to the Father or the Holy Trinity, whereas 

 it is good sense as applied to Christ. (2.) That 

 ejecting the three offending versicles, the re- 

 mainder becomes a hymn to Christ as God of the 

 nature above mentioned. Lamed's impression of 



the inappropriateness of these three versicles in 

 their present place appears fully as much entitled 

 to regard as Mr. Jebb's conviction of their abso- 

 lute necessity. If any interpolation has taken 

 place, it must have taken place at a time long an- 

 tecedent to the date of any existing MSS., so that 

 we are entirely left to the question of internal 

 evidence upon the matter. And it is not unrea- 

 sonable to suppose, that the date usually assigned 

 for the composition of the hymn was in reality 

 only that of its interpolation. With the well- 

 known forgery of the three heavenly witnesses in 

 1 John v. 7. before our eyes, we surely cannot be 

 blamed for entertaining such a suspicion. 



I confess myself entirely unable to answer the 

 arguments of Lamed, and shall only be too happy 

 to find them satisfactorily answered by Mr. Boys, 

 Mr. Jebb, or any other of your numerous learned 

 correspondents. A. H. W. 



MALONIANA. 



(2 nd S. ix. 324.) 



Your correspondent E. C. B., in proof " how 

 profoundly ignorant Malone must have been," 

 says that he speaks of Pope as patronising Lord 

 Mansfield, whereas, " at the time mentioned," 

 Lord Mansfield " was in the highest position in 

 the House of Commons, the antagonist of Lord 

 Chatham." It is loose and objectionable to speak 

 of Lord Mansfield and Lord Chatham as members 

 of the House of Commons ; the more especially 

 as the one was not created a peer for ten or 

 twelve years after Pope's death, nor the other for 

 more than twenty. I will, however, confine my- 

 self to facts. Mr. Murray, afterwards Lord 

 Mansfield, first took his seat in the House of 

 Commons in March, 1743, and, according to the 

 Parliamentary History, made his first speech there 

 in Dec. 1743, about five months before Pope died. 

 Pope's Epistle to " dear Murray " was published 

 in 1737. 



I have thought it right to correct your cor- 

 respondent in this instance, although I agree with 

 him as to the worthlessness, or worse, of what are 

 called the Maloniana in Sir James Prior's Life of 

 Malone, which ought never to have been pub- 

 lished, and never would have been by Malone. 

 No doubt Malone wrote down any anecdote as he 

 heard it, without time for consideration ; but 

 publication is a deliberate act for which he would 

 have considered himself responsible ; and as many 

 of the anecdotes and speculations found in Sir 

 James Prior's volume were published by Malone, 

 it is fair to assume that he left the others un- 

 published, because he found them, as in truth 

 they are, worthless, and in many instances ab- 

 surd. Malone, therefore, is not responsible, but 

 his biographer. 



