Notes and Queries, Number 25, April 20, 1850 | Page 5

my soul the trust shall lodge secur'd, With ribs of steel, and
marble heart immur'd,"
he pronounced "very bad." And of some tumid metaphors he says, "All
too forced and over-charged."
At p. 51. Spence says:--"Does it not sound mean to talk of lopping a
man? of lopping away all his posterity? or of trimming him with brazen
sheers? Is there not something mean, where a goddess is represented as
beck'ning and waving her deathless hands; or, when the gods are
dragging those that have provok'd them to destruction by the Links of
fate?" Of the two first instances, Pope says:--"Intended to be comic in a
sarcastic speech." And of the last:--"I think not at all mean, see the
Greek." The remarks are, however, expunged.
The longest remonstrance occurs at p. 6. of the Fifth Dialogue. Spence
had written:--"The _Odyssey_, as a moral poem, exceeds all the
writings of the ancients: it is perpetual in forming the manners, and in
instructing the mind; it sets off the duties of life more fully as well as
more agreeably than the Academy or Lyceum. _Horace ventured to say
thus much of the Iliad, and certainly it may be more justly said of this
later production by the same hand_." For the words in Italics Pope has
substituted:--"Horace, who was so well acquainted with the tenets of
both, has given Homer's poems the preference to either:" and says in a
note:--"I think you are mistaken in limiting this commendation and
judgment of Horace to the Iliad. He says it, at the beginning of his
Epistle, of Homer in general, and afterwards proposes both poems
equally as examples of morality; though the Iliad be mentioned first:
but then follows--'_Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile
proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem_,' &c. of the Odyssey."
At p. 34. Spence says:--"There seems to be something mean and
awkward in this image:--

"'His loose head tottering as with wine opprest Obliquely drops, and
nodding knocks his breast.'"
Here Pope says:--"Sure these are good lines. {397} They are not mine."
Of other passages which please him, he occasionally says,--"This is
good sense." And on one occasion, where Spence had objected, he says
candidly:--"This is bad, indeed,"--"and this."
At p. 50. Spence writes:--"There's a passage which I remember I was
mightily pleased with formerly in reading _Cervantes_, without seeing
any reason for it at that time; tho' I now imagine that which took me in
it comes under this view. Speaking of Don Quixote, the first time that
adventurer came in sight of the ocean, he expresses his sentiments on
this occasion in the following manner:--'He saw the sea, which he had
never seen before, and thought it much bigger than the river at
Salamanca.'" On this occasion Pope suggests,--"Dr. Swift's fable to
Ph----s, of the two asses and Socrates."
S.W. SINGER. April 8. 1850.
* * * * *
FOLK LORE.
_Charm for the Toothache._--The charm which one of your
correspondents has proved to be in use in the south-eastern counties of
England, and another has shown to be practised at Kilkenny, was also
known more than thirty years ago in the north of Scotland. At that time
I was a school-boy at Aberdeen, and a sufferer--probably it was in
March or April, with an easterly wind--from toothache. A worthy
Scotchwoman told me, that the way to be cured of my toothache was to
find a charm for it in the Bible. I averred, as your correspondent the
curate did, that I could not find any such charm. My adviser then
repeated to me the charm, which I wrote down from her dictation. Kind
soul! she could not write herself. It was pretty nearly in the words
which your correspondent has sent you. According to my recollection,
it ran thus:--"Peter sat upon a stone, weeping. And the Lord said unto
him, 'Peter, why weepest thou?' And he answered, and said, 'Lord, my
tooth acheth.' And the Lord said unto him, 'Arise, Peter, thy teeth shall
ache no more.'" "Now," continued my instructress, "if you gang home
and put yon bit screen into your Bible, you'll never be able to say again
that you canna find a charm agin the toothache i' the Bible." This was
her version of the matter, and I have no doubt it was the orthodox one;

for, although one of the most benevolent old souls I ever knew, she was
also one of the most ignorant and superstitious. I kept the written paper,
not in my Bible, but in an old pocket-book for many years, but it has
disappeared.
JOHN BRUCE.
Easter Eggs (No. 16. p. 244.).--Breakfasting on Easter Monday, some
years ago, at the George Inn at Ilminster, in the county of Somerset, in
the palmy days of the Quicksilver Mail, when the table continued