gretted that from its great historical interest the topography of both Greenwich and its suburbs has been so little investigated. GEORGE W. BENNETT.

sex.

Pillory (2nd S. vi. 245. 278.) —In reply to the inquiry of T. N. B., there is, or was two or three years ago, a pillory in the church at Rye, in SusIt was kept in a part of one of the aisles, used as a kind of lumber place. The last time it was used, I was told, was in 1813; when a Mr. Hughes and a Mr. Robins were put in the pillory at Rye, and imprisoned for two years, for aiding in the escape of two French general officers.

OCTAVIUS MORGAN.

Sebastianus Franck (2nd S. vi. 232.) He was an Anabaptist and mystic of Woerden in Holland. He taught with the Stoics that all sins were equal, and that all sects and religions belonged to the true Church. He despised the Holy Scriptures, and insisted solely on the spirit. He was opposed by Luther, Melancthon, and others of the Reformers, and died before Luther in 1545. Α work, in which he appears to have satirised the female sex, is strongly censured in a Treatise on Matrimony by Frederus, and by Luther in the preface to the same.

The above account is taken from Jöcher's AllΑλιεύς. gemeines Gelehrten Lexicon. Dublin.

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.

We are indebted to Mr. Albany Fonblanque, Jun., for a little volume entitled How We are Governed; or, The Crown, the Senate, and the Bench. A Handbook of the Constitution, Government, Laws, and Power of Great Britain. In the form of Letters, Mr. Fonblanque furnishes brief sketches of the constitution of England, and by whom and in what way the country is governed: treating, as he goes on, of the Origin of that Constitutionthe Prerogative of the Crown-the Composition and Privileges of the two branches of the Legislature - our Financial System- -our principles of Local Government

the Church, the Army, the Navy, and the Law-our Courts of Law and Equity, and their Procedure, and, lastly, of the Law of Evidence. It is scarcely necessary to insist upon the utility of a work of this nature, if carefully and accurately compiled; and we are bound to speak of How We are Governed as a volume which has been prepared with great care, and which furnishes very accurate information in a very clear and pleasant form.

Messrs. Routledge have added to their Series of British Poets an edition of Godfrey of Bulloigne, or Jerusalem Delivered, by Torquato Tasso, translated by Edward Fairfax. Edited by Robert Aris Wilmott, Incumbent of Bearwood. Mr. Wilmott has aimed at a popular edition, and tells us that we shall find "the Archaisms occasionally modified." This may be popular; but we doubt its propriety; and if, as he admits, "the language of Fairfax is commonly simple and unaffected," there can be little reason for making it "assume a modern dress with easy elegance." Mr. Wilmott's Biographical Sketch of Fairfax is very pleasantly written.

The Society for making known on the Continent the Principles of the Church of England have just issued Histoire de la Reforme en Angleterre, par le Rev. F. C. Massingberd, Traduit de l'Anglais. Edité, avec une Preface par le Rev. Frederic Godfray. The popularity of Mr. Massingberd's little volume is well known, and this translation of it into French is certainly well calculated to advance the objects of the Society. Students of Spanish Literature are indebted to Messrs. Williams and Norgate for the reprint of a very interesting specimen of the early Drama of Spain, La Gran Semiramis, Tragedia del Capitan Cristoval de Virues, Escrita A.D. 1579. The original is of very great scarcity, and it work cannot fail to excite, may be the means of inducing is to be hoped that the attention which this remarkable

its editor to produce, not only the more valuable of Virues' other Dramas, but also his Lyrical Poems, and a good life of the Poet.

In a little volume entitled Notes on Ancient Britain and the Britons, the Rev. William Barnes has given us the result of his Collections for a course of Lectures on this subject; and has produced a series of sketches of the Ancient Britons, their language, laws, and mode of life, and of their social state as compared with that of the Saxons, which will be read with considerable interest.

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Notes.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD SUPERSTITION.

(Continued from 2nd S. v. 125.)

