Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
to order it.
By one of the stipulations of the hollow Peace of Amiens, the colony of the Cape of Good Hope was restored by Great Britain to the Batavian Republic, which immediately appointed Mr. J. A. de Mist its Commissary-General, and despatched him to receive the ceded territory from the hands of the English, to instal the new Governor, General J. W. Janssens, into his high office, and to reorganise the constitution of the colony.
Having fulfilled these duties, Mr. De Mist determined to make a tour of inspection, and he accordingly travelled on horseback nearly 4500 English miles through the interior. Among his suite was a Dr. Lichtenstein, the physician and savant of the party, who afterwards published an account of the expedition.
The extract that I am about to make from his work may at first sight appear unnecessarily long; but I wish the "courteous reader" to bear in mind that I do not cite it for the sake of parading a long rambling comment on five short words of Aristophanes, but for that of bringing forward additional evidence, to prove that a dry roll may occasionally be of as much service in recruiting the strength and spirits of that noble animal, the horse, when jaded by violent exertion or long-protracted toil, as our English nostrums, a warm mash or a bottle of water. Dr. Lichtenstein says,—
"Our road led us soon again over the Vogel river and here we were obliged to supply ourselves with water for the whole day, since not a drop was to be met with again till the Melk river, a distance of ten hours [ = 50 English miles]. When we had filled our vessels, and our cattle had drunk plentifully, we proceeded on our way.
"It is difficult for an European to form an idea of the hardships that are to be encountered in a journey over such a dry plain at the hottest season of the year. All vegetation seems utterly destroyed; not a blade of grass, not a green leaf, is anywhere to be seen; and the soil, a stiff loam, reflects back the heat of the sun with redoubled force; a man may congratulate himself that, being on horseback, he is raised some feet above it. Nor is any rest from these fatigues to be thought of, since to stop where there is neither shade, water, or grass, would be only to increase the evil, rather than to diminish it.
"Yet the African horses are so well accustomed to hardships, although they have in fact much less innate strength than the European, that it is incredible what a length of way they will go, in the most intense heat, without either food or drink. It is, however, customary for the riders to dismount at intervals, when the saddles are taken off, and the animals are suffered to roll upon the ground and stretch out their limbs for a short time. This they do with evident delight, and after they have well rolled, stretched, and shaken themselves, they rise up and go on as much refreshed as if they had had food and drink given them. On arriving at a farm, the invitation of the host, who comes immediately to the door, is, 'Get off, Sir, and let him roll.' A slave then appears, takes the horse, and leads him backwards and forwards for a few minutes, to recover his breath, and he is then unsaddled and left to roll.
"These rollings were then the only refreshment we could offer our horses, and both they and their riders were, when towards evening they arrived at the Melk river, exceedingly exhausted."—Travels in Southern Africa in the Years 1803-1806. By Henry Lichtenstein, Doctor in Medicine and Philosophy, &c. &c. Translated from the original German by Anne Plumptre: London, Henry Colburn, 1812; vol. i. chap. xxv.
Temple.
DREAM TESTIMONY
On Saturday the 30th of July, 1853, the dead body of a young woman was discovered in a field at Littleport, in the Isle of Ely. The body has not yet been identified, and there can be little doubt that the young woman was murdered. At the adjourned inquest, held on the 29th of August, before Mr. William Marshall, one of the coroners for the isle, the following extraordinary evidence was given:
"James Jessop, an elderly, respectable-looking labourer, with a face of the most perfect stolidity, and who possessed a most curiously-shaped skull, broad and flat at the top, and projecting greatly on each side over the ears, deposed: 'I live about a furlong and a half from where the body was found. I have seen the body of the deceased. I had never seen her before her death. On the night of Friday, the 29th of July, I dreamt three successive times that I heard the cry of murder issuing from near the bottom of a close called Little Ditchment Close (the place where the body was found). The first time I dreamt I heard the cry it woke me. I fell asleep again, and dreamt the same again. I then woke again, and told my wife. I could not rest; but I dreamt it again after that. I got up between four and five o'clock, but I did not go down to the close, the wheat and barley in which have since been cut. I dreamt once, about twenty years ago, that I saw a woman hanging in a barn, and on passing the next morning the barn which appeared to me in my dream I entered, and did find a woman there hanging, and cut her down just in time to save her life. I never told my wife I heard any cries of murder, but I have mentioned it to several persons since. I saw the body on the Saturday it was found. I did not mention my dream to any one till a day or two after that. I saw the field distinctly in my dream and the trees thereon, but I saw no person in it. On the night of the murder the wind lay from that spot to my house.'
"Rhoda Jessop, wife of the last witness, stated that her husband related his dreams to her on the evening of the day the body was found."
In Mr. John Hill Burton's Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland, is a chapter entitled "Spectral and Dream Testimony," to which the above evidence will be a curious addition.
Cambridge.
SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE
"Priam's six-gated city," &c.—In the prologue to Troilus and Cressida occurs—
" . . . Priam's six-gated city,
Dardan and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan,
And Antenorides, with massy staples,
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts."
What struck me here was the omission of the only gate of Troy really known to fame, the Scæan, which looked on the tomb of the founder Laomedon; before which stood Hector, "full and fixed," awaiting the fatal onslaught of Achilles; where Achilles, in turn, received his death-wound from the shaft of Paris; and through which, finally, the wooden horse was triumphantly conveyed into the doomed city.
The six names are shown to be taken by Shakspeare in part from Caxton, and in part from Lydgate: and in Knight's edition we are told that they are "pure inventions of the middle age of romance-writers."
Let us examine this assertion. The names are to be found pretty nearly as above, but with one important difference, in Dares' History of the Trojan War. My authority is Ruæus, the Delphine editor of Virgil (see his note at Æn. II. 612.). Now Dares (perhaps the oldest of the profane writers whom we know) was a Phrygian, who took part in the Trojan war, and wrote its history in Greek: and the Greek original was still extant in the time of Ælian, from A.D. 80 to 140. Of this, now lost, a Latin translation still survives, by some attributed to Cornelius Nepos, and by some regarded as spurious; but, either way, its date must be long antecedent to "the middle age of romance-writers." It was doubtless from this Latin history that Caxton or Lydgate, or both, derived directly or indirectly the names they adopted; and yet it is to be noted that they give respectively the names of Chetas and Cetheas to one of their gates, and omit the well-known Scæan, which Dares expressly mentions; for I presume that no principle of philology will sanction the identification of Scæan with either of the terms used by these two writers.
I have trespassed somewhat on your space, but let me hope the subject may be farther elucidated. The points I wish to put forward are, Shakspeare's omission of the Scæan gate, and the proposition by Knight (for a proposition it is, though in a participular form), that these six names are "pure inventions of the middle age of romance-writers."
Hong Kong.
On the Word "delighted" in "Measure for Measure," &c. (Vol. viii., p. 241.).—Inasmuch as the controversy respecting this word seems to be over, and no one of the critics and commentators on Shakspeare's text appears to have the slightest