Various - Notes and Queries, Number 15, February 9, 1850 стр 2.

St. Johns Wood, Jan. 26. 1850.

NOTES FROM FLY-LEAVES, NO. 6

In a copy of Burnets Telluris Theoria Sacra (in Latin), containing only the two first books (1 vol. 4to., Lond. 1689), there is the following entry in Bishop Jebbs hand-writing:

From the internal evidence, not only of additional matter in the margin of this copy, but of frequent erasures and substitutions, I was led to suppose it was the authors copy, illustrated by his own annotations and improvements. The supposition is, perhaps, sufficiently corroborated by the following extract from the Biographia Britannica, vol. iii. p. 18.

It seems it was usual with Dr. Burnet, before he published any thing in Latin, to have two or three copies, and no more, printed off, which he kept by him for some time, in order to revise at leisure what he had written currente calamo, and sometimes, when he thought proper, to be communicated to his particular friends for their opinions, &c.

This copy, as it does not differ from any of the editions of 1689, was certainly not one of those proofs. But the Doctors habit of annotating on his own Latin books after they were printed, renders it extremely probable that this book was a preparation for a new edition. It would be well to compare it with the English translation.

The nature of many of the corrections and additions (which are very numerous), evidently shows a preparation for the press. I have compared this copy with the English edition, published in the same year, and find that some of the corrections were adopted; this, however, but in a few instances, while in one, to be mentioned presently, a palpable mistake, corrected in the MS. Latin notes, stands in the translation. The English version differs very materially from the Latin. The author says in his Preface:

This English version is the same in substance with the Latin, though I confess, tis not so properly a translation, as a new composition upon the same ground, there being several additional chapters in it, and several new moulded.

The following are examples of corrections being adopted: P. 6. Latin ed. Quod abunde probabitur in principio libri secundi. For the last word subsequentis is substituted, and the English has following. P. 35. Hippolitus is added to the authorities in the MS.; and in the English, p. 36., Anastasius Sinaiti, S. Gaudentius, Q. Julius Hilarius, Isidorus Hispalensis, and Cassiodorus, are inserted after Lactantius, in both. P. 37. Johannes Damascenus is added after St. Augustin in both. P. 180. a clause is added which seems to have suggested the sentence beginning, Thus we have discharged our promise, &c. But, on the other hand, in p. 8. the allusion to the Orphics, which is struck out in the Latin, is retained in the English; and in the latter there is no notice taken of Empedocles, which is inserted in the margin of the Latin. In p. 11. Ratio naturalis is personified, and governs the verb vidit, which is repeated several times. This is changed by the corrector into vidimus; but in the English passage, though varying much from the Latin, the personification is retained. In p. 58., Dion Cassius is corrected to Xiphilinus; but the mistake is preserved in the English version.

SHAKSPEARES EMPLOYMENT OF MONOSYLLABLES

I offer the following flim-flam to the examination of your readers, all of whom are, I presume, more or less, readers of Shakspeare, and far better qualified than I am to anatomize his writings, and see what bred about his heart.

I start with the proposition that the language of passion is almost invariably broken and abrupt, and the deduction that I wish to draw from this proposition, and the passages that I am about to quote is, thatShakspeare on more than one occasion advisedly used monosyllables, and monosyllables only, when he wished to express violent and overwhelming mental emotion, ex. gratiâ:

In this passage [I bracket Gloster] we find no fewer than forty-two monosyllables following each other consecutively. Again,

After I had kept this among other flim-flams for more than a year in my note-book, I submitted it in a letter to the examination of a friend; his answer was as follows:Your canon is ingenious, especially in the line taken from the sonnet. I doubt it however, much, and rather believe that sound is often sympathetically, and as it were unconsciously, adapted to sense. Moreover, monosyllables are redundant in our tongue, as you will see in the scene you quote. In King John, Act III. Sc. 3., where the King is pausing in his wish to incense Hubert to Arthurs murder, he says:

forty monosyllables.

The very passage he quoted seemed, to my eyes, rather a corroboration of the theory, than an argument against it! I might, I think, have quoted the remainder of Lears speech ending with the words Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, and, with the exception of three words, consisting entirely of monosyllables, and one or two other passages. But I have written enough to express my meaning.

Temple.

NOTES UPON CUNNINGHAMS HAND-BOOK FOR LONDON

Wild House, Drury Lane.Mr. Cunningham says, Why so called, I am not aware. Wild is a corruption of Weld. It was the town mansion of the family of the Welds, of Lutworth Castle.

Compton Street, Soho.Built in the reign of Charles the First by Sir Francis Compton. New Compton Street, when first formed, was denominated Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, the owner of the land. It afterwards changed its name, from a demise of the whole adjoining marsh land, made by Charles the Second to Sir Francis Compton. All this, and the intermediate streets, formed part of the site of the Hospital of St. Giles.

Tottenham Court Road.The old manor-house, sometimes called in ancient records Totham Hall, was, in Henry the Thirds reign, the residence of William de Tottenhall. Part of the old buildings were remaining in 1818.

Shorts Gardens, Drury Lane.Dudley Short, Esq., had a mansion here, with fine garden attached, in the reign of Charles the Second.