is a much admired line in Campbell's _Gertrude of Wyoming_—but the
identical line is to be found in the poems of the American Freneau.
* * * * *
Corneille's celebrated _Moi_ of Medea is borrowed from Seneca. Racine,
in Phœdra, has stolen nearly the whole scene of the declaration of
love from the same puerile writer.
* * * * *
The peculiar zodiac of the comets is comprised in these verses of
Cassini—
Antinous, Pegasusque, Andromeda, Taurus, Orion,
Procyon, atque Hydrus, Centaurus, Scorpius, Arcus.
* * * * *
Speaking of the usual representation of the banquet-scene in Macbeth,
Von Raumer, the German historian, mentions a shadowy figure thrown by
optical means into the chair of Banquo, and producing intense effect
upon the audience. Enslen, a German optician, conceived this idea, and
accomplished it without difficulty.
* * * * *
A religious hubbub, such as the world has seldom seen, was excited,
during the reign of Frederic II, by the _imagined_ virulence of a book
entitled “The Three Impostors.” It was attributed to Pierre des
Vignes, chancellor of the king, who was accused by the Pope of having
treated the religions of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet as political
fables. The work in question, however, which was squabbled about,
abused, defended, and familiarly _quoted_ by all parties, is well
proved never to have existed.
* * * * *
The word Τυχη, or Fortune, does not appear once in the whole Iliad.
* * * * *
The “Lamentations” of Jeremiah are written, with the exception of the
last chapter, in acrostic verse: that is to say, every line or couplet
begins, in alphabetical order, with some letter in the Hebrew
alphabet. In the third chapter each letter is repeated three times
successively.
* * * * *
The fullest account of the Amazons is to be found in Diodorus Siculus.
* * * * *
Theophrastus, in his botanical works, anticipated the {575} sexual
system of Linnæus. Philolaus of Crotona maintained that comets
appeared after a certain revolution—and Æcetes contended for the
existence of what is now called the new world. Pulci, “the sire of the
half-serious rhyme,” has a passage expressly alluding to a western
continent. Dante, two centuries before, has the same allusion.
De vostri sensi ch è del rimanente
Non vogliate negar l'esperenza
Diretro al sol, del mondo sensa gente.
* * * * *
Cicero makes _finis_ masculine, Virgil feminine. Usque ad eum
finem—_Cicero_. Quæ finis standi? Hæc finis Priami fatorum—_Virgil_.
* * * * *
Dante left a poem in three languages—Latin, Provençal, and Italian.
Rambaud de Vachieras left one in five.
* * * * *
Marcus Antoninus wrote a book entitled Των εις εαυτον—Of the things
which concern himself. It would be a good title for a Diary.
* * * * *
Lipsius, in his treatise “De Supplicio Crucis,” says that the upright
beam of the cross was a _fixture_ at the place of execution, whither
the criminal was made to bear only the transverse arm. Consequently
the painters are in error who depict our Savior bearing the entire
cross.
* * * * *
The stream flowing through the middle of the valley of Jehoshaphat, is
called, in the Gospel of St. John, “the brook of cedars.” In the
Septuagint the word is κεδρον, darkness, from the Hebrew Kiddar,
black, and not κεδρων, of cedars.
* * * * *
Seneca says that Appion, a grammarian of the age of Caligula,
maintained that Homer himself made the division of the Iliad and
Odyssey into books, and evidences the first word of the Iliad, Μηνιν,
the Μη of which signifies 48, the number of books in both poems.
Seneca however adds, “Talia sciat oportet qui multa vult scire.”
* * * * *
The tale in Plato's “Convivium,” that man at first was male and
female, and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a
natural love towards one another, seems to be only a corruption of the
account in Genesis of Eve's being made from Adam's rib.
* * * * *
Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies;
Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau—
La moitié de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau
which may be thus translated,
Weep, weep, my eyes! it is no time to laugh
For half myself has buried the other half.
* * * * *
Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this
inscription—“Ingresso alla prigione di Torquato Tasso.”
* * * * *
Hedelin, a Frenchman, in the beginning of the 18th century, denied
that any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to
be made up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et
circulatorum—à la maniere des chansons du Pontneuf.
* * * * *
The Rabbi Manasseh published a book at Amsterdam entitled “The Hopes
of Israel.” It was founded upon the supposed number and power of the
Jews in America. This supposition was derived from a fabulous account
by Montesini of his having found a vast concourse of Jews among the
Cordilleras.
* * * * *
The word _assassin_ is derived according to Hyle from Hassa, to kill.
Some bring it from Hassan, the first chief of the association—some
from the Jewish Essenes—Lemoine from a word meaning “herbage”—De Sacy
and Hammer from “hashish” the opiate of hemp leaves, of which the
assassins made a singular use.
* * * * *
“Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur” was a law of the twelve tables.
* * * * *
The origin of the phrase “corporal oath” is to be found in the ancient
usage of touching, upon occasion of attestation, the _corporale_ or
cloth which covered the consecrated articles.
* * * * *
Montgomery in his lectures on _Literature_ (_!_) has the
following—“Who does not turn with absolute contempt from the rings and
gems, and filters, and caves and genii of Eastern Tales as from the
trinkets of a toyshop, and the trumpery of a raree-show?” What man of
genius but must answer “Not I.”
* * * * *
The Abbè de St. Pierre has fixed in his language two significant
words, viz: _bienfaisance_, and the diminutive _la gloriole_.
* * * * *
There is no particular air known throughout Switzerland by the name of
the Ranz des Vaches. Every canton has its own song varying in words,
notes and even language. Mr. Cooper, the novelist, is our authority.
* * * * *