It is too often lost sight of, that Etymologies are matters of history, matters of fact; though of course when history fails we must have recourse to speculation and conjecture. How deceptive the latter is, all students of etymology must be aware. Words are generated in infinitely various ways, and spring from all the accidents of circumstance, and the caprices of fancy. We often meet with derivations which we stumble at on first sight as being most far-fetched, yet they turn out on examination to be historically correct; and, on the other hand, we often meet with derivations which at once carry conviction with them, so obvious, apt, and simple are they, yet on examination they prove false. I feel convinced we shall gain more by following up Cicero's clue than by conjectures which have only a certain plausibility to recommend them. Let me repeat his account of the matter:

"They who used to pray and offer sacrifices whole day's together, that their children might survive them, were called Superstitious, which name had afterwards a wider application given to it."

In my former Note, to which the present is supplementary, I suggested that this extreme anxiety on the part of the Superstitiosi that their children might survive them, was probably caused by their desire to secure to themselves after death the Rites of Sepulture, which the ancients believed to be all-important. I shall now proceed to give some illustrations of this belief, even though I cannot pretend to establish the supposed connexion between it and the proceedings of the Supersti

tiosi.

Solomon declares in Eccles. vi. 3.: "If a man beget an hundred children and live many years, and that he have no burial; I say that an untimely birth is better than he."

Bp. Pearson, in treating of the Fifth Article of the Creed, has a long and interesting note on the subject, of which I shall only extract a part, as his work is so accessible and well-known. In arguing that Hades is a place and not a state, he refers to "the judgment of the ancient Greeks," "because there were many which they believed to be dead, and to continue in the state of death, which yet they believed not to be in Hades, as

For instance, it might be said that when the doctrine of the Soul's Immortality was first introduced amongst the ancient Romans, they who first embraced it, and believed that they should survive death, were called Superstites and Superstitiosi, or Survivors. This is far more probable than most of the derivations assigned for Superstitio, and yet it has not an historical leg to stand on.

those who died before their time, and those whose bodies were unburied." He then proceeds: :-

"The opinion of the Ancient Greeks in this case is excellently expressed by Tertullian, who shows three kinds of men to be thought not to descend ad inferos when they die; the first, Insepulti, the second Aori, the third Biaothanati. 'Creditum est, insepultos non ante ad inferos redigi quam justa perceperint.'-De Anim. c. 56. Aiunt et immatura morte præventas eousque vagari isthic, donec reliquatio compleatur ætatis, quacum pervixissent, si non intempestive obiissent.'-Ibid. 'Proinde extorres inferum habebuntur, quas vi ereptas arbitrantur, præcipue per atrocitates suppliciorum; crucis dico, et securis, et gladii, et fera.'. Ibid. The souls then of those whose bodies were unburied were thought to be kept out of Hades till their funerals were performed; and the souls of them who died an untimely or violent death, were kept from the same place until the time of their natural death should come. Of that of the Insepulti, he produceth the example of Patroclus: Secundum Homericum Patroclum funus in somnis de Achille flagitantem, quod non alias adire portas inferum posset, arcentibus eum longe animabus sepultorum.'-Ibid. The place he intended is Iliad, v. 71. In the same manner he describes Elpenor, Odyss. A. 51.; where it is the observation of Eustathius: Or Sóta v ToÎS Ἕλλησι, τὰς τῶν ἀθάπτων ψυχὰς μὴ ἀναμίγνυσθαι ταῖς λοιπαῖς. Legimus præterea in sexto insepultorum animas vagas esse,' says Servius on neid, iii. 67. The place which he intended, I suppose, is this:

Hæc omnis, quam cernis, inops inhumataque turba est; Portitor ille Charon; hi, quos vehit unda, sepulti, Nec ripas datur horrendas nec fauca fluenta Transportare prius, quam sedibus ossa quierunt. Centum errant annos, volitantque hæc littora circum.' Virg. Æn. vi. 325. Thus he is to be understood in the description of the funeral of Polydorus, n. iii. 62.:

'Ergo instauramus Polydoro funus, et ingens Aggeritur tumulo tellus, animamque sepulcro Condimus.'

