Chapter I: Front Matter

[Transcriber's note: Characters with macrons have been marked in brackets with an equal sign, as [=e] for a letter e with a macron on top. Underscores have been used to indicate _italic_ fonts; equal signs indicate =bold= fonts. Original spelling variations have not been standardized. A list of volumes and pages in "Notes and Queries" has been added at the end.]

NOTES AND QUERIES:

A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION

FOR

LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

"When found, make a note of."--CAPTAIN CUTTLE.

VOL. IV.--NO. 112--SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20. 1851.

Price Threepence. Stamped Edition 4_d._

CONTENTS.

Page

NOTES:--

Wady Mokatteb identified with Kibroth Hattavah, by
the Rev. Moses Margoliouth 481

On a Passage in Goldsmith, by Henry H. Breen 482

Minor Notes:--Biographical Dictionary--The Word
Premises--Play of George Barnwell--Traditions from
Remote Periods through few Links 483

QUERIES:--

Deodands and their Application, by Jonathan Peel 484

Minor Queries:--Hell paved with the Skulls of
Priests--Charib--Thumb Bible--Tripos--Louis Philippe
and his Bag of Nails--Brass Statues at Windsor--Edmund
Bohun--Bishop Trelawney 484

MINOR QUERIES ANSWERED:--Companion Ladder--Macaulay's
Ballad of the Battle of Naseby 485

REPLIES:--

The Crucifix as used by the Early Christians, by
J. Emerson Tennent 485

The Word "[Greek: Adelphos]." by T. R. Brown 486

The Roman Index Expurgatorius of 1607 487

Replies to Minor Queries:--Hobbes's "Leviathan"--Age
of Trees--Treatise against Equivocation--Lycian
Inscriptions--Alterius Orbis Papa--Carmagnoles--General
James Wolfe--Johannes Trithemius--Sir William
Herschel--Dr. Wm. Wall--Parish Registers--Compositions
during the Protectorate--General Moyle--Descendants
of John of Gaunt--Church of St. Bene't Fink--Coins
of Vabalathus--Engraved Portrait--"Cleanliness is next
to godliness"--Cozens the Painter--Whig and Tory--Prince
Rupert's Drops--Deep Well near Bansted Downs--Mrs. Mary
Anne Clarke--Upton Court 487

MISCELLANEOUS:--

Notes on Books, Sales, Catalogues, &c. 493

Books and Odd Volumes wanted 494

Notices to Correspondents 494

Advertisements 494

Notes.

WADY MOKATTEB IDENTIFIED WITH KIBROTH HATTAVAH.

The difficulty of deciding the antiquity of the famous inscriptions in the deserts of Arabia, would be considerably diminished if we could ascertain the earliest mention of the valley now known as Wady Mokatteb. What I am about to submit to the readers of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," is not a presumptuous or rash suggestion, but an idea diffidently entertained, and cautiously and maturely considered.

It is not at all improbable that that valley, with its surrounding rocky chronicles, was first mentioned by Moses, the first delineator of the "great wilderness." The mention I allude to is to be found in Numbers, xi. 26. The passage, as it occurs in the English version, runs thus:

"But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of the one
was Eldad, and the name of the other was Medad; and the Spirit rested
upon them, and they were of them that were written."

The original words of the last clause are but the two following:--

[Hebrew: vhemah bakkthuwbiym]

which literally signify, "and they were amongst the inscriptions."

A personal and literary examination of the locality of the Sinaitic inscriptions convinces me that Eldad and Medad were then in that famous region. By a reference to the chapter alluded to, it will be found that the children of Israel were then at that awfully memorable place called _Kibroth Hattavah_ (ver. 34.), and no one, who has but a slight knowledge of scripture topography, will be at a loss to observe that it is the very spot where the mysterious inscriptions are found.

Dr. Robinson, in his _Biblical Researches_, vol. i. p. 138., thus notices the subject in question:

"The Sinaite inscriptions are found on all the routes which lead from
the West towards Sinai, above the convent El-Arbain, but are found
neither on Gebel Musa, nor on the present Horeb, nor on St. Catherine,
nor in the valley of the convent; while on Serbal they are seen on its
very summit."

Lord Lindsay, in his first letter from _Edom and the Holy Land_, introduces the same district in the following words:

"We now entered Wady Mokatteb, a spacious valley, bounded on the east
by a most picturesque range of black mountains, but chiefly famous for
the inscriptions on the rocks that line it, and from which it derives
its name. There are thousands of them, inscriptions too, and here is
the mystery, in a character which no one has yet deciphered."

Now, let the ancient and modern maps be compared, and it will be discovered that the same place which is called, in Num. xi. 26., [Hebrew: kthuwbiym], probably on account of its inscriptions, is also called by the Arabians [Arabic: wadi el mokatteb] _Wady el Mokatteb_.

