Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/142

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136


NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. VIL FEE. is, 1913.


there were several parsleys. Parsley was used, at funeral entertainments <! in the later ages of Greece, not like Homer's, of flesh alone, but all sorts of beans, peas, lettuces, parsley, eggs." &c. (Potter's ' Antiquities,' 1775).

Parsley was brought to the table by the Greeks. The variety used in this manner is not likely to have been the same as that used for garlands : the latter were probably of the wild, or water, parsley, and, in all probability, are what Horace refers to when he invited Phyllis on Maecenas's birthday.

With respect to the exact meaning (English) of apium belonging to local and historical botany, the latter may be ; but it will be, I think, difficult to name a locality where, if parsley be asked for, celery w^ould be given, or vice versa.

ALFRED CHAS. JONAS.

" SEX HOBAS SOMNO " (11 S. vi. 411, 474 ; vii. 71). The following extract from J. G. Seume's (1763-1810) autobiographical sketch ' Mein Leben ' ("Meyers Volksbticher," 359- 360, p. 32) might be of interest in this connexion :

"Ich hatte, wenn ich nicht Lust hatte ?A\ arbeiten, ein gutes Talent zu schlafen : und tat mir etwas Gutliches iin Morgensehlaf, da mich vor Mitternaeht die Wanzen in dern alten verdammten Baue nicht ruhen liessen. Das sagte ieh ihm [Martini, his headmaster] geradezu ; und er brummte. Einmal fand ich, als ich etwas spat aufstand, von seiner Hand rait Kreide an die Stubentiir geschrieben : Sex septemve horas dormisse sat est iuvenique fsenique. Ieh veranderte das ve in que : und nun lautete es : Sex septemque (sechs und sieben, also dreizehn) horas. So blieb es stehen, bis er wieder kani. 'Ei, seht doch die Variante,' rief er halb komisch, halb strafencl ; 'nicht iibel, gar nicht iibel fur Faulenzer, wie wir sind.' Hiitte er den Hexameter nicht ungebiihrlieh zum Hepta- meter verlangert, so hatte die Schnurre nicht stattfinden konnen."

HEINRICH MUTSCHMANN. University College, Nottingham.

REFERENCE WANTED (11 S. vii. 10). The Lord Coventry ('D.N.B.'), 1578-1640, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, was appointed Lord High Steward for that day, and addressed Mervin, Lord Audley, &c., the prisoner, as 'follows :

" Oh, think upon your offences, which are so heinous and so horrible, that a Christian man ought scarce to name them, and such as the de- praved nature of man (which of itself carrieth a man to all sin) abhorreth." Trial of Mervin, Lord Audley, Ac. (Cobbett's 'State Trials,' vol. iii. 7 Charles I., 1631).

These words were partly quoted by Lord Macaulay in his essay on Frederic the Great, p, 496, vol. i., of his ' Critical and Historical


Essays,' 1884. A similar instance of human depravity to that of Lord Audley was that of John Atherton, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, who was hanged at Dublin 5 Dec., 1640 ('D.N.B.'),; Wood's 'Athense Oxoni- enses,' ii. 892). F. C. WHITE.

Cardiff.

"SABAFT" (11 S. vi. 349. 418). Both The Saturday Review, 24 Aug., 1912, and MR. HOCIAN attribute seven weeks to Lent : " the whole seven weeks of Lent," says the one ; " the penitential seven weeks of Lent," writes the other. In the Anglican branch of the Church it is usual to refer to the term as being of six weeks only, though I have no doubt that Rome and England mean to indicate the same length of time i.e., from Ash Wednesday to, and including,. Easter Eve, Sundays being, as ever, festivals.

ST. SWITHIN.

"Or SORTS" (11 S. vii. 10,56,117). I have heard the replies under this heading criti- cized on the ground that they make the phrase too modern. The critic believed that " of sorts " used in a depreciatory sense was the latest slang at Cambridge thirty years ago. It certainly goes back twenty-four years, as it occurs in Rudyard Kipling's play ' The Story of the Gadsbys/ published in 1889. In the sixth scene :

Mrs. Gadsby. Oh, what 's that ugly red streak inside your arm ?

Capt. G. Nothing. It 's a mark of sorts.

Here the speaker is making light of the scar.. (Cf. " Tush, sweetheart, 'tis but a scratch.") In the last scene :

Mafflin. If I could slay off a brother or two, I s'pose 1 should be a Marquis of sorts.

Here the speaker is implying that he has no high opinion of being a marquis.

M. H. DODDS.

SCHOPEiraAUER AND WlMBLEDON (11 S.

vii. 90). The home of the school at Wimble- don conducted by the Rev. Thomas Lan- caster, at which Schopenhauer was for a- short time a pupil, was the fine old Jacobean house in the High Street known for the last forty or fifty years as Eagle House. It is now, and has for more than a quarter of a century been, the home of the well-known architect and scholar Sir Thomas Graham Jackson, Bt., R.A. Sir Thomas contributed a very interesting account of his beautiful house which he described as "perhaps unique as a survival of the smaller rural or semi-rural homes of the prosperous London merchant in the seventeenth century "