n s. v. j A y. is, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
33
An identical legend has been current in
connexion with the crypt, which is now all
that is left, of the church of St. Wilfrid at
Hexham (built A.D. 674-8), where a hole
in the wail similar in character to that at
Ripon exists. Both crypts are of one
period, of similar design, and are said to
resemble the confessio found under early
churches in Rome and elsewhere. These
subterranean chambers have been apparently
constructed beneath the high altars of the
churches, the main feature of which was
a sacrarium. The door to this was entered
from a private stairway used only by the
brethren in charge. The worshippers de-
scended by a separate staircase leading to
a small ante-chapel that was divided from
the chapel itself by a solid wall. In the
centre of this was an orifice, or squint,
piercing the otherwise blank wall, command-
ing a view of the interior and of its sacred
relics. As the worshippers passed this in
turn their feeling of veneration would be
heightened by the surrounding mystery of
the situation and the play of light upon the
holy relics seen through the hole in the wall
in sudden revelation. That the orifice in-
tended for such a solemn purpose was ever
used for the baser object of the test indicated
by the " needle eye " is not only improbable,
but an examination of the squint itself will
show the absurdity involved in such an
attribution. R. OLIVER HESLOP.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The passage of which J. T. F. is in search is by Fuller, as stated in Walbran's ' Ripon Guide.' See ' The History of the Worthies of England,' ' York-shire,' ' Writers,' under ' Peter of Rippon,' ed. 1811, vol. ii. p. 512. EDWARD BENSLY.
SPENSER AND DANTE (11 S. iv. 447, 515). It is possible that MR. BRESLAR has not consulted Dr. Paget Toynbee's ' Dante in English Literature.' The book aims at tracing the influence of Dante upon English writers from Chaucer to Gary. In the preface we find the following statistics :
(i The number of authors represented is between five and six hundred, viz., some 50 for the four- teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, nearly 60 for the seventeenth, about 150 for the eighteenth, and the remainder for the first forty- four years of the nineteenth."
An examination of the text shows that not all the men of letters from whom citations are given made " definite allusion " to Dante, but that some of them (among whom is Spenser) are included on the basis of a patent influence at his hands. Moreover,
in some cases he is merely spoken of as
" among the famous men of Florence," and
John Evelyn is admitted to the company of
those that reveal his influence on the ground
of having mentioned in the ' Diary ' the
statue of Dante at Poggio Imperiale. The
lists are nevertheless of interest, and show
that at no time in the history of English
literature after the late fourteenth century
were allusions to Dante what one could,
from a quantitative standard, call " ex-
tremely limited."
Among the authors before the seventeenth century who mention Dante by name are Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Barclay, Henry Parker (Lord Morley), John Bale, William Thomas, William Barker, Thomas Cooper, John Jewel, Thomas Churchyard, John Foxe, Robert Peterson, Gabriel Harvey, Sir Philip Sidney, Lawrence Humphrey, Robert Greene, George Whetstone, Bartholomew Young, George Puttenham, Sir John Harington, John Florio, Abraham Flaunce, Thomas Bedingfield, William Covell, Robert Tofte, Michael Drayton, and Francis Meres.
Among those in the seventeenth century are Ben Jonson, Robert Burton, William Burton, John Ford, John Milton, Thomas Heywood, Sir William D'Avenant, Sir Thomas Browne, Anthony Wood, Edward Phillips, and John Dryden.
IDA LANGDON.
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
LATIN ACCENTUATION (11 S. iv.. 448). It is not easy to return a brief answer to MR. W. BURD'S questions. The system of the word-accent in Latin has not been the same at all periods of the language, and there is a difficulty in determining when certain changes took place, what the exact nattire of these changes was, and to what causes they were due. A study of the following will be helpful :
Prof. W. M. Lindsay's ' Latin Language ' (Clarendon Press, 1894), chap, iii., 'Ac- centuation,' pp. 148-217 ; see especially pp. 163-5, 10, ' Exceptions to the Paen- ultima Law,' and 11, 'Vulgar-Latin Ac- centuation.'
The article ' Latin Language,' by the late Prof. A. S. Wilkins and Prof. R. Seymour Conway, in the eleventh edition of 'The Ency. Brit.,' especially pp. 246, 247.
See also Brugmann and Delbriick, ' Grund- riss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermaniscnen Sprachen,' vol. i., 2nd ed., Strassburg, 1897, part i. p. 232, Anmerkung ; an article by A. Hornung in the Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, vii. 572, and p. 547 sq. in vol. xiv., in a review by Fritz Neumann