Should the identity between Wady Mokatteb and Kibroth Hattavah be considered conclusive, then the antiquity of the Sinaitic inscriptions is far more remote than the date fixed by certain archaeologists and palaeographists; the records may prove to be, in truth and in deed, the handy-work of the Israelites during their encampment there.

The readers of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" need scarcely be told that the inscriptions were first noticed in the sixth century by Cosmas, a Graeco-Indian merchant, who was hence surnamed Indicopleustes. But it is necessary to impress the fact that Cosmas, though a man of intelligence and of letters, considered that the alphabet in which the inscriptions were made, was unknown; but having visited the Wady in company with certain well-informed Jews, his Hebrew companions read and deciphered several of the records, and decided that the Israelites of the Egyptian Exodus were the performers of the inscriptions. All this Cosmas stated in his _Christian Topography_ (a work published for the first time in 1707 by the learned Montfaucon), and concurs in the opinion that the ancient Hebrews were the scribes. This circumstance borne in mind, will be proof against the theory conceived by Professor Beer, brought forth by Dr. Lepsius, adopted and fostered by Dr. Wilson, viz. that an Utopian Nabathaean Christian tribe executed those inscriptions during their pilgrimages to the sacred localities on Mount Sinai. Is it not strange that Cosmas should not have heard that there was such a tribe of scribes in the valley? Is it not unaccountable that the knowledge of the alphabet should so soon have been forgotten? Cosmas flourished comparatively but a short time after the supposed Nabathaeans.

But the advocates of the Nabathaean theory argue that the Sinaitic inscriptions must be of a comparatively modern date, since there are found amongst them some Greek and Latin ones; and, moreover, the cross does sometimes occur in various shapes. I venture to submit that the inscriptions bear self-evidence that they have been executed at various dates. It is true that by far the greatest number of them display indubitable marks of remote antiquity; but there are some which must be pronounced juvenile when compared with the _great majority_. The latter bear marks of an execution resembling the inscriptions on the ancient Egyptian obelisks, whilst the former are rude and superficially cut, and already almost effaced. I take, therefore, the Greek and Latin, and indeed some of the yet unknown inscriptions, to have been cut at a comparatively modern date. Who knows whether Cosmas and his companions did not try their hands at a few?

Why should it be thought improbable that the different monks on Mount Sinai, who occupied the convent there at various ages, should have done their quota to puzzle the modern palaeographist and traveller? Is it absolutely impossible that the prefect of the Franciscan missionaries of Egypt, who visited the Wady in 1722, and his companions, who were well instructed in the Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Armenian, Turkish, English, Illyrian, German, and Bohemian languages, should have chiselled a few in the characters they were most expert? In the same manner might the occurrence of the cross be accounted for, if it were necessary, without precipitating oneself to the conclusion that "the occurrence, in connection with the inscriptions of the cross in various forms, indicates that their _origin_ should be attributed to the early Christians." But is it possible that such antiquaries as Drs. Beer, Lepsius, and Wilson, should be ignorant, or affect to be ignorant, that the cross was an ancient hieroglyphic, of a date long before the Christian era, well known by the name of _Crux Ansata_, and of the _Divina Taw_, and signified among the Egyptians "Life to come"? That the form of the cross was used among the Hebrews is conclusive from the fact that it was the ancient Hebrew mint letter for the [Hebrew: tav]. What, then, is the value of the arguments in behalf of the Nabathaean theory? All the specimens that have been given hitherto of the inscriptions, are no more in comparison with the vast numbers which literally cover the highest mountains, than a drop out of a bucket, including even those given in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of 1766, in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature_ of 1832, and by the Rev. Charles Forster of this year[1], and even adding the 1200 taken by M. Lottin de Laval. (See "NOTES AND QUERIES", Vol. iv., p. 332.)

[Footnote 1: _The One Primeval Language, &c._, by the Rev. Charles
Forster. The above is a compendium of two letters which the writer
addressed on the subject to his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin,
and the late Bishop of Norwich,--to the former from Paris, to the
latter from Alexandria. See _A Pilgrimage to the Land of my
Fathers_, vol. i. pp. 6-15. Mr. Forster's work did not appear
until about a year after the publication of part of the writer's
travels.]

MOSES MARGOLIOUTH.

ON A PASSAGE IN GOLDSMITH.

Goldsmith, in _The Deserted Village_, has the lines:

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
_A breath can make them, as a breath has made_;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied."

In this passage the fourth line, which I have given in italics, is traced by D'Israeli, in _Curiosities of Literature_, under the head of "Imitations and Similarities," to the French poet, De Caux, who, comparing the world to his hour-glass, says--

---- "C'est une verre qui luit,
Qu'un souffle peut _detruire_, et qu'un souffle a _produit_."

