Various

“ SHAKSPEARE READINGS, NO. IX.
"It lies as sightly on the back of him
As great Alcides' shoes upon an ass."—King John, Act II. Sc. 1.
"The ass was to wear the shoes, and not to bear them on his back, as Theobald supposed, and therefore would read shows. The 'shoes of Hercules' were as commonly alluded to by our old poets, as the ex pede Herculem was a familiar allusion of the learned." (Mr. Knight in 1839.) ”

“ If so, how is it that his expositors, with these old poets before their eyes all this time, together with their own scholarship to boot, have so widely mistaken the true point of his allusion? It is precisely because they have confined their researches to these old poets, and have not followed Shakspeare to the fountain head. ”

“ God has mercifully granted it to grow in the greatest plenty in all parts most infested by the rattlesnake. It is very remarkable that this herb acquires its greatest perfection just at the time when the bite of these serpents is the most dangerous.... Virginian Snake-root (Aristolochia serpentaria) chewed, makes also an excellent poultice for wounds of this sort.... The fat of the serpent itself, rubbed into the wound, is thought to be efficacious. The flesh of the rattlesnake, dried and boiled to a broth, is said to be more nourishing than that of the viper, and of service in consumptions. ”

“ The Conception is usually represented in Christian art by a figure of Mary setting her foot, as second Eve, on the head of the prostrate serpent (in allusion to Gen. iii. 15.) , and thus we find it in Callot's Images.
"Not seldom, in a series of subjects from the Old Testament, the pendant to Eve holding the apple is Mary crushing the head of the fiend: and thus the bane and antidote are both before us." ”

“ Many of the phrases of the ancient tongues, in which the eye bears a part, have been handed down to us, and are still preserved in our own. My space, however, forbids me to do more than allude to them; but there is one very forcible expression in the Hebrew עַיִן בְּעַיִן, literally, eye in eye, which we render much less forcibly—face to face. The Welsh have preserved it exactly in their llygad yn llygad. Indeed, this is not the only instance in which they are proud of having handed down the Hebrew idiom in all its purity. Shakspeare twice uses the old phrase ”

“ The ancient opinion respecting the rooted antipathy between the ash and the serpent is not to be explained merely by the fact in natural history of its being an antidote, but it has a deeply mythical meaning. See, in the Prose Edda, the account of the ash Yggdrasill, and the serpents gnawing its roots. Loskiel corroborates Pliny as to the ash being an antidote:
"A decoction of the buds or bark of the white ash (Fraxinus carolina) taken inwardly is said to be a certain remedy against the effects of poison," i.e. of the rattlesnake. ”

“ The "freckled" appearance which you mention in your positives in all probability depends upon the action of the light upon the silver, which still remains in your proof. We have often found it to be the case when old hyposulphite of soda is used, and when the strength of the bath is becoming weak and doubtful. It is certainly a safe process to soak the picture in clean water for an hour or two, the light being excluded previous to the immersion into the hypo.; and the water extracting a large portion of the solutions remaining on the paper, the after application of the hypo. ”

“ Knight's note upon Theobald is, that Shakspeare had his notion of the shoes from "our old poets," while the learned had theirs from ex pede Herculem; but where the analogy lies, wherein the point, or what the application, is not explained. Steevens' original note was superior to this, in so much that he quoted the words of these old poets, thereby giving his readers an opportunity of considering the justness of the deduction. The only set-off to this omission by Mr. Knight is the introduction of "ex pede Herculem," the merit of which is doubtless his own. ”

“ That if the ink of part of a writing is of a different shade, though of the same colour, from that of the other parts, we cannot infer from that circumstance alone that the writing was done at different times. Ink taken from the top of an inkstand will be lighter than that from the bottom, where the dregs are; the deeper the pen is dipped into the ink, the darker the writing will be. ”

“ It is interesting to observe how nearly Theobald's plain, homely sense, led him to the necessity of the context. The real points of the allusion can scarcely be expressed in better words than his own:
"Faulconbridge, in his resentment, would say this to Austria, 'That lion's skin which my great father, King Richard, once wore, looks as uncouthly on thy back, as that other noble hide, which was borne by Hercules, would look on the back of an ass!' A double allusion was intended: first, to the fable of the ass in the lion's skin ”

“ If the protonitrate of iron properly prepared be used in the development, the deposit assumes the beautiful appearance of dead white silver, having none of the reflecting qualities of the metal plates.
C. E. F. (June 13th) . The spots in the specimen sent depend upon minute substances in your collodion not receiving the action of the nitrate of silver bath; and you will find this upon looking through a prepared plate after it has been in the nitrate bath, and previously to its ever having been in the camera. They may be iodide or iodate of silver, or small crystals of nitrate of potash. ”

“ In all the ancient mysteries, the serpent was more or less conspicuously introduced, and always as a symbol of the invigorating or active power of nature. The serpent was an emblem of the sun. Solar, Phallic, and Serpent worship, are all forms of a single worship. [8] The Hindu Boodh, Chinese Fo, Egyptian Osiris, Northern Woden, Mexican Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent) , are one and the same. ”

“ The Teutonic sehandes ougen, pupilla oculi, is totally distinct; seha being merely medius punctus oculi, whence sehan, videre. In the Semitic languages, as well as in the Greek and Latin, the origin of the term is the same, and gives no clue to the meaning of the Saxon term. Thus, in the Hebrew אִישׁוֹן, dim. of אִישׁ, homunculus, the small image of a person seen in the eye. In Arabic it is the man or daughter of the eye. In Greek we have κόρη, κοράσιον, κορασίδον; and in Latin, pupa, pupula, pupilla. ”