Not that anima does here signify the body, as some have observed; but that the soul of Polydorus was at rest, when his body had received funeral rites, as Servius: Legimus præterea in sexto insepultorum animas vagas esse, et hinc constat non legitime sepultum fuisse. Rite ergo, reddita legitima sepultura, redit anima ad quietem sepulcri,' saith Servius, n. iii. 67. ; or rather, in the sense of Virgil, ad quietem inferni, according to the petition of Palinurus, En. vi. 37.

• Sedibus ut saltem placidis in morte quiescam.' And that the soul of Polydorus was so wandering about the place where his body lay unburied, appeareth out of Euripides in Hecuba, v. 30.; and in the Troades of the same poet, this aλn, or erratio vagabunda insepultorum is acknowledged by the chorus, v. 1073. And when their bodies were buried, then their souls passed into Hades, to the rest. So was it with Polydorus, and that man mentioned in the history of the philosopher Athenagoras, whose umbra or phasma walked after his death.'- Plin. 1. vii. Epist. 27. This was the case of the Insepulti." - Bp. Pearson, Dobson's ed. 1847, pp. 353-355.

See also the work on Pompeii (one of the L. E. K. series), Lond. 1881-2, in which, in the chapter on Tombs, this subject is treated of at some length.

In the narrative of the sufferings of Byron and the crew of H. M. ship "Wager" on the coast of S. America occurs a curious illustration of the

146 OCT. 16. '58. [2nd S. VI. 146.,

:

"The reader will remember the shameful rioting, mutiny, and recklessness which disgraced the crew of the 'Wager; nor will he forget the approach to cannibalism and murder on one occasion. These men had just returned from a tempestuous navigation, in which their hopes of escape have been crushed; and now what thoughts disturbed their rest-what serious consultations were they which engaged the attention of these sea-beaten men? Long before Cheap's Bay had been left, the body of a man had been found on the hill named Mount Misery. He was supposed to bave been murdered by some of the first gang who left the island. This body had never been buried, and to such a neglect did the men now ascribe the storms which had lately afflicted them; nor would they rest until the remains of their comrade were placed beneath the earth, when each evidently felt as if some dreadful spell had been removed from his spirit. Few would expect to find many points of resemblance between the Grecian mariners of the heroic ages who navigated the galleys, described by Homer, to Troy, and the sailors of George II.; yet here, in these English seamen, was the same feeling regarding the unburied dead which prevailed in ancient times."*

The Desire for Posterity, though it seem perhaps hardly sufficient to account for the acts of the Superstitiosi, is so deeply implanted in the human heart, and is so connected with Man's instinctive longing and striving after Immortality, that, after all, it may possibly have been their ultimate and only motive; especially when we consider the eccentricities of Paganism† and of all religious fanaticism on the one hand, and the intense humanity and domesticity of minds such as Dr. Arnold's, on the other hand. Of the latter it has been said:

"All persons have their whole and centre, to which their tastes and feelings attach. Arnold's whole was the house, the oikia, the family.... A family was a temple and church with Arnold, -a living sanctuary and focus of religious joy,—a paradise, a heaven upon earth. It was the very cream of human feeling and sentiment, and the very well-spring of spiritual hopes and aspirations. He thought and he taught, and he worked and he played, and he looked at Sun, and Earth, and Sky, with a domestic heart. The horizon of family life mixed with the skiey life above, and the Earthly Landscape melted, by a quiet process of nature, into the Heavenly one." Dr. Arnold himself declared: "I do not wonder that it was thought a great misfortune to die childless in old times, when they had not fuller light it seems so completely wiping a man out of existence.' The anniversaries of domestic events the passing away of successive generations-the entrance of his sons on the * See Tales of Adventure by Sea and Land, London, James Burns, 1847, p. 121.

-

"It is the demand of nature itself, What shall we

do to have Eternal Life? The Desire of Immortality and of the Knowledge of that whereby it may be attained, is so natural unto all men, that even they which are not persuaded that they shall, do notwithstanding wish that they might, know a way how to see no end of life. A longing, therefore, to be saved, without understanding the true way how, hath been the cause of all the Superstitions in the world."-Hooker, Serm. ii. § 23.