The turn given to the thought in the French has suggested to D'Israeli an emendation of the passage in Goldsmith. He proposes that the word "unmakes" should be substituted for "can make." The line would then read--

"A breath _unmakes_ them, as a breath has made."

This emendation seems to me to be alike ingenious and well-founded. The line itself is but the corollary of the one that precedes it; and in order to make the sense complete, it should contain antithetical expressions to correspond with "flourish" and "fade." Now, between "can make" and "made" there is nothing antithetical; but between "made" and "unmakes" there is.

In support of this view, I may quote one or two parallel passages, in which the antithesis is preserved. The first is a quatrain commemorating the devastating effects of an earthquake in the valley of Lucerne in 1808:

"O ciel! ainsi ta Providence
A tous les maux nous condamna:
Un souffle _eteint_ notre existence
Comme un souffle nous la _donna_."

The second is a line which occurs in _Curiosities of Literature_, and which I am compelled to quote from memory, having no access to that work. It is as follows:

"A breath _revived_ him, but a breath _o'erthrew_."

That Goldsmith wrote the line in question with the word "unmakes," there seems little reason to doubt. To say of princes and lords that "a breath can make them, as a breath has made," far from conveying any idea of their "fading," would be, on the contrary, to indicate the facile process by which they may be perpetuated. It would show how they may "flourish," but not how they may "fade."

Although this emendation in Goldsmith was pointed out many years ago, and recommends itself by its appositeness, and its obvious adaptation to the context, yet I believe it has never been introduced into any edition of that poet. I have before me two copies of _The Deserted Village_, and both contain the words "can make." As, however, among the many useful hints thrown out by "NOTES AND QUERIES," that of suggesting the emendation of obscure or difficult passages in our poets, appears to have met with the approbation of your readers, I trust some future editor of Goldsmith may be induced to notice this passage, and restore the text to its original accuracy.

HENRY H. BREEN.

St. Lucia.

Minor Notes.

_Biographical Dictionary._--May I beg for the assistance of "NOTES AND QUERIES" to enforce a want which I am sure is daily felt by thousands of educated Englishmen? The want I speak of is that of _a good Biographical Dictionary_, coming down to the middle of the century; a dictionary as good as the _Biog. Universelle_ for _foreign_ lives, and _a hundred times better for English lives_. Every one knows how meagre and unsatisfactory is that otherwise magnificent work in its English part. Why should we not have an abridged translation, with the home portion re-written?

Z. Z. Z.

_The Word Premises._--The use of the word _premises_ for houses, lands, and hereditaments, is surely incorrect. I have never found the word _praemissa_ used in any Latin writer in a sense that can sanction the modern application of its derivative. Johnson's authority supports the view that the word is perverted in being made to stand for houses and lands, as he says it is "in low language" that the noun substantive "premises" is used in that sense, as, "I was upon the _premises_," &c. The office of "the premises" in a deed, say the Law Dictionaries, is to express the names of the grantor and grantee, and to specify the thing granted. "The _premises_ is the former part of a deed, being all that which precedeth the _habendum_ or limitation of the estate." I believe the term "parcels" is applied, technically, to the specification of the property which forms the subject of a deed. In an instrument, it may not be wholly incorrect to refer by the term "premises" to the particulars premised, and, if an etymological inaccuracy, it may be excused for the sake of avoiding repetitions; but surely we ought not to speak of houses, lands, &c. by this term. I see I am not the first to call an editor's attention to this point, for, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of Jan., 1795, a correspondent complains of this improper application of the word, and attributes the perversion to the lawyers, "who," he says, "for the sake of brevity (to which, by-the-bye, they are not much attached), have accustomed themselves to the phrase, 'the aforesaid _premises_,' whence the word has come to be universally taken as a collective noun, signifying manors, tenements, and so on." The absurdity of such a use of the word is illustrated by putting it for animals, household goods, and personal estate, for which it may as well stand as for lands and houses.

W. S. G.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

_Play of George Barnwell:_--

"Last Friday a messenger came from Hampton Court to the Play House by
the Queen's command, for the manuscript of George Barnwell, for Her
Majesty's perusal, which Mr. Wilks carried to Hampton Court early on
Saturday morning; and we hear it is to be performed shortly at the
Theatre in Hampton Court, for the entertainment of the Royal Family,"
&c.--_Daily Post_, Monday, July 5. 1731.

H. E.

_Traditions from Remote Periods through few Links_ (Vol. iii., pp. 206. 237.):--

"My greatest boast in this line is, that I have conversed with Sir
Isaac Herd, the celebrated herald, and he had conversed with a person
who was present at the execution of Charles I."--Lord Campbell's
_Lives of the Chief Justices_, vol. ii. p. 304. note.

E. H. A.

Queries.

DEODANDS AND THEIR APPLICATION.

