Various

“ Bohn has conferred a boon, not only upon the professional student, but upon all who would acquire a knowledge of the presiding principle which regulates every part of art, and who can appreciate the eloquent and admirable manner in which the great president conveyed that knowledge. ”

“ Is any gentleman in possession of any old printed copies of Danish or Swedish popular ballads, or of any manuscript collection of similar remains? Are any such known to exist in any public library in Great Britain? ”

“ According to Aristotle, mighty individuals are above legal restraint, against such the general laws of a state do not avail: according to Paul, the fruits of the Spirit are too glorious and divine for legal restraint; they dwell in a region far above the regulation of the moral law.
While there is no possibility of demonstrating that this identity of expression is a quotation, there is nothing to forbid the idea of this sentence being a loan from the philosopher to the apostle. Paul was as likely to be at home in the great philosophers, as in the second and third-rate poets of Greece. ”

“ CRABB, at the advanced age of 80, finds herself left on the death of her Husband, having come to the knowledge of one or two persons slightly acquainted with the deceased, they have made it a duty strictly to inquire into the merits of this distressing case, and as such earnestly to recommend it to the sympathy of those who value literature and pity the necessities of age. ”

“ With this scientific, though concise and popularly written volume, profusely illustrated as it is with coloured figures of the most remarkable British birds, as their guide—and a little patient observation—an amount of knowledge of birds and their habits will soon be acquired by them, which will prove a source of never-ending enjoyment, and give new zest to every fresh visit to the woods and fields. ”

“ Such is the far-famed theory of Wolf, which, as most modern scholars agree, is only calculated "to conduct us to most preposterous conclusions." [7] And this last dictum of Othello's, Mr. Editor, reminds me, that here it would not be preposterous to come to a conclusion for the present, and to close my observations in another paper, where I shall a theory "unfold," which, after the most patient consideration and reconsideration, I am inclined to think the most approximative to the truth. ”

“ Paul, his exactly cultivated mind is scarcely less visible than his divinely inspired soul. Notwithstanding his magnificent rebukes of human learning and philosophy, and his sublime exaltation of the foolishness of God above the wisdom of men, the Apostle of the Gentiles was no mean master of Gentile learning. His three well-known quotations from Greek poets furnish direct evidence of his acquaintance with Greek literature. He proclaimed the fatherhood of God to the Athenians in the words of his countryman the poet Aratus (Acts, xvii. 28.) ”

“ P.S.—I have seen, in a court of justice in Lancashire, judge and counsel fairly set fast with a broad spoken county person; and many of the words in common use are not to be found in any dictionary or glossary. Again, I have spoken to reporters as to technical words used at such meetings, for instance, as those of the mechanical engineers in Birmingham, and I have been informed that they are frequently bewildered and surprised at the numbers of words in use having the same meaning, but which are not to be found in any dictionary. ”

“ He brings an hexameter verse of a Cretan poet as a testimony to the bad character of the Cretan people (Titus, i. 12.) . I do not positively assert that I have discovered a fourth quotation; I would merely inquire whether the appearance in a Pauline epistle of a sentence which occurs in a treatise of Aristotle, is to be regarded as a quotation, or as an accidental and most singular identity of expression. In the Politics (lib. III. cap. 8.) , Aristotle, in speaking of very powerful members of a community, says, "κατα δε των τοιουτων ουκ εστι νομος" ("but against such there is no law") . ”

“ Thus arose the formidable Wolfian controversy, which "scotched," though not "killed," the belief of the critical world in Homer. The principal arguments he adduces are from the poems themselves, in his attempt to establish the non-being of writing at the time of their composition.
Thus, in the Odyssea, [3] a master of a vessel has to remember his cargo, not having a list of his goods; in the Iliad, [4] Bellerophon carries a folded tablet containing writing or signs to Prætos in Lycia. ”

“ The dog, whose name is different in most languages, shows that he is indigenous to most countries. The cat, on the contrary, having almost the same name in many languages, is therefore of foreign extraction in nearly all countries. The word paper is common to many tongues, the moderns having adopted it from the Greek; in which language, however, the root of the word is not significant. ”