“ Britton's theory (as to Col. Barré) may equally well apply to his own, namely, that it affords "a [another] curious instance of the delusion to which ingenious men may resign themselves, when they have a favourite opinion to uphold!" The reviewer, indeed, admits that he has "traced the parallel from the scantiest materials;" and in another passage repeats, that but "few materials exist for a sketch of Thomas Lyttelton's life." ”

“ Writing performed with a pen that has been used before, will be darker than that with a new pen; for the dry residuum of the old ink that is encrusted on the used pen will mix with the new ink, and make it darker. ”

“ In O'Brien's work on The Round Towers of Ireland, London, 1834, may be found much curious matter on this subject; and a good deal of light is thrown on the horrors of Serpent or Boodhist worship. It is, however, a wild and irreverent book, and by no means to be recommended to the general reader, independently of the nature of its details. Mr. Payne Knight's book is too well known to need mention here. ”

“ The brightness of the colour is by no means an index of its degree of sensitiveness—on the contrary, paper of a bright yellow colour is more apt to brown than one of a pale primrose. Too bright a yellow would also indicate an insufficient soaking; and suffering the paper to remain longer than is needful not only lessens its sensitive powers, but does much damage by removing all the size. ”

“ In the dialects which descended from the Teutonic in the Saxon branch, the connexion between these two distinct objects is also singularly preserved. It is to be found in the Low German, the Friesic, and the Anglo-Saxon. In the latter we have eá, eah, eagor, a welling, flowing stream; eah, ægh, eage, an eye, which might be abundantly illustrated.
We could hardly fail to find in Shakspeare some allusion to these connected images in the old tongue; no speck of beauty could exist and escape his ken. ”

“ The Indians are remarkably skilled in curing the bite of venomous serpents, and have found a medicine peculiarly adapted to the bite of each species. For example, the leaf of the Rattlesnake-root (Polygala senega) is the most efficacious remedy against the bite of this dreadful animal. ”

“ It is {40}hard to stumble on a plant that is not an antidote to the bite of serpents. Our old herbals were compiled, however, almost entirely from the writings of the ancients, and from foreign sources. The ancients had a curious notion relative to the plant Basil (Oscimum basilicum) , viz., "That there is a property in Basil to propagate scorpions, and that the smell thereof they are bred in the brains of men." Others deny this wonderful property, and make Basil a simple antidote. ”

“ Fordyce knew the black servant of an Indian merchant in America, who was fond of soup made of rattlesnakes, in which he always boiled the head along with the rest of the animal, without any regard to the poisons."—Rees's Cyclopædia.
"There is a religious sect in Africa, not far from Algiers, which eat the most venomous serpents alive; and certainly, it is said, without extracting their fangs. They declare they enjoy the privilege from their founder. The creatures writhe and struggle between their teeth; but possibly, if they do bite them, the bite is innocuous." ”

“ Pigs are excepted from the dreadful effects of their bite; they will even attack and eat them. It is said that, if a rattlesnake is irritated and cannot be revenged, it bites itself, and dies in a few hours ”

“ If the salts of gold are to be used, deep tints are very readily obtained by the French papers. The propriety of using gold is very questionable, not only as affecting the after permanence of the picture, but from the strong contrasts generally produced being very offensive to an artist's eye. 2ndly. Xyloidine may be iodized precisely the same as collodion, but no advantage whatever is gained from its use. ”

“ The evidence afforded therefore by this volume, comes peculiarly in support of the dates and other circumstances put forth in the printed volume of Poems; and leads us inevitably to the conclusion, that it was utterly impossible for Thomas Lyttelton to have had any share in the Letters of Junius. He has enough to answer for on the score of his early profligacy and scepticism, without being dragged from the grave to be arraigned for the crime of deceit. His heart need not, according to the reviewer, be "stripped bare" by the scalpel of any literary anatomist ”

“ Knight who restores shoes to the text, and that it is Mr. Knight who points out the common allusion by our old poets to the shoes of Hercules? Who would imagine that the substance of this correction of Theobald was written by Steevens a couple of generations back, and that, consequently, Theobald's proposed alteration had never been adopted? ”

“ The metathesis in the first case seems sanctioned by the analogy of the Sanscrit drî and Greek δείρω, and the mutation of l and r in the second is too common in Greek and Latin to admit of any doubt, e.g. ἀρ-γαλέος and ἀλγαλέτος; Sol and Soracte. With this premised, I think we may be justified in connecting the following words with one another.
Dores, Dryopes with Σείριος (of Σιός and Δῖος) Θέρος, the Scythian sun-god Οἰτό-συρυς, the Egyptian O-siris, and perhaps the Hebrew דוֹר and Greek δηρὸς (the course of the sun being the emblem of eternity) .—Dol-opes with Sol, εἵλη, Selli, &c. ”

“ Sir Isaac Newton and Voltaire on Railway Travelling.—Sir Isaac Newton wrote a work upon the prophet Daniel, and another upon the book of Revelation, in one of which he said that in order to fulfil certain prophecies before a certain date was terminated, namely, 1260 years, there would be a mode of travelling of which the men of his time had no conception; nay, that the knowledge of mankind would be so increased, that they would be able to travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour. ”

“ For in the grave there is no room, either for ambition or repentance; and the degree of our happiness or misery for eternity is proportioned to the state of preparation or unpreparation in which we leave this world. Instead of many a man, I might have said most good men ”