Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/50

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44


NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. iv. JULY 15, ion.


The occurrence of this prince's name twice in Middlesex, sc. in " Isleworth " and " Islington " ; the apparent omission of that county from the ' Tribal Hidage ' ; the probability of the correctness of the emendation of gifla to " Gisla " ; and the propinquity of 16, gifla, and 17, hicca, in the list, would seem to justify the location I have proposed.

ALFRED ANSCOMBE.

30, Albany Koad, Stroud Green, N.

[MR. ANSCOMBE'S paper was in the Editor's hands some time before MR. BROWKBILL'S note on ' The Burghal Hidage,' anie, p. 2, was printed.]


ROBERT BURTON'S LIBRARY. At 11 S. i. 325 I drew attention to the appearance in a second-hand catalogue of a book (John Pits' s ' Relationes ') that had formerly been in Robert Burton's possession. Prof. Moore Smith has pointed out to me that in Mr. James Tregaskis's " Caxton Head" Cata- logue 705, dated 12 June, 1911, there is another book that once belonged to Burton.

The item in question consists of two volumes bound together apparently by an early sixteenth - century Cambridge binder. The first is a copy of Erasmus's ' Moriae Encomium ' with Gerhard Lister's notes, Erasmus's epistle to Martin Dorp, Seneca's ' Ludus de Morte Claudii Caesaris ' with Beatus Rhenanus's Scholia, and John Free's Latin translation of Synesius's ' Praise of Baldness,' this also with Beatus Rhenanus's Scholia. The volume was printed by John Froben at Basel in 1515. Bound up with this are Erasmus's ' De Duplici Copia Rerum ac Verborum,' ' De Ratione Studii & Instituendi Pueros,' and

  • De Puero lesu Concio,' printed by Ascen-

sius (Josse Bade) at Paris, 1512.

According to the account given in the catalogue, the book contains the autograph signatures of Robert Burton (2 Jan., 1595) and his elder brother William (1593). There are said to be numerous interlinear and marginal notes, " presumably by Robert Burton." I regret that I have had no opportunity of examining the book.

Erasmus's ' Moriae Encomium ' was printed several times in the same volume with the Latin version of Synesius's <&a\d K pas ty K <*>/uov. Some time ago I had conjectured that Burton used one of these editions. See, for example, i. 1, 3, 2 of ' The Anatomy of Melancholy,' where a reference to Syne- sius, " inlaud. calvit.,"is found between two quotations from ' The Praise of Folly.'


Joseph Hall mentions the two works to- gether, ' Satires,' VI. i. 159,

Folly itselfe, and baldnes may be praised, where his editors indulge in some very strange statements.

With regard to the ' Commentarii ' on ' Moriae Encomium ' published under Lister's name, but frequently attributed to Erasmus, Mr. P. S. Allen has recently shown in his edition of Erasmus's ' Epis- tolse,' vol. ii. p. 407, that the question of authorship is solved by Erasmus's own state- ment in an unpublished letter to Bucer, from which it appears that, in consequence of Lister's dilatoriness, Erasmus had been compelled to supply a great part of the notes himself, but had generously allowed Lister to take the full credit.

EDWARD BENSLY.

University College, Aberystwyth.

" J'Y suis, J'Y RESTE." This well-known phrase is usually attributed to Marshal MacMahon in the' trenches before the Malakoff, e.g., in ' Dictionary of Quotations (French),' by T. B. Harbottle and Col. P. H. Dalbiac (1908), p. 75, and ' Gefliigelte Worte,' ed. 20 (1900), p. 519. A writer, however, in The Athenceum of 1 July, reviewing the English translation ' Men and Things of my Time,' by the Marquis de Castellane, says that the Marquis used the phrase in his speech to the National Assembly on 18 November, 1873, and " now asserts that it was invented by him and his wife during the preparation of his speech. This is a good story, and bears some mark of probability, as serious historians of the Third Republic have quoted M. de Castellane's speech as the principal corroboration of the legend. Yet we are not entirely convinced that the confessed hoaxer of the National Assembly is not now hoaxing his readers."

In oratory a man is no more upon oath than in lapidary inscriptions, to quote a Johnsonian comparison. The careful in- quirer would perhaps ascertain whether MacMahon had that gift for incisive brevity which belonged to some great men of action ; otherwise one might be justified in concluding that, as usual, some professional maker of dicta gave a saying or the germ of a saying that quality which makes it " fly lively o'er the lips of men."

When once the idea of a hoax is admitted, decision becomes much more difficult.

NEL MEZZO.

" MAKE A LONG ARM." It could not be expected that the ' N.E.D.,' to which we are all profoundly indebted, should in every case give the earliest example of a phrase.