I should say that there is little doubt of Ernest being the translation of Ernisius. There is a village which I know well, some five miles from Bedford, called Milton Ernest, from a family of Erneys or Ernest which possessed the manor from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth; and if I may trust my memory, there is the tomb of one of them in the church. Murray's Handbook of Herts, Beds, and Hunts says: In the wall of the N. aisle is the arched canopy of a founder's tomb richly foliated, and beneath it a coffin slab of Purbeck on which is a cross of somewhat unusual design.' JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

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Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

JOHN OWEN THE EPIGRAMMATIST (10 S. xi. 21). I should be glad to make a correction in the name of the German translator of Owen given ante, p. 22, 1. 37. It should be Löber. Löbern on the title-page is the accusative case after the preposition durch. EDWARD BENSLY.

mine the bent of the mind, and the mind as well as the body was credited with its own particular humours. A humour was therefore a predominant mental characteristic, as Shadwell says in the epilogue to his play The Humourists

A humour is the bias of the mind,

By which with violence 'tis one way inclined; It makes our notions lean on one side still, And in all changes that may bend the will. Pepys writes: I see that religion, be it what it will, is but a humour.' Ben Jonson, who set himself up as a protector of the word, complained that it is rack'd and tortured

so that Now if an idiot Have but an apish or fantastic strain, It is his humour. In his Introduction to The Magnetic Lady' Jonson writes: The author, beginning his studies of this kind with Every Man in his Humour, and after Every Man out of his Humour '; and since continuing in all his plays, especially those of the comic thread whereof The New Inn was the last, some recent humours still or manners of men that went along with the times; finding himself now near the close or shutting up of his circle, hath fancied to himself an idea, this Magnetic Mistress: a lady, a brave bountiful house-keeper and a virtuous widow: who, having a young niece, ripe for a man and marriageable, he makes that his centre attractive to draw thither a diversity of guests, all of persons of different humours to make up his perimeter. And this he hath called Humours Reconciled.” The word is used at least 35 times in the two plays-Henry V.' and The Merry

Wives.'

A. R. BAYLEY.

Under "humour," 6 b, the 'N.E.D.' has the following

"An inclination or disposition for some specified action, etc.; a fancy (to do something); a mood or state of mind characterized by such inclination. With illustrative quotations from Shakespeare (Mids. N.,' I. ii. 30; Merry W., II. i. 133-4, &c.) and from various other writers down to 1863. It appears that Nym frequent use of the term-a part, I suppose, was only peculiar, if at all, in an unusually of the noted in him. drawling, affected" speech Page

..

C. C. B. In Isaac Reed's Variorum Edition of Shakspeare (1813) there is a long note by Steevens on the passage quoted by ST. SWITHIN; but the note merely gives an extract from 'Humor's Ordinarie, where a Man may be verie merrie and exceeding well used for his sixpence' (1607), and is in no way explanatory.

May it not be that in this play Shakspere was, by the reiteration of the word humour in Nym's mouth, making fun of the title of Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour '? This play of Jonson's was first acted in 1596: the Merry Wives some two or three years later.

ST. SWITHIN quotes "Here's a fellow frights English out of his wits"; and this is the reading of the Globe edition. Isaac Reed, however, and Charles Knight give "frights humour out of his wits," and mention no other reading. What authority is there for substituting English for humour?

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T. M. W.

["English" is the reading of the First Folio.] The fashionable use of the word in Elizabethan days came to be applied on all occasions, with as little judgment as wit; every coxcomb had it always in his mouth; and every particularity he affected was denominated by the name of humour." Nym appears to be a burlesque type of those who were given to such affectation, and the jocosity involved lies in Shakespeare's ridicule of its abuse. See Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour,' III ii., and the Prologue to 'Every Man out of his Humour.'

TOM JONES.

