74
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. ix. JAN. 21, 1914.
It does not, however, need a very large
acquaintance with the literature of the time
to discover the connexion ; it is, indeed,
obvious, even to such a comparatively " un-
informed " person as myself. Sidney began
a translation of Du Bartas, but did not
finish it a fact which is referred to in these
verses ; he died in 1586. Sylvester's ver-
sion appeared in 1598. What more natural
than that, in publishing it, he should pay
such a tribute to his greater precursor ?
That the verses were Sylvester's own i clear
from the reference to them in the com-
mendatory poem by R. R. on a later page.
It does not seem necessary to say anything
further in answer to SIB EDWIN DURNING-
LAWBENCE'S argument. C. C. B.
The answer, I imagine, to the editorial query at the last reference is that Apelles could mean " without a skin " if the parents of the Greek painter had given their child a, name compounded of alpha privative and the Latin word pellis.
Credat Judseus Apella !
Certainly, in the days when most etymolo- gists had taken a pledge of total abstention from evidence, the explanation of Apella in the above sentence of Horace (' Sat..' I. v. 100) as " sine pelle " (circumcised) seems to have excited little emotion. It is found in Porphyrion, Pseudo-Acron, and the commentator Cruquianus, and adopted by more than one writer of the Renaissance. It was rejected, however, by several six- teenth-century scholars, Cruquius's remark being " mihi plane videtur ridiculum." When it was generally recognized that Apella was a common cognomen among libertini, and of Greek origin, the delusion was already on its death-bed. But, like many other delusions, it was a most unconscion- able time dying, and last century found it still lingering. Orelli thought it necessary to- contradict it in his edition of Horace. So recently as the Ninth Series it has ad- vanced its miscreated front in ' N. & Q.,' and been denounced by DR. LEEPER (9 S. iv. 250) as a " sheer impossibility " belonging to " the pre-scientific stage of philology." EDWARD BENSLY.
At p. 11, ante, I showed that it was an in- disputable fact that Milton in his Epitaph on Shakespeare, which appeared in the Second Folio of the plays, 1632, derived not only his iniagery of the " starre-ypointed " pyramid with the meaning of a Beacon, a "Bacon," but also his actual words, " Hallow'd Re- liques," from p. BS in Joshua Sylvester's
translation of ' Du Bartas, His Divine
Weekes and Workes,' 1605. Milton must
have been very familiar with this work, as
is shown by the use he makes of it in his
- Paradise Lost.' It is, therefore, no longer
open to cavil or question, but is an actually proved fact, that Milton tells us quite clearly that " Bacon is Shakespeare." This result is not dependent upon, nor is it in any way affected by, the meaning which I ascribe to Apelles. We read in Horace " credat Ju- daeus apella," the correct translation of which is " let a circumcised Jew believe." Editors have obscured the real meaning of this passage by printing " apella" with a capital A, as if Horace had possessed some utterly unknown friend named Apella. It is, how- ever, practically certain that Horace, in the fancied superiority of his own scepticism, was sneering at the superstitious, credulous, " circumcised " son of Abraham.
Again, " trahere pellem " means "to unmask," and is a well-known classical phrase. The writer of the verses upon the pyramid, on p. B L > of Sylvester's translation, tells us that Bacon wrote under " the skin," " the mask " of Sidney. He also says :
This Lovely Venus first to Limne began ne. This tells us that ' Venus and Adonis ' (which the author describes as " the first heire of my invention," meaning thereby his invention of the name of William Shake- speare) was, in fact, written by Bacon. Then he closes the verses with :
Not daring meddle with Apelles Table. In this way he tells us that he is not going further to refer to the table, the list, the catalogue of the numerous important works which will eventually be assigned to their real author, Francis Bacon, when the skin, the mask, the pseudonym that hides his identity has been stripped off.
EDWIN DURNING-LAWREXCE.
13, Carlton House Terrace, S.W.
JULES VERNE (US. viii. 168, 489). In answer to MR. LING, my memory embalms the most delightful journals of my boyhood, and I remember the following serial tales appearing in The Boy^s Own Paper : ' The Boy Captain ' (' Dick Sands ' in book-form), vol. ii., Oct., 1879 Sept., 1880 ; ' The Crypto- gram,' vol. hi., 1880-81 ; sequel, vol. iv., 1881-2 ; ' The Mysterious Island ' (' Godfrey Morgan '), vol. v., 1882-3 ; ' The Star of the South ' (afterwards altered to ' Star of the Settlement,' as it infringed some well-known novelist's copyright title), vol. vii., 18845 ; ' Clipper of the Clouds,' vol. ix., 1886-7 ; ' Castle of the Carpathians,' vol. xi., 1889-90.