“ In a former paper I had occasion to notice the intimate knowledge possessed by Shakspeare in the arcana of the several arts; and I now recognise, in this passage, a metaphorical allusion to the degradation of gold by the admixture of baser metal. Gold and lead have always been in poetical opposition as types of the noble and the base; [170] and we are assured by metallurgists, that if lead be added to gold, even in the small proportion of one part in two thousand, the whole mass is rendered completely brittle. ”

“ In the United States, since 1774, we have seen the population double itself in 22 years. The curious tables which M. Samuel Blodget has published in his Statistical Manual of the United States of America (1806, p. 73.) , show that, for certain States, this cycle is only thirteen or fourteen years."
Again, Malthus, in his Essay on the Principles of Population, p. 6., says:
"According to a table of Euler, calculated on a mortality of 1 in 36, if the births be to the deaths in the proportion of 3 to 1, the period of doubling will be over 12 years and 4-5ths. ”

“ NUMBER OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.
(Vol. v., p. 11.)
Your correspondent ÆGROTUS sees a difficulty in the rapid increase of the Israelites in Egypt, and proposes to lessen it by doubling the time of their stay there, and including women in their census. His criticisms, however, seem to be as inadmissible as his difficulty is unreal.
For, first, in the place he quotes (Ex. xii. 37.) , the number is said to be "nearly 600,000 that were men," where the Italics are intended to throw emphasis on men; because the Heb. גְּבָריִם means men as opposed to women, strong men, even soldiers. ”

“ The Wolfian Theory.
The most important consideration concerning Homer is the hypothesis of Wolf, which has been contested so hotly; but before entering on the consideration of this revolution, as it may be called, I shall lay before your readers the following quotation from the introduction of Fauriel to the old Provençal poem, "Histoire de la Croisade contre les Albigeois," in the Collection des Documens Inédits sur l'Histoire de France. He observes:—
"The romances collectively designated by the title of Carlovingian, are, it would seem, the most ancient of all in the Provençal literature. ”

“ When, therefore, we would prove that a writer is not original, it is not enough to produce similar thoughts or phrases in older writers, unless our instances are so numerous as to afford an appearance of systematic copyism, or historical evidence of the fact of imitation be forthcoming from some external source. ”

“ That they remained only 215 years in Egypt, is not merely the opinion of Professor Lee, as ÆGROTUS seems to think: it is given by Josephus (Antiq. II. xv. 2.) , was received by the Jews and early Christians generally, and is now (at least almost) universally adopted.
Now, to come to the supposed difficulty itself: none such really exists, even if we take the higher number and the shorter time, as I think indeed we ought. The men being taken at about 600,000, we must reckon the whole people, at least, at 2,000,000. ”

“ The great pipe is a roll in the Exchequer wherein all accounts and debts due to the king delivered and drawn out of the remembrancer's offices, are entered and charged. I presume the Bishop of Winchester's great pipe was a roll of all accounts and debts due to him in right of his bishopric. ”

“ This Wolf interprets to signify conventional marks, like the picture writing of the otherwise civilised Mexicans. [5] Again, in the Iliad (VII. 175.) , the chiefs are represented as throwing lots in a helmet, and the herald afterwards handing the lots round for recognition, as each of the lots bore a mark known only to the person who made it. From this Wolf argues that writing was unknown at the time, or the herald would have immediately read the names aloud. But do we not even now make use of such marks without confounding them with writing? This is nothing at all ”

“ His Principi di Scienza nuova contain the germ of the theory reproduced by Wolf with so much scholarship. Wolf, founding his theory on the investigations of Vico and Wood, extended or modified their views, and assumed that the poems were never written down at all until the time of Peisistratos, their arranger. In 1778, the famous Venetian Scholia were discovered by Villoison, throwing open to the world the investigations of the Alexandrian critics ”

“ And he who with quick perceptions combines the thoughts which have arrested his attention, and with a lively and apt expression, fresh and free from conventional formalism, gives them out to another, that man may be called original. ”