SIR WALTER SCOTT ON THE SCOTCH AND THE IRISH (10 S. xi. 107). The passage referred to is probably that in Lockhart's 'Scott,' 1st ed., vol. vi. p. 43. Scott was in July, 1825, just crossing to Ireland in a steamboat. It contained packages of the cast-off raiment of Scotch beggars for the Irish:

Sir Walter rather irritated a military passenger (a stout old Highlander), by asking whether it had never occurred to him that the beautiful checkery of the clan tartans might have originated in a pious wish on the part of the Scottish Gael to imitate the tatters of the parent race. After soothing the veteran into good-humour....he remarked that if the Scotch Highlanders were really descended in the main from the Irish blood, it seemed to him the most curious and difficult problem in the world to account for the startling contrasts in so many points of their character, temper, and demeanour.

See the passage further for Scott's opinion on these differences. NEL MEZZO.

SNAKES DRINKING MILK (10 S. x. 265, 316, 335, 377, 418).-In his 'Primitive Culture,' 2nd ed., chap. xv., Dr. Tylor says:

"To this day Europe has not forgotten in nursery tales or more serious belief the snake that comes with its golden crown and drinks milk out of the child's porringer; the house-snake, tame and kindly, but seldom seen, that cares for the cows and the children.... And he refers to Hanusch for the snake that was kept and fed with milk in the temple of the old Slavonic god Potipos.

In Africa the Baris give milk and meat to the snakes, calling them their grandmothers (Ratzel, History of Mankind,' trans. Butler, vol. ii. p. 357, 1899). From a

similar motive possibly, the old Chinese Buddhists offered cream to Liu, a constellation shaped as, and governed by, a serpent (Twan Ching-Shih, Yû-yang-tsah - tsu,' 9th cent. AD., rom. iii.). Southey's 'Commonplace Book' (Reeves & Turner, 1876, Fourth Series, pp. 425-6) contains a story of a snake which regularly visited a little boy to share his breakfast of bread and milk.

The folk-lore of snakes and milk is regarded as traceable to ancestor-worship by Dr. Frazer, who writes :

"Where serpents are thus viewed as ancestors come to life [as by the Zulus and other Kafir tribes, &c.], the people treat them with great respect, and then feed them with milk, perhaps because milk is the food of human babes and the reptiles are treated as human beings in embryo, who can be born again from women....Perhaps the libations of milk which the Greeks poured upon graves were intended to be drunk by serpents. Adonis, Attis, Osiris,' 1907, pp. 74-5.

Notwithstanding this reasonable exposition, there is no lack of assertors that snakes drink milk. For example, Ermete Pierotti, 'Customs and Traditions of Palestine,' 1864, pp. 47-8, has this passage :

"I once occupied a house at Jerusalem in the Via Dolorosa....the outer walls and inner court of which were overgrown with hyssop....It harboured a number of serpents....I abandoned my hostile intentions, and ordered them to be their gratitude for this treatment by visiting supplied with milk every day. They showed my bedroom, where I used to find them coiled corner. These faithful friends up in a rarely wanting in the old Arab houses at Jerusalem, where their presence is regarded as a good omen by the inhabitants. The most surprising thing

are

is that neither the women nor the babies fear

them....Mothers are not unfrequently awakened in the night by the reptiles, which have fastened on their breasts, and are sucking their milk.... Serpents are also in the habit of entering the folds and grottoes in which flocks are penned, and, during the night, quietly sucking the milk from the teats of the ewes or she-goats, without awaking them; which is as good a proof of their cunning as any that we could find."

It is noteworthy that the Albanians hold milk to act inimically upon serpents that drink it with overmuch greed. The story runs thus:

"A shepherd once found a snake asleep, coiled round a large heap of gold pieces; and knowing how to set to work under the circumstances, placed a pail of milk by its side, and waited in a hiding-place until it should wake. It came to pass as he expected. The snake took to the milk with avidity, and drank its fill. On this it returned to the heap of gold, in order to go to sleep again, but the thirst with which snakes are attacked after drinking milk prevented it from doing so. It became restless, and moved irresolutely round and round the heap, till the

burning within forced it to go in quest of water. The water, however, was far off, and before it had returned, the wary shepherd had carried off the whole heap of gold into a place of safety."-Hahn, Albanische Studien,' quoted in Tozer's Researches in the Highlands of Turkey,' 1869, vol. i. p. 205. KUMAGUSU MINAKATA.

Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

SHAKESPEARE IN FRENCH: ARMS or LIVERPOOL (10 S. xi. 84).-MR. WILMSHURST is wrong in stating that the arms of the city of Liverpool display four livers. In point of fact, there is but one bird in these arms, and that bird, though popularly known in Liverpool as "the liver," and formerly discussed as such, is described in the grant and confirmation of arms to Liverpool in 1797 as a cormorant. If MR. WILMSHURST can give any authority for the liver being the same bird as the wild swan, or for the swannery which he says originally existed at the mouth of the Mersey, our local antiquaries will be very grateful to him. J. P. R.

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COMPARED with many volumes in the same amazingly cheap series the 'Shakspeare' (1272 pp.), for example, or the Wordsworth' (1008 pp.), or the Shelley (928 pp.)-Mr. Robertson's Thomson,' which runs but to 540 pp. of spacious long primer, seems almost а slender affair. Yet the labour bestowed on parts of this book has been anything but slender. To those who know Thomson's passion for rehandling his work it is enough to say that the editor has conscientiously noted every change in the text of The Seasons' from the first appearance of the several parts ('Winter,' March, 1726; Summer,' 1727; Spring,' 1728; Autumn ' and the Hymn,' 1730) down to the fourth and last collected edition revised by the author (1746)- -a task to some extent mechanical, yet neither short nor simple.

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A reprint of Winter' in its earliest shape forms another useful feature of this volume. The text, taken from the folio copy in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, is here accompanied with the variations introduced in the second edition, published in June, 1726. A bold vindication of poetry and its claims-just then obscured by the absorbing political preoccupations of the hour-prefaced this second edition, and is reproduced in Mr. Robertson's notes. Elate with the joy of recent achievement, the cockerel o' the of great gravity and character" who, with the North crows a gay defiance of those ". persons Prime Minister, Walpole, at their head, held poets and their works alike negligible. "That any man should seriously declare against that divine art is really amazing....That there are frequent and notorious abuses of Poetry" may be granted; but to argue against the use of things from their abuse is a stupid error, into which I hope that no man who has the least sense of shame in him will fall....after the present sulphureous attacker of the stage." A note here would have been useful. The reference may be to Arthur Bedford, one of the tribe of pamphleteers who fed the flaming controversy kindled in March, 1698, by

trate the various works; for instance, there are five editions of Burns placed under the names of the various illustrators; but a complete index of authors is given at the end. We should advise Mr. Goodspeed to give the prices in his Catalogues issued for England in English money. There is an interesting note under Pendleton's Lithography, Boston Monthly Magazine, Vol. I. No. 7, December, 1825, two copies, each with a different plate. These two lithographs are amongst the earliest specimens of the art as practised in Boston, and illustrate an article on the subject. In this the writer states: Nothing was done to bring lithography into this country until within a few months, when Mr. John Pendleton commenced an establishment for litho graphy in this city. Perhaps a little before his return from France, a few attempts had been made in the city of New York, but they had not reached us, nor have they yet. Mr. Pendleton is a young gentleman of taste and talents, from the State of New York, who was on a visit to Paris, on business of an entirely different nature, and becoming pleased with lithography, put himself immediately under the first artists of France." With the information he obtained, and taking with him the proper materials, he went to Boston and engaged with his brother, a copper plate printer of established celebrity."

