358
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9 th S. II. OCT. 29, '98.
1715/16 ! Aged 89 years. | For this departed soul |
& all y e rest | that Christ hath purchased | They
shall be Bless'ed.
F. J. P.
AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (8 th S. i. 329 ; vii. 209, 339).
The hand that rocks the cradle, &c. I enclose a cutting from the Church Family News- paper (5 Feb., 1897), which I think answers this query :
" The origin of the well-known phrase, 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,' has at last been discovered. It has long defied research ; but a Miss Roberts, writing to an American journal, tells how many years ago John Brougham, Lester Wallack, Artemus Ward, and others used to meet, after the play, at Windhurst's in Park Row. One night the question, ' What rules the world ? ' arose, and various opinions were expressed. William Ross Wallace, who was present, retired before long, and some time later called Thomas J. Leigh from the room, and handed to him a poem which he had just written. Mr. Leigh read it aloud to the company, and Mr. Brougham made a happy little speech of acknowledgment. The thing was entitled ' What Rules the World ? ' and the first stanza ran :
They say that man is mighty, He governs land and sea,
He wields a mighty sceptre O'er lesser powers that be ;
But a mightier power and stronger Man from his throne has hurled,
And the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world. Miss Roberts obtained these facts from Mr. Leigh three years ago. J." G. H. J.
(9 th 8. ii. 228.)
A plant, a leaf, a blossom, but contains A folio volume. We may read, and read, And read again, and still find something new, Something to please, and something to instruct, E'en in the noisome weed,
is from the Rev. James Hurdis, D.D., 'The Village Curate' (ed. 1810), p. 33. I think I saw it answered in'N.&Q.' G.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
A Dictionary of Proper Names, <fec., in the Work.' of Dante. By Paget Toynbee, M.A. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) THAT yeoman's service is being rendered by English scholarship to the study of Dante is made abund- antly evident by a reference to our columns. No long time ago (see 8 th S. vi. 479) we congratulated our readers on the appearance of an edition of the complete works of Dante issued from the Claren don Press, in a shape equally handsome, accurate, and convenient, under the care of Dr. Moore. This was but one of many works equally serviceable am admirable we owe to the Clarendon Press. To thai edition, the most useful we know, Mr. Pagei Toynbee appended a full index of proper names anc notabilia. This index forms the basis of the ex tended and much more ambitious and importan work he now issues. Not the first effort is it to
iupply, in the convenient form of a dictionary, the
niormation for want of which the student of Dante
s frequently at fault. Commentaries upon Dante
jonstitute a literature in themselves, as the student,
despairing of mastering a fraction, is but too well
aware. The idea of the present work was found,
VIr. Toynbee tells us, in the ' Vocabolario Dantesco ;
ou, Dictionnaire Critique et Raisonn^ de la Divine
Com^die de Dante Alighieri ' of L. G. Blanc, pub-
ished at Leipzig in 1852. This work, translated
seven years later into Italian, has now run through
ive editions. It is confined, however, to the
Divina Commedia,' and, as it includes the voca-
Diilary of the poems, gives but very brief articles on
- he proper names. Other publications, some of
them of a sufficiently ambitious nature one, indeed, extending to seven volumes followed. None of these fulfils entirely the purposes for which Mr. Toynbee's dictionary is intended, and none cer- tainly supplies the requisite information in a form so commodious. An ' Encyclopaedia Dantesca,' by Dr. G. A. Scartazzini, is in progress, but has as yet reached but half way through the alphabet.
The edition of Dante which the student who con- sults the ' Dictionary ' is supposed to use is that edited by Dr. Moore, and mentioned above, which com- prises the whole of the works, in Italian and Latin, in poetry and in prose. As this edition is cheap as well as excellent, the man who is bold enough to own books cannot do better than put it on his shelves by the side of the ' Dictionary,' which, how- ever, it does not match in size. (Might it not be convenient to publish an edition of the works of dimensions similar to those of the ' Dictionary ' ?) So far as regards the ' Divine Comedy,' though the Oxford 'Dante' may be the best, any edition will serve, as we have tested by using the ' Dictionary ' with Dayman's 'Danfce,' 1865, which, though not, perhaps, quite up to date in scholarship, and, we fancy, not very easily accessible, has at least the advantage, for the beginner, of having on opposite pages the Italian text and a translation into terza rima which is deficient neither in closeness nor in happiness. To give an instance. Under the word 'Gigante' we are referred to ' Purgatorio,' xxxii. 152, and under ' Feroce drudo' to 1. 155 of the same canto. The reference is easy to Dayman, whose note to the passages conforms to some extent with that of Mr. Toynbee. Under ' Arrigo ' (the fourth of the name), which, of course, conies early in the book, we find ample information on a subject of constant interest and unending contro- versy among scholars. Prince Henry of England, second son of Henry II., is spoken of, owing to the fact that he was twice crowned in his father's life- time, as the young king (il re giovane). The majority of MSS. and early editions read "re Giovanni," a natural slip on the part of half-informed scribes. As will be expected by those familiar with Dr. Moore's criticism on the point, Mr. Toynbee gives forth no uncertain utterance, saying that Giovanni is " almost certainly the result of a copyist's error." There are, apart from ' Arrigo d' Inghilterra ' and 'Arrigo Manardi,' eight entries under ' Arrigo.' The student who seeks to appraise the information supplied in the ' Dictionary ' cannot do better than refer to these, which occupy nine closely printed columns. A good share of the work is naturally taken up with classical names, as Ovid (who appears under ' Ovidius,' ' Ovidio,' and ' Ovidio Maggiore'), Cicero, Calliope, Lachesis, &c. Under words such as ' Beatitudine,' ' Quadrivio,' ' Lus-