The Christian Remembrancer, 1844, vol. viii. p. 562.

chords of his nature, and made him blend with every prospect of the Future, the keen sense of the continuance fortunes of his children, and to unite the thought of them (80 to speak) of his own existence in the good and evil with the yet more solemn feeling, with which he was at all times wont to regard the blessing' of a whole house transplanted entire from Earth and Heaven, without one failure.'" Dr. Arnold's Life, DRO

This passage reminds one of what the Son of Sirach

5847

says: "He that teacheth his son grieveth the enemy; and before his friends he shall rejoice of him. Though his father die, yet he is as though he were not dead, for he hath left one behind him that is like himself. While he lived, he saw and rejoiced in him; and when he died, Ire was not sorrowful. He left behind him an avenger against his enemies, some that shall requite kindness to

his friends." Ecclus. xxx. 3-6.

"

Bacon (Essay xxvii.) uses similar language with regard to Friends:

It was a sparing speech of the Ancients to say, 'That a Friend is another himself;' for that a Friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, and die many times in desire of some things which they principally take to heart; the bestowing of a Child, the finishing of a Work, or the like. If a man have a true Friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him; so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires."

In the same Essay, Bacon mentions that Septimius Severus had such a friendship for Plantianus, that he preferred him to his own son, and wrote to the Senate, in the words of the Superstitiosi: "I love this man so well, that I wish he may overlive me."

As MR. FARRER (2nd S. v. 243.) has kindly directed my attention to an inscription, quoted by Taylor in his Civil Law, in which are the words "Infeliciss. Parens Afflictus Præposteritate," I should be glad to know whether there are similar EIRIONNACH. inscriptions on record ?

"ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS:

BYRON AND RIDGE, HIS FIRST PRINTER.

As affecting the accuracy of literary history, it may be worth while to correct a mistake into which Moore, in his Life of Byron, has, I believe, fallen, in connexion with his account of the publication of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In 1806 Lord Byron, being on a visit at Southwell, employed Mr. Ridge, a bookseller at the neighbouring town of Newark, to print," merely for the perusal of a few friends to whom they are dedicated," a few copies of Fugitive Pieces in verse; and who, adds the noble author, "will look upon them with indulgence: and as most of them were composed between the age of fifteen and seventeen, their defects will be pardoned or forgotten in the youth and inexperience of the writer." "Of this edition," says Moore, "which

which subsisted among ourselves down to the last gener ation, in the Baronies of Forth and Bargie, in the county of Wexford in Ireland. The remnant of the first English or Welsh adventurers under Strongbow, who obtained lands in that district, maintained themselves through a long series of generations, distinct in manners, usages, costume, and even language, and both from the Irish population, and, what is more remarkable, from the English settlers of all subsequent periods."

It would be an amusing book that should consist of the innumerable "facts," which, once asserted, are endlessly repeated-though proved to be false; and the multitude of "scraps" which are, for the same reason, as worthless as the "castoff garments" for which the importunate Jew clamours on Monday mornings with his sonorous "Aul clo."*

Exactly thirty years ago the Count Benedetto Giovanelli proved that these so-called Cimbri and Teutones the representatives of a remnant that escaped the sword of Marius were merely a colony of Germans, in the true ethnological sense of the word, who settled in Italy during the reign of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who died in the year of Our Lord 526! (Dell' Origine dei Sette e Tredeci communi e d altre Popolazioni Alemanne abitanti frà l'Adige e la Brenta nel Trentino, nel Veronese, e nel Vicentino. Memoria del C. Benedetto Giovanelli, Trento, 1828.) And in 1829, M. W. F. Edwards, in his brochure Des Caractères Physiologiques des Races Humaines, p. 107. et seq., superadded his own valuable experience to the archæological investigations of Giovanelli, as follows:

