io*s. ii. NOV. -'.;, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
435
A mistress moderately fair,
And good as Guardian Angels are,
Only belov'd, and loving me !
This latter wish was never gratified, for it was an '"impossible she" on whom he had fixed his eyes. In his charming essay 4 Of My Self ' perhaps the last thing that Cowley wrote, ne is as full of enthusiasm for a country life as he was in his boyhood. He says :
" That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which I confess, I wonder at my self) may appear at the latter end of an Ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other Verses. The beginning of it is boyish, but of this part which I here set down (if a very little were corrected) I should hardly now be much ashamed."
And then he quotes the three stanzas from
- A Vote ' with slight changes, such as " un-
known " for ignotei and " no Luxurie" instead of not luxury. His last words are these :
Nee vos dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos MUSJC, Libert as, Otia, Libri, Hortique Sylvajque anima remanente relinquam.
Nor by me e'r shall you, You of all Names the sweetest and the best, You Muses, Books, and Liberty and Rest ; You Gardens, Fields, and Woods forsaken be, As long as Life it self forsakes not me.
All my quotations, except the first, are taken from a copy of Bishop Sprat's edition (the fourth, 1674) of Cowley's works, which is enriched by the manuscript annotations of Dr. Hurd, who also attained episcopal dignity. The latter carefully verifies the Latin quotations, but he says nothing about the verses given above in that language, which do not seem to be of classic origin and are, I believe, the poet's own, drawn from his
- Plantarum Libri Duo,' printed in 1662.
I am unable to give the author of the lines sent by MR. HICHAM, but I think I have said enough to show that, if they were not com- posed by Abraham Cowley, they must have oeen written by an imitator of his style. Though the delights of a rural retreat have been celebrated by Horace, Virgil, Martial, and Claudian (' Old Man of Verona ') in par- ticular passages, all of them admirably trans- lated by our poet, he may be said to have made the subject peculiarly his own, for his thoughts were ever dwelling on it from his early boyhood until he caught cold in the Chertsey meadows, and, as Dr. Sprat says : "At last his death was occasioned by his very delight in the Country and the Fields, which he had long fancied above all other Pleasures." JOHN T. CURRY.
HERMIT'S CRUCIFIX (10 th S. ii. 228). The notches or conventionalized leaves with
which the crucifix in the Car Cliff Cave,
Derbyshire, is described by MR. AcKERLEYa*
being ornamented, are a peculiarity in the
carving, not itself any mark of date. But a
high authority apparently, writing in the
Penny Post for 1 July, 1890, observes that
examples of the form, which is known in
heraldry by the term " raguly : ' {. ., the
edges of the cross are made to have the
appearance of lopped trees would not
probably be found earlier than the fourteenth
century. "A cross is similarly represented
on a tomb of this date," says the same writer,
"in Bredon Church, in Warwickshire, and has been set up in the chancel. The wooded district may have suggested this form of the cross to be more appropriate, and bring to the mind of the Anchorite the words of the ancient hymn by Venantius :
Dicendo nationibus Regnavit in ligno Deus ; translated, or rather paraphrased, in ' Hymns Ancient and Modern '
How God the heathen's King should be, For God is reigning from the Tree.'
J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.
SUPPRESSION OF DUELLING IN EM;LAXJ (10 th S. ii. 367). Much information on this subject may be derived from the following sources :
1. Clifford Walton's * History of the British Standing Army, 1660-1700,' p. 583.
2. Steele's papers in the Spectator and Guardian, 1711-13.
3. John Cockburn's ' History of Duels, Shewing their Heinous Nature and the Neces- sity of Suppressing them, 3 1720. Especially p. 352. The author was well known in 1G89 as the Jacobite minister of Ormiston.
4. * Cautions and Advices,' by an old Officer, 1760. Especially pp. 154-69.
5. 'Duelling,' by Granville Sharp, second edition, 1790. The preface to the first edition, dated 1773, says that the practice of duelling has of late years increased to a most alarm- ing degree. The tract deals chiefly with the state of the law as to manslaughter and murder.
6. * Duelling and the Laws of Honour, by J. C. Bluett, 1836. Especially chap.ix., where suggestions are made for constituting "courts of honour," and forming k ' societies " for the express purpose of opposing the practice of duelling. At p. 151 of the second edition of this little book it is suggested that her gracious Majesty the Queen should, with the approbation of her royal consort, declare her detestation of this crime, and refu- el uellist admission to her drawing-room. Her example might be a powerful instrument in lessening this great national sin. Ladies of
