Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 | Page 6

he that moves my bones."
This is given upon the authority of Dr. Nathan Drake's work on
Shakspeare, in two vols. 4to. Now in this work much is given which is
copied into the memoir, but I do not there find this anecdote, and
perhaps some reader of "N. & Q." may supply this deficiency, and state
where I may find it. I may be allowed to state, that Pope's skull was
similarly stolen and another substituted.
I annex Wheler's remark that no violation of the grave had, up to the
time of his work, taken place.
"Through a lapse of nearly two hundred years have his ashes remained
undisturbed, and it is to be hoped no sacrilegious hand will ever be
found to violate the sacred repository."--History of
Stratford-upon-Avon, by R. B. Wheler (circa 1805?), 8vo.
A SUBSCRIBER.
On a Passage in "Macbeth."--MR. SINGLETON (Vol. vii., p. 404.)
says, "Vaulting ambition, that o'erleaps itself," is nonsense--the thing is
impossible; and proposes that "vaulting ambition" should "rest his hand
upon the pommel, and o'erleap the saddle (sell)," a thing not

uncommon in the feats of horsemanship.
Did MR. SINGLETON never o'erleap himself, and be too late--later
than himself intended? Did he never, in his younger days, amuse
himself with a soprasalto; or with what Donne calls a "vaulter's
sombersault?" Did he never hear of any little plunderer, climbing a wall,
o'erreaching himself to pluck an apple, and falling on the other side,
into the hands of the gardener? "By like," says Sir Thomas More, "the
manne there overshotte himself."
What was the manne about? Attempting such a perilous gambol,
perhaps, as correcting Shakspeare.
To {overleap, overreach, overshoot} himself are merely, to {leap, reach,
shoot}, over or beyond the mark himself intended.
Q.
Bloomsbury.
P.S.--MR. ARROWSMITH reminds us of the old saw, that "great wits
jump." He should recollect also that they sometimes nod.
* * * * *
Minor Notes.
Lemon-juice administered in Gout and Rheumatism.--At a time when
lemon-juice seems to be frequently administered in gout and
rheumatism, as though it were an entirely new remedy, I have been
somewhat amused at the following passage, which may also interest
some of your readers; it occurs in Scelta di Lettere Familiari degli
Autori più celebri ad uso degli studiosi della lingua Italiana, p. 36., in
a letter "Di Don Francesco a Teodoro Villa":
"Io non posso star meglio di quel che sto, e forse perchè uso di spesso il
bagno freddo, e beo limonata a pranzo e a cena da molti mesi. Questa è
la mia quotidiana bevanda, e dacche mi ci sono messo, m' ha fatto un

bene che non si puo dire. Di quelle doglie di capo, {218} che un tempo
mi sconquassavano le tempie, non ne sento più una. Le vertigini, che
un tratto mi favorivano sì di spesso, se ne sono ite. Sino un reumatismo,
che m' aveva afferrato per un braccio, s' e dileguato, così ch'io farei ora
alla lotta col più valente marinaro calabrese che sia. L' appetito mio
pizzica del vorace. Che buona cosa il sugo d' un limone spremato nell'
acqua, e indolciato con un po' di zucchero! Fa di provarlo, Teodoro.
Chi sa che non assesti il capo e lo stomaco auche a te."
S. G. C.
Weather Proverbs.--Are these proverbs worth recording?
"Rain before seven, fine before eleven."
"A mackerel sky and mare's tails, Make lofty ships carry low sails."
"If the rain comes before the wind, Lower your topsails and take them
in: If the wind comes before the rain, Lower your topsails and hoist
them again."
The expressions in the latter two are maritime, and the rhymes not very
choice; but they hold equally in terrestrial matters, and I have seldom
found them wrong.
RUBI.
Dog Latin.--The answer of one of your late correspondents (E. M. B.,
Vol. vii., p. 622.) on the subject of "Latin--Latiner," has revived a
Query in your First Volume (p. 230.) as to the origin of this expression
which does not appear to have been answered. I do not remember
having seen any explanation of the term, but I have arrived at one for
myself, and present it to your readers for what it is worth. Nothing, it
must be admitted, can be more inconsistent with the usual forms of
language than the Latin of mediæval periods; it is often, in fact, not
Latin at all, but merely a Latin form given to simple English or other
words, and admitting of the greatest variety. Now of all animals the
distinctions of breed are perhaps more numerous in the canine race than

any other. The word "mongrel," originally applied to one of these
quadruped combinations of variety, has long been used to signify
anything in which mixture of class existed, especially of a debasing
kind, to which