"I cannot dismiss the subject of Italy without speaking of a tribe whose ancestors are supposed to have played a conspicuous part in history. In the mountains of the Vicentino and Veronese territory there exists an exotic population. It is considered to be a remnant of the Cimbri vanquished by Marius: it even goes by that name, or that of the inhabitants of the Seven or the Thirteen Communi,' according to the province in which the tribe happens to be situated. I had reason, on all accounts, to wish to become acquainted with them.. It is said that a king of Denmark paid them a visit, and acknowledged them to be his fellow-countrymen. If they really spoke a Danish dialect, and were yet the descendants of the Cimbri vanquished by Marius, their affinity with the Galli called Kimris could scarcely subsist,unless we suppose that, even at the time of Marius, they had already changed their language, -an opinion which you [he is addressing Amédée Thierry], I think, would reject. Before approaching them, I was convinced that they could not even on that hypothesis-have issued from the Cimbric Chersonesus. At Bologna, Mezzofante had shown me a specimen of their language - the Lord's Prayer: and far from being Danish, it was such easy German, that I understood every word of it at once. When I arrived at Vicenza, and subsequently at Verona, the advanced state of the season prevented me from extending my journey into the mountains. Count Orti, of

The reader may probably remember Byron's detection of "blunders in Lord Bacon's Apothegms. See Byron's Works, vol. xvi. 120., ed. 1833. In this edition the Index-reference to this matter is wrong, being vol. XV. instead of xvi.

Verona, had the kindness to collect for me a few of these mountaineers, who frequently visit that city. I therefore both saw and heard them speak. If I was not warranted in coming to any conclusion from their features, on account of the smallness of their number, I could, at least, form a judgment respecting the nature of their language. I addressed one of them in German: he replied in his own language, and we understood each other perfectly. I was thus convinced that their dialect is Germanic, and in no respect whatever Scandinavian. A comparison of the languages alone was sufficient to con vince me that they could not be a remnant of the Cimbri of Marius. I was then unacquainted with the historical researches which Count Giovanelli had just published respecting these supposed Cimbri. Induced by similar reasons to these which I have stated, and others which I omit, Count Giovanelli consulted the authors who wrote during the epoch of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, for the purpose of finding the traces of any Ger-er man people who might have established themselves in these regions before the invasion of the Lombards. In these writers he found authentic documents attesting that establishment and its epoch. Ennodius, in his Panegyric of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, in Italy, addresses the following words to the latter: Thou hast received the Germans within the confines of Italy, and thou hast established them without prejudice to the Roman proprietors of the land. Thus this people has found a king in the place of the one whom it deserved to lose. It has become the guardian of the Latin Empire, whose frontiers it had so often ravaged: it has been fortunate in abandoning its own country, since it has thus obtained the riches of ours?'* A letter of Theodoric, king of Italy, written by Cassiodorus, and addressed to Clovis, king of the Franks, explains the cause and the circumstances of

immigration:Your victorious hand has vanquished the German people, struck down by powerful disasters; but moderate your resentment against those unfortunate remnants of the nation, for they deserve pardon, since they have sought an asylum under the protection of your relatives. Be merciful towards those who in their terror have hidden themselves in our confines. Let

it suffice that their king has fallen, together with the pride of his nation.' + After these formal historical vouchers, it is evident that these supposed Cimbri are Southern Germans belonging to the confederation of the Allemanni, whose name was subsequently extended to the people of all Germany."

It is much to be regretted that Edwards did not visit this isolated people, so as to give to Ethnology those important details which it craves, respecting the persistence of Races through an immense lapse of time. But, after all, what is this persistence of only some 1300 years comwhich has pared with that of the Hebrew Race

* "Quid quod à te Allemanniæ generalitas intra Italia terminos sine detrimento Romanæ possessionis inclusa est, cui evenit habere regem, postquam meruit perdidisse. Facta est Latialis custos Imperii, semper nostrorum po-0 pulatione grassata. Cui feliciter cessit fugisse patriam suam, nam sic adepta est soli nostri opulentiam."-Opera, 311. ed. 1611.

Allemannicos populos, causis fortioribus inclinatos, victrici dextrâ subdidistis, etc. Sed motus vestros in fessas reliquias temperate; quià jure gratiæ merenture evadere, quos ad parentum vestrorum defensionem respicitis confugisse. Estote illis remissi qui nostris finibus celantur exterriti, etc. Sufficiat illum regem cum gentis sume superbiâ cecidisse.". Cassiod. Var., 1. ii. 41.