Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850 | Page 7

prettily sings:
"Lurline hung her head, Turned pale, and then red; And declared his
abruptness in popping the question So soon after dinner had spoilt her
digestion."
This lady's marriage resembled the other in all respects, and I leave you
to decide, and no man is more competent, from your extensive
knowledge of the mythology of Medieval Europe, whether Morgana,
beyond the mere accident of her name, was more likely than Lurline to
have added a word with a puzzling etymology to the languages of
Europe. The word will, I think, be found of Eastern origin, clothed in a
Teutonic form.
After all, Jacob Grimm and Cancianus may interest your readers, and
so I send the Note.
S.H.

Athenæum, Sept. 6. 1850
* * * * *
MINOR NOTES.
_Alderman Beckford._--Gifford (_Ben Jonson_, vol. vi. p. 481.) has
the following note:--
"The giants of Guildhall, thank heaven, yet defend their charge: it only
remains to wish that the citizens may take example by the fate of
Holmeby, and not expose them to an attack to which they will
assuredly be found unequal. It is not altogether owing to their wisdom
that this has not already taken place. For twenty years they were
chained to the car of a profligate buffoon, who dragged them through
every species of ignominy to the verge of rebellion; and their hall is
even yet disgraced with the statue of a worthless negro-monger, in the
act of insulting their sovereign with a speech of which (factious and
brutal as he was) he never uttered one syllable." ... "By my troth,
captain, these are very bitter words."
But Gifford was generally correct in his assertions; and twenty-two
years after his note, I made the following one:--
"It is a curious fact, but a true one, that Beckford did not utter one
syllable of this speech. It was penned by Horne Tooke, and by his art
put on the records of the city and on Beckford's statue, as he told me,
Mr. Braithwaite, Mr. Seyers, &c., at the Athenian Club.
"ISAAC REED.
"See the Times Of July 23. 1838, p. 6."
The worshipful Company of Ironmongers have relegated their statue
from their hall to a lower position: but it still disgraces the Guildhall,
and will continue to do so, as long as any factious demagogue is
permitted to have a place among its members.

L.S.
_The Frozen Horn._--Perhaps it is not generally known that the writer
of _Munchausen's Travels_ borrowed this amusing incident from
Heylin's {263} Mikrokosmos. In the section treating of Muscovy, he
says:--
"This excesse of cold in the ayre, gave occasion to _Castilian_, in his
_Aulicus_, wittily and not incongruously to faine that if two men being
smewhat distant, talke together in the winter, their words will be so
frozen that they cannot be heard: but if the parties in the spring returne
to the same place, their words will melt in the same order that they
were frozen and _spoken_, and be plainly understood."
J.S.
Salisbury.
_Inscription from Roma Subterranea._--If you deem the translation of
this inscription, quoted in Lord Lindsay's fanciful but admirable
_Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, worth a place among your
Notes, it is very heartily at your service.
"Sisto viator Tot ibi trophæa, quot ossa Quot martyres, tot triumphi.
Antra quæ subis, multa quæ cernis marmora, Vel dum silent, Palam
Romæ gloriam loquuntur. Audi quid Echo resonet Subterraneæ Romæ!
Obscura licet Urbis Coemetria Totius patens Orbis Theatrium! Supplex
Loci Sanetitatem venerare, Et post hac sub luto aurum Coelum sub
coeno Sub Româ Romam quærito!"
_Roma Subterranea_, 1651, tom. i. p. 625.
(Inscription abridged.)
Stay, wayfarer--behold In ev'ry mould'ring bone a trophy here. In all
these hosts of martyrs, So many triumphs. These vaults--these
countless tombs, E'en in their very silence Proclaim aloud Rome's glory:
The echo'd fame Of subterranean Rome Rings on the ear. The city's

sepulchres, albeit hidden, Present a spectacle To the wide world patent.
In lowly rev'rence hail this hallow'd spot, And henceforth learn Gold
beneath dross Heav'n below earth, Rome under Rome to find!
F.T.J.B.
Brookthorpe.
_Parallel Passages._--
"_There is an acre sown with royal seed_, the copy of the greatest
change from rich to naked, from cieled roofs to arched coffins, from
living like gods to die like men."--Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Dying_, chap.
i. sect. 1. p. 272. ed. Edin.
"_Here's an acre sown_ indeed With the richest _royalest seeds_, That
the earth did e'er suck in, Since the first man dyed for sin: Here the
bones of birth have cried, Though _gods they were, as men they died_."
F. BEAUMONT
M.W. Oxon.
_A Note on George Herbert's Poems._--In the notes by Coleridge
attached to Pickering's edition of George Herbert's _Poems_, on the
line--
"My flesh beg_u_n unto my soul in pain,"
Coleridge says--
"Either a