Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/330

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324


NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. OCT. 21, 1911.


No. 1061, " Index animi sermo." This again is put down as a law maxim. It is worth noting that Marcellus Palingenius in his ' Zodiacus Vitae ' i. 194, has

Index est animi sermo, morumque fidelis Haud dubie testis.

No. 1528, " Mens sequa in arduis." King offers no account of this beyond saying that it is the inscription under Warren Hastings's portrait in the Council Chamber of Calcutta. Surely the ultimate source is Horace, 4 Odes,' II. iii. 1-2,

^Equam memento rebus in arduis Servare mentem.

No. 2185, " Qufe prosunt omnibus artes," is, we are told, the motto of the Surgeons' Company. The origin of the words is not given. They are Ovid's. See 'Metamor- phoses,' i. 523 (Apollo is speaking) : Ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herb is, Nee prosunt domino, quse prosunt omnibus artes.

Pope may have had this in mind when, addressing Samuel Garth in his Second Pastoral, he wrote

Hear what from Love unpractis'd hearts endure, From Love, the sole disease thou canst not cure.

No. 2491, " Septem convivium, iiovem convitium," is described as a proverb, without further reference. But see chap. 5 of Julius Capitolinus's Life of the Emperor Verus in the ' Historia Augusta ' : " Septem con- vivium, novem vero convicium ll \ and com- pare 11 S. i. 433.

No. 3019. Absente auxilio perquirimus undique frustra,

Sed nobis ingens indicis auxilium est.

This is the first in King's list of ' Adespota.'" Had he given the immediate source from which the quotation was taken, the task of tracing its author might possibly have been lightened. Can the couplet have been written for the express purpose of being placed at the head of an index V I have noted a curious parallel. The English - Welsh Dictionary by the Rev. John Walters (1721-97: see 'D.N.B.'), Rector of Lan- dough, Glamorganshire (London, 1794), bears on its title-page the motto Lexicon hoc tandem vulgatum (en accipe) curat Ne tendas dubio tramite, Lector, iter.

"Frustra. . . .perquirere is in Lucretius, vi. 381-2.

No. 3022 (among the 'Adespota'). " Audax ad omnia foemina, quse vel amat vel odit. ?J Burton quotes this in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' not very far from the end of III. ii. ii. iv. The words are taken from the so-called Epistle of Valerius to Rufinus, 'Ne ducat uxorem,' which is


printed among the spurious works of St. Jerome in Vallarsi's ed., Verona, 1742, vol. xi. col. 245 (second numbering), and in Migne's 'Patr. Lat.,' vol. xxx. col. 259. See Lange's 'Polyanthea,' s.v. 'Mulier,' and W. Teuffel's 'Hist, of Rom. Lit,, 5 trans, by G. C. W. Warr, vol. ii. 477, 7. But the epistle is included as Walter Map's in his 'De Nugis Curialium,' Distinctio IV. cap. iii., p. 149 in Thomas Wright's edition, Camden Society, 1850. I quote the passage as given in Vallarsi :

" Livia yirum suum interfecit, quern nimis odiit. Lucillia suum, quern nimis amavit. Ilia sponte miscuit aconitum : hsec decepta f urorem propinavit pro amoris poculo .... Exemplo harum experimentum cape : quod audax est ad omnia qua3 amat vel odit femina [" qucecumque amat," &c., in Wright's text of ' De Nugis Curia- lium ']."

Livia is the wife of Tiberius's son Drusus, unless the reference is to the legend about Augustus's consort. The story of Lucilia has been familiarized by Tennyson's 'Lucre- tius.'

No. 3036, " Defuncti ne injuria affician- tur." - Under this " adespoton " King refers to No. 462, " De mortuis nil nisi bonum,' 1 where he quotes from Diogenes Laertius, i. 69, the maxim ascribed to Chilo : TOV TeOvijKOTa p.}] /caKoAoyetv. "Defuncti," &c., appears to be simply a translation of the Greek. Philip Camerarius is evidently referring to the same maxim when he writes ('Op. Subcis.,' Cent. I. cap. iii.) " Extat enim praaceptum Sapientum : Defuncti iniuria ne afficiuntor." In Gesner's trans- lation of Stobseus's ' Florilegium ' TOV rere- Xevr^Kora /XT) /caKoAoyet (cxxii.) is rendered " Defunctum non maledictis afficias.'*

No. 3039,

De male queesitis vix gaudet tertius haeres, Nee habet eventus sordida praeda bonos.

King calls this "a mediaeval epigram, probably prompted by the seizure of church property," but gives no reference for its occurrence. It was pointed out by Novus in *N. & Q.' as far back as 1 S. x. 216, that the lines are quoted in Walsingham's 'Historia Anglicana.' See H. T. Riley's edition in the Rolls Series, vol. i. p. 481. Riley's note, while not overlooking the metrical error, calls the lines " rather Ovidian.' 1 He does not seem to have been aware that

Non habet eventus sordida prseda bonos

is Ovidian. It comes from ' Am ores,' i. 10, 48. EDWARD BENSLY.

Bad Wildungen.