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Messrs. W. N. Pitcher & Co.'s Manchester Catalogue 166 contains Holden's Architecture,' 2 vols., oblong folio, half-calf, 1861-6, 31. 3s.; The Century Dictionary,' 8 vols., thick folio, halfmorocco, 5l. 108.; Burke's Heraldic Illustrations,' 3 vols., imperial 8vo, half-morocco, 1844-6, 31. 38.; and an extra-illustrated copy of Thackeray's essay on Cruikshank, green levant by Morrell, 41. 158. The second edition of Robinson Crusoe' and the first edition of The Farther Adventures,' 2 vols., 1719, mottled calf by Rivière, are 141. Grote's Greece,' 8 vols., tree calf by Rivière, is 41. 48.; Henderson's James I. and VI.,' Edition de Luxe, 2 vols., 67. 68.; Lever, illustrations by Phiz, 34 vols., cloth, 31. 38. ; Montalembert's 'Monks of the West,' 7 vols., 31. 38.; Pearson's Reprints of British Dramatists, 27 vols., 91. 10s.; first edition of Valpy's Shakespeare,' 15 vols., calf gilt, 1832, 47. 108.; and The Faerie Queene,' designs by Muckley, one of 30 copies, 81. Mr. Charles F. Sawyer's Catalogue 11 is Part I. of Latest Purchases. The first item is a beautiful copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle'; it is tall and clean, and contains all the 2,250 woodcuts, fine impressions, bound by Rivière; it is from the library of Josiah Vavasseur, and has his book-plate. Mr. Sawyer offers it for 451.; a note on the fly-leaf states that it cost 65. Other works include Burton's Arabian Nights,' 17 vols., as new, 107. 10s.; and the Leatherstocking Edition of Fenimore Cooper, 32 vols., 21. 18s. We note sets of the following: Defoe, 16 vols., art cloth, 4/. 48.; De Quincey, 16 vols., half-calf, 31. 3s.; George Eliot, 8 vols., half-morocco, Edition de Luxe, 27. 18s. 6d. Fielding, edited by Henley, 16 vols., original cloth, 41. 178. 6d.; Scott's Complete Works, 101 vols., three-quarter red levant, Cadell, 1831, 28 guineas; Sterne, edited by Cross, 12 vols., buckram, 31. 10s.; Thackeray, 26 vols., 12. 12s.; and Victor Hugo, 10 vols., half-morocco, 31. 10s. A miniature book, The English Bijou Almanack for 1837,' poetically illustrated by L. E. L., has portraits of Queen Adelaide, Coleridge, Goethe, and others, and con

tains four pages of music. The book measures in. by in., is enclosed in gilt leather case, 1837, 31. 38. There is a selection of ancient and modern bindings. Messrs. Henry Sotheran & Co.'s Price Current 690 is devoted to books on Political Economy, Social History, and Law, English and Foreign, and many authors of note on these subjects appear in its pages. The list under Bentham includes the scarce edition of his works edited by John Hill Burton, 11 vols., royal 8vo, calf, Edinburgh, 1843, 10l. 10s. Under George Canning is Therry's edition of his speeches, 6 vols., calf, 1836, 31. 3s.; and under Capt. Cook is his catalogue of the different specimens of cloth he collected in his voyages (it contains 56 actual specimens), 1787, 351. A collection of Corn Law Tracts, 1828-42, is priced a guinea. Under Sir F. M. Eden, described as the " Forerunner of Poor-Law Reform," is his State of the Poor,' 3 vols., 4to, 1797, 81. A collection of 145 letters from Léon Faucher, addressed to Henry Reeve from Paris, 1835-54, is 251. A collection relating to the general election of 1880 contains nearly 650 illustrations, and consists of ballads, broadsides, and caricatures and portraits of the Ministry. The whole is carefully mounted, forming 3 vols, imperial folio, 1 folio, and 3 post 8vo, together 7 vols., half-morocco, 211.; under Gladstone is Sir John Gladstone's Mercator's Reply to Mr. Booth's Pamphlet on Free Trade,' Liverpool, 1833, 12s. 6d. The author anticipated disastrous results from the repeal of the Corn Laws. There is an early work of Halliwell-Phillipps, Some Account of a Collection of Bills, Accounts, and Inventories, illustrating the History of Prices 1650-1750, privately printed, Brixton Hill, 1852, 11. 2s. 6d. Under John Howard are 'The State of the Prisons in England' and 'The Principal Lazarettos in Europe,' 1777-89, 27. 28.; under Lord Overstone are collections of his tracts on Money, Commerce, &c.; and under McCulloch, Mill, Adam Smith, set of Hansard, 1806-1906, is priced 2351.; and and others are many items. A sound and uniform a set of the Statistical Society, 1839-1908, 407.

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