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Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Number 38 July 20 1850 by Various
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The most ancient, as well as the most striking instance, is recorded in the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis:--
Homer affords two instances of a similar kind: thus, Patroclus prophesies the death of Hector :--
Again, Hector in his turn prophesies the death of Achilles by the hand of Paris :--
This was not merely a poetical fancy, or a superstitious faith of the ignorant, for we find it laid down as a great physical truth by the greatest of the Greek philosophers, the divine Socrates:--
In Xenophon, also, the same idea is expressed, and, if possible, in language still more definite and precise:--
Diodorus Siculus, again, has produced great authorities on this subject:--
From the ancient writers I yet wish to add one more authority; and I do so especially, because the doctrine of the Stagirite is therein recorded. Sextus Empiricus writes,--
"Methinks I am a prophet new inspired; And thus, expiring, do foretel of him."
"O, I could prophesy, But that the earthy and cold hand of death Lies on my tongue."
Reckoning, therefore, from the time of Jacob, this belief, whether with or without foundation, has been maintained upwards of 3500 years. It was grounded on the assumed fact, that the soul became divine in the same ratio as its connection with the body was loosened or destroyed. In sleep, the unity is weakened but not ended: hence, in sleep, the material being dead, the immaterial, or divine principle, wanders unguided, like a gentle breeze over the unconscious strings of an AEolian harp; and according to the health or disease of the body are pleasing visions or horrid phantoms present to the mind of the sleeper. Before death, the soul, or immaterial principle, is, as it were, on the confines of two worlds, and may possess at the same moment a power which is both prospective and retrospective. At that time its connection with the body being merely nominal, it partakes of that perfectly pure, ethereal, and exalted nature which is designed for it hereafter.
As the question is an interesting one, I conclude by asking, through the medium of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," if a belief in this power of prophesy before death be known to exist at the present day?
AUGUSTUS GUEST.
London, July 8.
T.T.W.
Burnley, July 9. 1850.
FRANCIS LENTON THE POET.
In a MS. obituary of the seventeenth century, preserved at Staunton Hall, Leicestershire, I found the following:--
"May 12. 1642. This day died Francis Lenton, of Lincoln's Inn, Gent."
Edward F. Rimbault.
Minor Notes.
"To match this saint, there was another, As busy and perverse a brother, An haberdasher of small wares, In politics and state affairs,"
Has not been wrongly given by Dr. Grey to Lilburn, and whether Prynne is not rather the person described. Dr. Grey admits in his note that the application of the passage to Lilburn involves an anachronism, Lilburn having died in 1657, and this passage being a description of one among
"The quacks of government who sate"
to consult for the Restoration, when they saw ruin impending.
CH.
C. Forbes.
July 2.
"A turnpike road from Ashby to Whitwick, passes through Talbot Lane. Of this lane and the famous large pot at Warwick Castle, we have an old traditionary couplet:
"'There's nothing left of Talbot's name, But Talbot's Pot and Talbot's Lane.'
"Richard Beauchamp Earl of Warwick, died in 1439. His eldest daughter, Margaret, was married to John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, by whom she had one son, John Viscount Lisle, from whom the Dudleys descended, Viscount Lisle and Earl of Warwick."
It would therefore appear that neither the armour nor the pot belonged to the "noble Guy"--the armour being comparatively of modern manufacture, and the pot, it appears, descended from the Talbots to the Warwick family: which pot is generally filled with punch on the birth of a male heir to that noble family.
W. Reader.
QUERIES.
NICHOLAS FERRAR OF LITTLE GIDDING.
How he compiled or edited "the original MS." he states with much candour in his Preface :
"The editor's intention," in altering the narrative, "was to give what is not observed in the original, a regular series of facts; and through the whole a sort of evenness and simplicity of stile equally free from meanness and affectation. In short, to make the old and the new, as far as he could, uniform; that he might not appear to have sewed a piece of new cloth to an old garment, and made its condition worse by his endeavours to mend it."
Again, at page 308., he says,
"There is an antient MS. in folio, giving an account of Mr. N. Ferrar, which at length, from Gidding, came into the hands of Mr. Ed. Ferrar of Huntingdon, and is now in the possession of the editor. Mr. Peck had the use of this MS. as appears by several marginal notes in his handwriting; from this and some loose and unconnected papers of Mr. Peck.... the editor, as well as he was able, has made out the foregoing memoirs."
Can any of your numerous correspondents inform me if this "antient MS." is still in existence, and in whose possession?
Peckard was related to the Ferrars, and was Master of Magdalen Coll., Cambridge.
In "A Catalogue of MSS. at Gidding," Peckard, p. 306., the third article is "Lives, Characters, Histories, and Tales for moral and religious Instruction, in five volumes folio, neatly bound and gilt, by Mary Collet." This work, with five others, "undoubtedly were all written by N. Ferrar, Sen.," says Dr. Peckard; and in the Memoir, at page 191., he gives a list of these "short histories," ninety-eight in number, "which are still remaining in my possession;" and adds further, at p. 194.,
Is there any print or view in existence of the "Nunnery," at Little Gidding?
John Miland.
STUKELEY'S "STONEHENGE."
Can you or any of your contributors give me any further information about this inscription?
"To make the reader some amends for such a loss I have given a specimen of supposed Druid writing, out of Lambecius' account of the Emperor's library at Vienna. 'Tis wrote on a very thin plate of gold with a sharp-pointed instrument. It was in an urn found at Vienna, rolled up in several cases of other metal, together with funeral exuviae. It was thought by the curious, one of those epistles which the Celtic people were wont to send to their friends in the other world. The reader may divert himself with trying to explain it."
Has this inscription ever been explained, and how? Stukeley's book is by no means a rare one; therefore I have not trusted myself to copy the inscription: and such as feel disposed to help me in my difficulty would doubtless prefer seeing the Doctor's own illustration at p. 31.
Henry Cunliffe.
Hyde Park Street.
ATHELSTANE'S FORM OF DONATION.--MEANING OF "SOMAGIA."
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