“ Humboldt, in his Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne (tom. i. p. 339.) says:
"The information which I have collected proves that, if the order of nature were not interrupted from time to time by some extraordinary and disturbing cause" [e.g. famine, pestilence] , "the population of New Spain ought to double itself every nineteen years. [...] ”

“ Let this restriction be removed, by conferring upon doth the value of an effective verb, and it will be seen that the difficulty no longer remains. The sense then becomes, "the base doth doubt to the noble," i.e. imparts doubt to it, or renders it doubtful. We say, a man's good actions do him credit; why not also, his bad ones do him doubt? One phrase may be less familiar than the other, but they are in strict analogy as well with themselves as with the following example from the Twelfth Night, which is exactly in point ”

“ Authenticated Instances of Longevity.
—Your correspondent A. B. R. (antè, p. 145.) and others argue their question of the old Countess of Desmond very ably;—will any one of them be pleased to argue my question? Is there one word of truth in the story, or any other story that rests, as a preliminary condition, on the assumption that people have lived to one hundred and fifty years of age? ”

“ When I wrote the article in question, I had not had an opportunity of consulting the statute of 22 Hen. VIII. itself. In making the assertion that, prior to the case of Roose, "there was no peculiarity in the mode of punishment," I did so principally on the authority of Blackstone, who says—
"Of all species of deaths the most detestable is that of poison, because it can of all others be the least prevented either by manhood or forethought, and therefore by the statute of 22 Hen. ”

“ The most mysterious episode of his life was brought on by his sueing for England's richest and highest heiress, Elizabeth, daughter of Josceline, second Earl of Northumberland.
The other brother, Count Philip Christopher, was involved in the well-known tale of the unfortunate wife of George I., the unhappy Sophia Dorothea of Zelle, afterwards Duchess of Ahlden, and met his death under circumstances of much mystery. According to the Duchess's assertion, he was the elder brother, as she states he was born in 1656. ”

“ Cobbett, too, who afterwards lived here, boasted in one of his publications that he was writing in the same room where Johnson compiled his Dictionary. At any rate it is an interesting question, and probably can be set at rest by some of your literary friends, especially as I have reason to believe that there is one gentleman still living who visited the Doctor in Bolt Court. Madame D'Arblay, I think, once said, that the author of the Pleasures of Memory arrived at the door at the same moment with herself during Johnson's last illness. ”

“ Redditus assisus, or redditus assisæ: vulgarly, rents of assise, are the certain rents of the freeholders and ancient copiholders, because they be assised, and certain, and doth distinguish the same from redditus mobiles, farm rents for life, years, or at will, which are variable and incertain. ”

“ I never heard of them. I should think a clever fellow might make a fortune by inventing some kind of substitute which a man without the time, skill, or materials necessary for sewing on a button, might put in the place of a deserter. If you do not insert this Query, may your brace buttons fly off next time you are dressing in a hurry to dine with the grandest people you know!
YOUR WELLWISHER.
Princes of Wales and Earls of Chester, eldest Sons of the Kings of England.
—In the New Memoirs of Literature, vol. ”

“ Ogilvie Porter, who within three months followed his sister to the grave, being the last survivor of that talented and distinguished family. Dr. Porter commenced his medical career as a surgeon in the navy, and was probably acquainted with the Caribbean Sea and its islands; for his first wife, who died in 1807, and was buried at St. Oswald, in the city of Durham, was a native of Jamaica. Whether he avowed himself the writer, when he entrusted the work to his sister for publication, seems doubtful. ”

“ I dare say this idea of Mr. Boutell's may have been very ably refuted, by having pointed out the existence of the collar on a knight who is known for certain to have died prior to the reign of Henry IV. ”

“ MR. FOSS is, I believe, mistaken in supposing that all the serjeants called at the same time have the same motto. That is the usual practice, but it has not been invariably observed. Sir John Walter, Sir Henry Yelverton, and Sir Thomas Trevor, were all called on the same day (May 10, 1 Car. I.) . Sir John Walter and Sir Thomas Trevor gave the same motto on their rings, and Sir Henry Yelverton gave rings with a different motto. There are other instances of the like kind; that above referred to I take from the only old law-book I have now at hand (Croke's Reports) .
C. H. COOPER.
Cambridge. ”