Blackstone states (1 _Comm._ p. 300.) that a deodand--

"Is forfeited to the king to be applied to pious uses, and distributed
in alms by his high almoner, though formerly destined to a more
superstitious purpose. It seems to have been originally designed, in
the blind days of Popery, as an expiation for the souls of such as
were snatched away by sudden death; and for that purpose ought
properly to have been given to holy church."

The authorities for this latter statement are Fitzh., _Abr._, tit. "Enditement," pt. 27., and Staunf., _P.C._, 20, 21., neither of which books are in my possession, nor in this remote district can I gain access to them. Hume, Lingard, Henry, and Rapin, omit all mention of this change in the destination of the deodand, at least so far as I can find. Fleta, who lived, according to Dr. Cowell (_Interpreter_, in verb. "Fleta"), tem. Ed. II., Ed. III., or, according to Jacob (_Law Dic._, in ver. "Fleta"), tem. Ed. I., says that--

"This deodand is to be sold to the poor, and the price distributed to
the poor for the soul of the king and all faithful people departed
this life."--_Interpreter_, in ver. "Deodand."

It would therefore appear that in Fleta's time it was settled law that deodands went to the Crown; nor does this writer seem to take any notice of their having been, at any time, payable to the Church. Hawkins, East, and I think Hale also, are equally silent upon the point.

Can any of your readers kindly supply the information as to when deodands first ceased to be given to the Church, and when they became the property of the Crown?

JONATHAN PEEL.

Minor Queries.

349. _Hell Paved with the Skulls of Priests._--The proverb "Hell is paved with good intentions" (Vol. ii. pp. 86. 140.), brings to my recollection a remark I once heard from the lips of a French priest. He was addressing an audience chiefly composed of students in divinity, and while descanting on the peculiar dangers to which ecclesiastics are exposed, and the obstacles they have to encounter at every step on the road to salvation, he said there could be no doubt that by far the greater number of them would incur eternal damnation. "It was this" (added he, with an emphasis which sent thrill of horror through all present), "It was this that made one of the early fathers assert, that Hell is paved with the skulls of priests." I think the preacher mentioned Tertullian as his authority for this singular sentiment, but he only gave the words: "L'enfer est pave de tetes de pretres." Can any of your readers point out the precise passage referred to?

HENRY H. BREEN.

St. Lucia.

350. _Charib._--Can any of your correspondents inform me what is the derivation and meaning of the word _Charib_? The Charibs were the ancient inhabitants, as is well known, of the smaller West Indian islands.

W. J. C.

St. Lucia.

351. _Thumb Bible._--Can any of your readers tell me the history of the Thumb Bible, reprinted by Longman, 1850? Who was "J. Taylor," who seems to have been the author? He has strangely spoilt Bishop Ken's Morning and Evening Hymns at the conclusion of his book.

HERMES.

352. _Tripos._--What is the origin of the term "tripos" as applied to the mathematical and classical honour lists in the university of Cambridge?

A. F. S.

353. _Louis Philippe and his Bag of Nails._--Has any of your correspondents heard a story about a bag of rusty nails which Louis Philippe used to carry about with him; with which he considered his fate as in some way connected; and which he lost a few days before February 24, 1848? If so, is it known whether the story is well authenticated?

R. D. H.

354. _Brass Statues at Windsor._--"The Brass Statues at Windsor," sold in 1646 by order of the House of Lords to pay the troops at Windsor:--What were these statues?

WAYLEN.

355. _Edmund Bohun._--Is it possible that some Trans-atlantic notist may be able to supply a scrap or two of intelligence respecting the brief career of Edmund Bohun, as Chief Justice of South Carolina, 1698-1701? I believe he died in the latter year, and was buried at Charlestown.

S. W. RIX.

Beccles.

356. _Bishop Trelawney._--To what parliamentary decision does Atterbury allude in the subjoined extract from the dedication to Trelawney, Bishop of Winchester, prefixed to his Sermons in four volumes, 1723?

"This and another parliamentary decision, which your lordship not long
after with equal difficulty obtained, and by which the bishop's sole
right to judge of the qualifications of persons applying for
institution was unutterably confirmed, are such instances of your
magnanimity and public spirit as will remain in memory while the
church or the law of England lasts."

E. H. A.

Minor Queries Answered.

_Companion Ladder._--Why are the stairs leading from the deck to the chief cabin of a ship called "the companion ladder?"

A CONSTANT READER.

[The _companion_ in merchant ships is a wooden porch placed over the
entrance or staircase of the cabin. Hence the ladder by which officers
ascend to and descend from the quarter-deck, is called the _companion
ladder_.]

_Macaulay's Ballad of the Battle of Naseby._--Where is Mr. Macaulay's ballad of the "Battle of Naseby" to be found printed entire? It is not republished in the last edition of his _Lays of Ancient Rome_.