Note by Warton on Aristotle's "Poetics."—Some of your correspondents having expressed a wish that the MS. remarks of eminent scholars, when met with by your readers, might be communicated to the world through your pages, I beg to send you the following observations, signed J. Warton, which I have found on the blank leaf of a copy of Aristotle's Poetics (edit. of Ruddimannos, Edinb. 1731):—

"To attempt to understand poetry without having diligently digested this treatise, would be as absurd and impossible as to pretend to a skill in geometry without having studied Euclid. The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters, wherein he has pointed out the properest methods of exciting terror and pity, convince us that he was intimately acquainted with those objects which most forcibly affect the heart. The prime excellence of this precious treatise is the scholastic precision and philosophical clearness with which the subject is handled, without any address to the passions or imagination. It is to be lamented that the part of the Poeticks in which he has given precepts for comedy did not likewise descend to posterity."

A considerable number of notes, in the same handwriting, are also in the volume.

J. M.

Oxford.

Misappropriated Quotation.—I have heard the following passage of Lord Bacon's, Essay VIII., and by a Cambridge D.D. too, so far as the word "fortune," attributed to Paley:

"He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises. The best works of the greatest merit for the public have proceeded from unmarried and childless men."

B. B.

The God Arciacon.—In a Descriptive Account of the Antiquities in the Grounds and in the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, drawn up by the learned Curator of the antiquities, at page 20. I find the following inscription and explanation:—

"N. III. An altar recently discovered in the rubble foundation, under one of the pillars of the church of St. Dionis, Walmgate, York. It is inscribed:

DEO
ARCIACON
ET N. AVG. SI
MAT. VITALIS
ORD V. S. LM.

Which may be read thus: DEO Arciacon et Numini Augusti Simatius Vitalis Ordovix Votum solvit libens merito, i.e. To the God Arciacon and to the Divinity of Augustus, Simatius Vitalis, one of the Ordovices, discharges his vow willingly, deservedly—namely, by dedicating this altar. There is nothing in this inscription to indicate its date, or the Emperor to whose divinity, in part, the altar is dedicated. The god Arciacon, whose name occurs in no other inscription, was probably one of those local deities to whom the Roman legions were so prone to pay religious reverence, especially if in the attributes ascribed to them they bore any resemblance to the gods of their own country. If the reading and interpretation of ORD be right, Vitalis was a Briton; and Arciacon may have been a deity acknowledged by the Ordovices, who occupied the northern parts of Wales."

In the name ARCIACON I fancy that I see in a Latinized form the British words ARCH IACHAWR, i.e. the Supreme Healer. Arch has the same meaning in Welsh as it has in the English and several other languages. In combination it is shortened to Ar, as in Yr Arglwdd Dduw, the Lord God. My conjecture is, that the Britons may have worshipped a God whose attributes resembled those of the Æsculapius of the Greeks. I hope that some of the contributors to "N. & Q." will be so kind as to give some information on this subject.

Inverted hand symbol

Gat-tothed.—I do not know whether this mysterious word in the description of the "Wife of Bath," has been satisfactorily explained since the time of Tyrwhitt; but perhaps the following passage may suggest a new reading in addition to "cat-tothed" and "gap-tothed," which he gives in his note on Canterbury Tales, p. 470.:

"The Doctor deriveth his pedigree from Grono ap Heylyn, who descended from Brocknel Skythrac, one of the princes of Powis-land, in whose family was ever observed that one of them had a gag-tooth, and the same was a notable omen of good fortune."—Barnard's Life of Heylyn, p. 75., reprinted in Heyl. Hist. Ref. Eccl. Hist. Soc., 1. xxxii.

Query, What was a gag-tooth? The "Wife" herself says,

J. C. R.

Goujere.—The usage of this word by Shakspeare (in the Second Part of Henry IV.) is another proof that he took refuge in Cornwall, when he fled from the scene of his deerstalking danger. The Goujere is the old Cornish name of the Fiend, or the Devil; and is still in use among the folk words of the West.

C. E. H. Morwenstow.

The Ten Commandments in Ten Lines.—In looking over the Registers of the Parish of Laneham, Notts, last April, I discovered on one of the leaves the Commandments with the above title. It is signed "Richard Christian, 1689:" he was vicar at that time.

S. Wiswould.

Vellum-bound Books.—In a list of thirty books printed for T. Carnan and F. Newbery, and issued in 1773, I find the phrase two volumes bound in one in the vellum manner in seven instances; also, four volumes bound in two in the vellum manner; and, six volumes bound in three in the vellum manner. In other cases we have only the word bound or sewed. I have a suspicion that the phrase in the vellum manner may have some obsolete meaning; and submit this note to the consideration of those who are in search of a vellum-bound Junius.

Bolton Corney.