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

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.
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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 medi?val 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 such mixture generally tends. Nothing could be more appropriate than the application of the term to the "infima latinitas" of the Middle Ages; and from "mongrel" the transition to the name of the genus from that of the degenerate species appears to me to be very easy, though fanciful.
J. B--T.
Thomas Wright of Durham.--In the Philosophical Magazine for April, 1848, I gave an account of the "Original Theory or new Hypothesis of the Universe" of Thomas Wright, whose anticipations of modern speculation on the milky way, the central sun, and some other points, make him one of the most remarkable astronomical thinkers of his day. In the biography in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1793, he is described as struggling for a livelihood when a young man, and no account is given of