Boeoticus inquires (Vol. vi., p 209.) whence comes the line—

In p.352. of the same volume W. W. T. (quoting from D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature a passage which supplies the hexameter completing the distich, and attributes the verses to Sidonius Apollinaris) asks where may be found a legend which represents the two lines to have formed part of a dialogue between the fiend, under the form of a mule, and a monk, who was his rider. B.H.C., at p.521. of the same volume, sends a passage from the Dictionnaire LittÉraire, giving the complete distich:

and attributing it to the devil, but without supplying any more authentic parentage for the lines. The following Note will contribute a fact or two to the investigation of the subject; but I shall be obliged to conclude by reiterating the original Query of Boeoticus, Who was the real author of the lines?

In a little work entitled A Summer in Brittany, published by me in 1840, may be found (at p.99. of vol. i.) a legend, which relates how one Jean Patye, canon of Cambremer, in the chapter of Bayeux, rode the devil to Rome, for the purpose of there chanting the epistle at the midnight mass at Christmas, according to the tenor of an ancient bond, which obliged the chapter to send one of their number yearly to Rome for that purpose. This story I met with in a little volume, entitled Contes populaires, PrÉjugÉs, Patois, Proverbes de l'Arrondissement de Bayeux, recueillis et publiÉs, par F. Pluquet, the frontispiece of which consists of a sufficiently graphic representation of the worthy canon's feat. Pluquet concludes his narrative by stating that—

"Etienne Tabourot dans ses Bigarrures, publiÉes sous le nom du Seigneur des Accords, rapporte que c'est À Saint Antide que le diable, qui le portait À Rome sur son dos, adresse le distique latin dont il est question ci-dessus."

It should seem that this trick of carrying people to Rome was attributed to the devil, by those conversant with his habits, in other centuries besides the nineteenth.

I have not here the means of looking at the work to which Pluquet refers; but if any of your correspondents, who live in more bookish lands than this, will do so, they may perchance obtain some clue to the original authorship of the lines; for in Sidonius Apollinaris I cannot find them. The only edition of his works to which I have the means of referring is the quarto of Adrien Perrier, Paris, 1609. Among the verses contained in that volume, I think I can assert that the lines in question are not. We all know that the worthy author of the Curiosities of Literature cannot be much depended upon for accuracy.

Once again, then, Who was the author of this specimen, perhaps the most perfect extant, of palindromic absurdity?

T. A. T.

Florence.

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CHILDREN CRYING AT THEIR BIRTH.

"When I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do."—Wisd. vii. 3.

For the benefit of the lady-readers of "N. & Q." I subjoin a translation of these beautiful lines of Lucretius:

"The infant, as soon as Nature with great pangs of travail hath sent it forth from the womb of its mother into the regions of light, lies, like a sailor cast out from the waves, naked upon the earth in utter want and helplessness; and fills every place around with mournful wailings and piteous lamentation, as is natural for one who has so many ills of life in store for him, so many evils which he must pass through and suffer."

"Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? 'For in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth.' (Job xxv. 4.) Who remindeth me? Doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself I remember not? What then was my sin? Was it that I hung upon the breast and cried?"—St. Austin, Confess., lib. i. 7.

"For man's sake it should seeme that Nature made and produced all other creatures besides; though this great favour of hers, so bountifull and beneficiall in that respect, hath cost them full deere. Insomuch as it is hard to judge, whether in so doing she hath done the part of a kind mother, or a hard and cruell stepdame. For first and foremost, of all other living creatures, man she hath brought forth all naked, and cloathed him with the good and riches of others. To all the rest she hath given sufficient to clad them everie one according to their kind; as namely shells, cods, hard hides, prickes, shagge, bristles, haire, downe, feathers, quils, skailes, and fleeces of wool. The verie trunkes and stemmes of trees and plants, shee hath defended with bark and rind, yea, and the same sometime double against the injuries both of heat and cold: man alone, poore wretch, she hath laid all naked upon the bare earth, even on his birth-day, to cry and wraule presently from the very first houre that he is borne into this world: in suche sort as, among so many living creatures, there is none subject to shed teares and weepe like him. And verily to no babe or infant is it given once to laugh before he be fortie daies old, and that is counted verie early and with the soonest.... The child of man thus untowardly borne, and who another day is to rule and command all other, loe how he lyeth bound hand and foot, weeping and crying, and beginning his life with miserie, as if he were to make amends and satisfaction by his punishment unto Nature, for this onely fault and trespass, that he is borne alive."—Plinie's Naturall Historie, by Phil. Holland, Lond. 1601, fol., intr. to b. vii.

The following queries are extracted from Sir Thomas Browne's "Common-place Books," Aristotle, Lib. Animal.:

"Whether till after forty days children, though they cry, weep not; or, as Scaliger expresseth it, 'Vagiunt sed oculis siccis.'

"Whether they laugh not upon tickling?

"Why, though some children have been heard to cry in the womb, yet so few cry at their birth, though their heads be out of the womb?"—Bohn's ed. iii. 358.

Thompson follows Pliny, and says that man is "taught alone to weep" ("Spring," 350.); but—not to speak of the

as Spenser sings—the camel weeps when over-loaded, and the deer when chased sobs piteously. Thompson himself in a passage he has stolen from Shakspeare, makes the stag weep:

"Steller relates this of the Phoca Ursina, Pallas of the camel, and Humboldt of a small American monkey."—Laurence On Man, Lond. 1844, p.161.

