106
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. AUG. 10, 1907.
- Spenser and Virgil. All the three English
poets may have thought of Dido's lines in the ' ^Eneid ' :
Duris genuit te cautibus horrens Caucasus, Hyrcanseque admorunt ubera tigres. Tliereto the villaine xised craft in fight : For ever, when the squire his javelin shook, He held the lady forth before him right, And with her body, as a buckler, broke The puissance of his intended stroke.
Book IV. canto vii. stanza 26. Walter Scott copied this, in his novel of ' The Pirate,' when he made Bunce use Brenda as a buckler against Mordaunt.
In ' The Rape of the Lock ' is the couplet : Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair. Pope is immediately indebted to Dryden, as has been pointed out : She knows her man, and, when you rant and swear, Can draw you to her with a single hair.
' Translation of Persius.'
But the thought is not in Persius. Dryden was a very free translator. It has not been shown, I think, how much these poets are indebted to Spenser :
-Nought under heaven so strongly doth allure The sence of man, and all his minde possesses As beauty's lovely baite, that doth procure Great warriours oft their rigour to represse, And mighty hands forget their manlinesse ; Drawne with the powre of an heart-robbing eye, And wrapt in fetters of a golden tresse.
Book V. canto viii. stanza 1.
The real origin of this poetry seems to be a proverb, " Beauty draws more than oxen," which is in the collection of George Herbert, called ' Jacula Prudentum.' Looke ! how the crowne, which Ariadne wore Upon her yvory forehead, that same day That Theseus her unto his bridale bore, When the bold Centaurs made that bloudy fray With the fierce Lapithes, which did them dismay.
Book VI. canto x. stanza 13. Ariadne was not at the feast of the Lapithse. The marriage of Pirithoiis was then cele- brated, not that of Theseus.
The combat with the captain of the bri- gands, slain in defence of Pastorella, whilst she falls covered with carcases, in canto ii. of Book VI., is very like a scene in ' Candide.' But probably Voltaire knew nothing of .Spenser. The story of Calidore and Pasto- xella in the sixth book is pleasing. We should like to hear that Calidore went back to Pastorella. But Spenser has left much unfinished which he intended to resume.
E. YABDLEY.
CAPE TOWN CEMETERY. The Roman
Catholic Bishop of St. Mary's, Cape Town,
is proceeding to the appropriation of the
disused cemetery in Somerset Road, in
accordance with the Act of 1906. The
Cape Times of 1 July contains the adver-
tisement of this. I have thought that the
subject may be of interest to the descend-
ants of persons deceased in Cape Town
during last century.
Extensive removals of memorial stones, tombs, and remains are in course of execu- tion and in contemplation, not only in the Roman Catholic cemetery, but also in two or three others adjacent, containing memo- rials of many naval and military officers, gentlemen of the Civil Service, &c. All the tombs, &c. , not removed by persons interested in them will, it is stated, be removed by the Government, or by the religious bodies to whom they belong. HENRY GEARING.
Atlas Works, Cape Town.
KNOYDART : ITS PRONUNCIATION. The tourist often wonders why Knoydart in Inverness is locally pronounced " Crojarst." This name is interesting as illustrating two important rules of Gaelic orthoepy. One is that initial en or kn is sounded like cr or kr. The other is that final rt becomes rst. The latter change originated, no doubt, in the introduction of a kind of glide between the r and the t, which later developed into a sibilant. Another example of it is the term port, applied to a bagpipe tune. In ' The Century Dictionary ' this is marked as if pronounced like port wine, which may do very well for English or Scots, but the Gaelic speaker always calls it porst.
JAS. PLATT, Jun.
HTJME AND ROTJSSEATJ. In Mrs. F. Mac- donald's ' Jean Jacques Rousseau : a New Study in Criticism ' (1906), the question as to Hume's conduct to Rousseau is discussed at great length. One point is whether Hume had any share in Horace Walpole's " Letter of the King of Prussia " ; and the following passage is quoted (at p. 171 of vol. ii.) as from a letter of Hume to the Marquise de Brabantane :
"Tell Madame de Boufflers that the only pleasantry I permitted myself in connection with the pretended letter of the King of Prussia was made by me at the dinner-table of Lord Ossory."
In the ' Private Correspondence of David Hume with Several Distinguished P ersons, between the Years 1761 and 1776 ' (4to, London, 1820), the passage is given as fol- lows :
" Please tell Madame de Boufflers that I received her letter the day after I wrote mine. Assure her that Horace Walpole's letter was not founded on any pleasantry of mine : the only pleasantry in that
