Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 | Page 4

He had overtaken them, cometh in fitly and properly [Greek: epilambanetai]."--Id., vol. i. p. 7.
"No time so kindly to preach de Filio hodie genito as hodie."--Id., p. 285.
"A day whereon, as it is most kindly preached, so it will be most kindly practised of all others."--Id., p. 301.
"Respice et plange: first, 'Look and lament' or mourn; which is indeed the most kindly and natural effect of such a spectacle."--Id., vol. ii. p. 130.
"Devotion is the most proper and most kindly work of holiness."--Id., vol. iv. p. 377.
Perhaps the following will be thought so apposite, that I may be spared the labour, and the reader the tedium of perusing a thousand other examples that might be cited:
And there is nothing more kindly than for them that will be touching, to be touched themselves, and to {544} be touched home, in the same kind themselves thought to have touched others."--Id., vol. iv. p. 71.[1]
W. R. ARROWSMITH.
(To be continued.)
[Footnote 1: Kindly is quite a pet word with Andrewes, as, besides the passages quoted, he employs it in nearly the same sense in vol. iii., at pp. 18. 34. 102. 161. 189. 262. 308. 372. 393. 397.; in vol. i., at pp. 100. 125. 151. 194. 214.; in vol. ii. at pp. 53. 157. 307. 313. 338. The same immortal quibbler is also very fond of the word item, using it, as our cousins across the Atlantic and we in Herefordshire do at the present day, for "a hint."]
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DEVONIANISMS.
Miserable.--Miserable is very commonly used in Devonshire in the signification of miserly, with strange effect until one becomes used to it. Hooker the Judicious, a Devonshire man, uses the word in this sense in the Eccl. Polity, book v. ch. lxv. p. 21.:
"By means whereof it cometh also to pass that the mean which is virtue seemeth in the eyes of each extreme an extremity; the liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal miserable, and by the judgment of the miserable lavish."
Few.--Speaking of broth, people in Devon say a few broth in place of a little, or some broth. I find a similar use of the word in a sermon preached in 1550, by Thomas Lever, Fellow of St. John's College, preserved by Strype (in his Eccles. Mem., ii. 422.). Speaking of the poor students of Cambridge, he says:
"At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef among four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else."
Figs, Figgy.--Most commonly raisins are called figs, and plum-pudding figgy pudding. So with plum-cake, as in the following rhymes:--
"Rain, rain, go to Spain, Never come again: When I brew and when I bake, I'll give you a figgy cake."
Against is used like the classical adversùm, in the sense of towards or meeting. I have heard, both in Devonshire and in Ireland, the expression to send against, that is, to send to meet, a person, &c.
The foregoing words and expressions are probably provincialisms rather than Devonianisms, good old English forms of expression; as are, indeed, many of the so-called Hibernicisms.
Pilm, Farroll.--What is the derivation of pilm=dust, so frequently heard in Devon, and its derivatives, pilmy, dusty: it pilmeth? The cover of a book is there called the farroll; what is the derivation of this word?
J. M. B.
Tunbridge Wells.
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THE POEMS OF ROWLEY.
The tests propounded by MR. KEIGHTLEY (Vol. vii. p. 160.) with reference to the authenticity of the poems of Rowley, namely the use of "its," and the absence of the feminine rhyme in e, furnish additional proof, if any were wanting, that Chatterton was the author of those extraordinary productions. Another test often insisted upon is the occurrence, in those poems, of borrowed thoughts--borrowed from poets of a date posterior to that of their pretended origin. Of this there is one instance which seems to have escaped the notice of Chatterton's numerous annotators. It occurs at the commencement of The Tournament, in the line,--
"The worlde bie diffraunce ys ynn orderr founde."
It will be seen that this line, a very remarkable one, has been cleverly condensed from the following passage in Pope's Windsor Forest:--
"But as the world, harmoniously confused, Where order in variety we see; And where, tho' all things differ, all agree."
This sentiment has been repeated by other modern writers. Pope himself has it in the Essay on Man, in this form,--
"The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife Gives all the strength and colour of our life."
It occurs in one of Pascal's Pensées:
"J'écrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-être dans une confusion sans dessein: C'est le véritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le désordre même."
Butler has it in the line,--
"For discords make the sweetest