Risibility, and a sense of the ridiculous, is generally considered to be the property of man, though Le Cat states that he has seen a chimpanzee laugh.

The notion with regard to a child crying at baptism has been already touched on in these pages, Vol. vi., p.601.; Vol. vii., p.96.

Grose (quoted in Brand) tells us there is a superstition that a child who does not cry when sprinkled in baptism will not live; and the same is recorded in Hone's Year-Book.

Eirionnach.

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UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF LORD NELSON.

The following letter of Lord Nelson may, especially at the present moment, interest and amuse some of the readers of "N. & Q." The original is in my possession, and was given me by the late Miss Churchey of Brecon, daughter of the gentleman to whom it was addressed. Can any of your readers inform me where the "old lines" quoted by the great hero are to be found?

E. G. Bass.

Ryde, Isle of Wight.

Merton, Oct. 20, 1802.

Sir,

Your idea is most just and proper, that a provision should be made for midshipmen who have served a certain time with good characters, and certainly twenty pounds is a very small allowance; but how will your surprise be increased, when I tell you that their full pay, when watching, fighting and bleeding for their country at sea, is not equal to that sum. An admiral's half-pay is scarcely equal, including the run of a kitchen, to that of a French cook; a captain's but little better than a valet's; and a lieutenant's certainly not equal to a London footman's; a midshipman's nothing. But as I am a seaman, and faring with them, I can say nothing. I will only apply some very old lines wrote at the end of some former war:

Your feelings do you great honour, and I only wish all others in the kingdom were the same. However, if ever I should be placed in a situation to be useful to such a deserving set of young men as our mids, nothing shall be left undone which may be in the power of,

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FOLK LORE.

Devonshire Superstitions.—Seeing that you sometimes insert extracts from newspapers, I forward you a copy of a paragraph which appeared in The Times of March 7, 1854, and which is worth a corner in your folk-lore columns:

"The following gross case of superstition, which occurred as late as Sunday se'nnight, in one of the largest market towns in the north of Devon, is related by an eye-witness:—A young woman, living in the neighbourhood of Holsworthy, having for some time past been subject to periodical fits of illness, endeavoured to effect a cure by attendance at the afternoon service at the parish church, accompanied by thirty young men, her near neighbours. Service over, she sat in the porch of the church, and each of the young men, as they passed out in succession, dropped a penny into her lap; but the last, instead of a penny, gave her half-a-crown, taking from her the twenty-nine pennies which she had already received. With this half-crown in her hand, she walked three times round the communion-table, and afterwards had it made into a ring, by the wearing of which she believes she will recover her health."

Haughmond St. Clair.

Quacks.—In the neighbourhood of Sevenoaks, Kent, a little girl was bitten by a mad dog lately. Instead of sending for the doctor, her father posted off to an old woman famous for her treatment of hydrophobia. The old woman sent a quart bottle of some dark liquid, which the patient is to take twice or thrice daily: and for this the father, though but a poor labourer, had to pay one pound. The liquid is said by the "country sort" to be infallible. It is made of herbs plucked by the old woman, and mixed with milk. Its preparation is of course a grand secret. As yet, the child keeps well.

Near Whitechapel, London, is another old woman, equally famous; but her peculiar talent is not for hydrophobia, but for scalds. Whenever any of the Germans employed in the numerous sugar-refineries in that neighbourhood scald themselves, they beg, instead of being sent to the hospital, to be taken to the old woman. For a few sovereigns, she will take them in, nurse, and cure them; and I was informed by a proprietor of a large sugar-house there, that often in a week she will heal a scald as thoroughly as the hospital will in a month, and send the men back hearty and fit for work to boot. She uses a good deal of linseed-oil, I am told; but her great secret, they say, is, that she gives the whole of her time and attention to the patient.

P. M. M.

Temple.

Burning a Tooth with Salt.—Can any one tell us whence originates the custom, very scrupulously observed by many amongst the common people, when a tooth has been taken out, of burning it—generally with salt?

Two Surgeons.

Half Moon Street.

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PARALLEL PASSAGES.

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"The old and true saying, that a man is generally more inclined to feel kindly towards one on whom he has conferred favours than towards one from whom he has received them."—Macaulay, Essay on Bacon, p.367. (1-vol. edit.)—Query, whose saying?

"On s'attache par les services qu'on rend, bien plus qu'on n'est attachÉ par les services qu'on reÇoit. C'est qu'il y a, dans le coeur de l'homme, bien plus d'orgueil que de reconnaissance."—Alex. Dumas, La Comtesse de Charny, II. ch. iii.

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"Maria. Responde tu mihi vicissim:—utrum spectaculum amoenius: rosa nitens et lactea in suo frutice, an decerpta digitis ac paulatim marcescens?

"Pamphilus. Ego rosam existimo feliciorem quÆ marcescit in hominis manu, delectans interim et oculos et nares, quam quÆ senescit in frutice."—Erasmus, Procus et Puella.

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"It is the curse of kings, to be attended

By slaves that take their humours for a warrant

To break into the bloody house of life,

And, on the winking of authority,

To understand a law: to know the meaning

Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns

More upon humour than advised respect."—King John, Act IV. Sc. 2.