218
NOTES AND QUERIES. m s. iv. SEPT. o, 1911.
A full account of the scene, which took
place during the trial of a prisoner for utter-
ing a note, appeared in The West Surrey
Times, 4 and 11 August, 1860. The late
Serjeant Ballantine, who had appeared as
counsel in several cases before Mr. Justice
Blackburn, in ' Some Experiences of a
Barrister's Life,' 1890 ed., p. 333, gives
a brief but just account of the transaction ;
and a full and detailed narrative is included
in a pamphlet published by Mr. W. J.
Evelyn, entitled ' A Letter addressed to the
Magistrates of the County of Surrey,' to
which a plan of the court is prefixed. As a
matter of history, it may be added that the
fine was paid, but afterwards remitted.
A. RHODES.
SIB JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S POCKET-BOOKS (US. iii. 267, 313). MB. HOBACE BLEACKLEY may like to know that twenty-seven of Sir Joshua's pocket-books now belong to the Royal Academy ; see Devon and Corn- wall Notes and Queries, vol. vi. part vii., July, 1911, p. 214. H. TAPLEY-SOPEB.
Royal Albert Memorial, Exeter.
" WIMPLE " (11 S. i. 202, 498 ; iv. 138). In my reply at the last reference for " spellie " read skellie, and for the second " right " read left. As different forms of the line occur, I may add that my quotation was made from ' The Book of Scottish Poems,' edited by J. Ross. W. B.
0n
A Dictionary of Orienlal Quotations (Arabic and
Persian). By Claud Field. (Sonnenschein &
Co.)
IP Orientals were in the habit of making long quotations from their standard authors in the course of conversation or otherwise, this book might be of considerable service to them. But every one who has lived amongst them knows that they no more do this than Englishmen embellish their talk with Hamlet's soliloquy or Portia's dissertation on the quality of mercy. Nevertheless this book will be of use in assisting pur ^fellow- country men to understand and enter into'the spirit of the East.
Mr. Field has shown great industry in com- piling this anthology, and we do not complain of his confining himself to those writers who have received the honours of an English translation. It would, we think, have been an advantage if the Arabic and Persian extracts had been placed in separate sections. A Persian and an Arab differ from each other as much as a Slav differs from an Anglo-Saxon, and it would have been more convenient to the reader if he could have studied their respective temperaments, so far as
they are expressed in literature, en gros, if we may
use the phrase, rather than en detail. The pre-
Islamitic authors might also have been con-
veniently separated from those belonging to the
centuries after Mohammed.
With regard to the Persian section, only two quotations have been given from Firdausi, who may be regarded as the Malory of Persia and the representative of the romantic spirit in Iran. The numerous quotations from the ' Anwar-i- Suheili ' and the later Persian writers show the enormous influence which the introduction of Islam, with its fatalistic creed, had upon the mind of the naturally light-hearted Persian, and which the scientific spirit of Omar Khayyam, with its elaborate inquiry into the How and the Why, ineffectually endeavoured to turn into more agnostic channels. The Persian bent is seen in such a quotation as the'f olio whig from Shabistari :
Did the Musalman understand what the Idol is, He would know there is religion even in idolatry.
Here it must be remembered that the Persian was never a but-parast, or idol- worshipper, but the pre-Islamite Arab was, and so long as the worship of Yaghuth and Allat was sincere, in the Persian mind it was a case for tolerance.
One quotation from the ' Rubai'yat ' may be interesting to English readers, partly because it is not included in FitzGerald's paraphrase, and partly because it elucidates the problem of Omar's faith. Literally translated from the Persian, the passage runs :
" One hand upon the Koran, and one hand upon the cup, at one time near to the lawful, at another time near to the unlawful, the alabaster dome of turquoise sees me neither an absolute unbeliever nor a complete Musulman."
Mr. Whinfield, whose translation is followed by Mr. Field, turns the lines as under :
One hand with Koran, one with wine-cup dight, I half incline to wrong, and half to right ; This crystal azure dome beholds in me A sorry Moslem, yet not heathen quite.
This is as near, perhaps, as translation can go.
In a work of this kind, in which several hundred quotations are transliterated, misprints are in- evitable, but they are rare. In the quotation jiven above we have made a slight correction, as 'half incline" is misprinted "have incline," while n the Persian text nizd should be nazd. On p. 198 riz-i-wagha should be ruz-i-wagha.
On the whole, the extracts have been carefully jhosen, and the book should be useful in popular- zing the wisdom of the East. Some phrases lave, indeed, a familiar ring to English ears. ' The camel will not go through the eye of a needle " (p. 263) recalls a well-known passage in
- he New Testament ; while "He bites his finger
n spite against strangers " (p. 286) is remi- niscent of a famous faction-fight in ' Romeo and Juliet.'
LORD DUNRAVEN opens The Nineteenth Century vith a political discourse on the Constitution, n which he has been convicted of inaccuracy
- oncerning the Parliament Bill by The West-
ninster Gazette. Mr. J. Ellis Barker in * The Labour Revolt and its Meaning ' gives some striking figures of the wages of the poor, and says hat " the unskilled American negroes in the South
