Notes and Queries, Number 37, July 13, 1850 | Page 9

lines were addressed to one of the popes,
whose life, before his elevation to the see of St. Peter, had been passed
in excesses but little suited to the clerical profession.
They were addressed to him _orally_, by one of his former associates,
who met and stopped him while on his way to or from some high
festival of the Church, and who plucked aside, as he spoke, the
gorgeous robes in which his quondam fellow-reveller was dressed.
The reply of the pope was prompt, and, like the question, in a rhyming
Latin couplet. I wish, if possible, to discover, the name of the
pope;--the terms of his reply;--the name of the bold man who "_put him
to the question_;"--by what writer the anecdote is recorded, or on what

authority it rests.
C. FORBES.
Temple.
_The Carpenter's Maggot._--I have in my possession a MS. tune called
the "Carpenter's Maggot," which, until within the last few years, was
played (I know for nearly a century) at the annual dinner of the Livery
of the Carpenters' Company. Can any of your readers inform me where
the original is to be found, and also the origin of the word "Maggot" as
applied to a tune?
F.T.P.
_Lord Delamere._--Can any of your readers give me the words of a
song called "Lord Delamere," beginning:
"I wonder very much that our sovereign king, So many large taxes
upon this land should bring."
And inform me to what political event this song, of which I have an
imperfect MS. copy, refers.
EDWARD PEACOCK, JUN.
_Henry and the Nut-brown Maid._--SEARCH would be obliged for
any information as to the authorship of this beautiful ballad.
[Mr. Wright, in his handsome black-letter reprint, published by
Pickering in 1836, states, that "it is impossible to fix the date of this
ballad," and has not attempted to trace the authorship. We shall be very
glad if SEARCH's Query should produce information upon either of
these points.]
* * * * *
REPLIES.
FRENCH POEM BY MALHERBE.
The two stanzas your correspondent E.R.C.B. has cited (Vol. ii., p. 71.)
are from an elegiac poem by MALHERBE (who died in 1628, at the
good old age of seventy-three), which is entitled _Consolation à
Monsieur Du Perrier sur la Mort de sa Fille_. It has always been a great
favorite of mine; for, like Gray's Elegy and the celebrated Coplas of
Jorge Manrique on the death of his father, beside its philosophic
moralising strain, it has that pathetic character which makes its way at
once to the heart. I will transcribe the first four stanzas for the sake of
the beauty of the fourth:--
"Ta douleur, Du Perrier, sera done éternelle, Et les tristes discours Que

te met en l'esprit l'amitié paternelle L'augmenteront toujours.
"Le malheur de ta fille au tombeau descendue, Par un commun trépas,
Est-ce quelque dédale, où ta raison perdue Ne se retrouve pas?
"Je sai de quels appas son enfance estoit pleine; Et n'ay pas entrepris,
Injurieux ami, de soulager ta peine Avecque son mépris.
"Mais elles estoit du monde, où les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin:
Et Rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin."
The whole poem consists of twenty-one stanzas and should be read as a
whole; but there are several other striking passages. The consolation the
poet offers to his friend breathes the spirit of Epictetus:--
"De moy, déjà deux fois d'une pareille foudre Je me suis vu perclus, Et
deux fois la raison m'a si bien fait resoudre, Qu'il ne m'en souvient plus.
"Non qu'il ne me soit grief que la terre possède Ce qui me fut si cher;
Mais en un accident qui n'a point de remède, II n'en faut point
chercher."
Then follow the two stanzas cited by your correspondent, and the
closing verse is:--
"De murmurer contre-elle et perdre patience, Il est mal-à-propos:
Vouloir ce que Dieu veut, est la seule science Qui nous met en repos."
The stanza beginning "Le pauvre en sa cabane," is an admirable
imitation of the "Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede," &c. of Horace, which
a countryman of the poet is said to have less happily rendered "La pâle
mort avec son pied de cheval," &c.
Malherbe has been duly appreciated in France: his works, in one
edition, are accompanied by an elaborate comment by Menage and
Chevreau: Racan wrote his life, and Godeau, Bishop of Vence, a
panegyrical preface. He was a man of wit, and ready at an impromptu;
yet it is said, that in writing a consolotary poem to the President de
Verdun, on the death of his wife, he was so long {105} in bringing his
verses to that degree of perfection which satisfied his own fastidious
taste, that the president was happily remarried, and the consolation not
at