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

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.]
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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 �� 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 ��ternelle, Et les tristes discours Que te met en l'esprit l'amiti�� paternelle L'augmenteront toujours.
"Le malheur de ta fille au tombeau descendue, Par un commun tr��pas, Est-ce quelque d��dale, o�� 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 m��pris.
"Mais elles estoit du monde, o�� les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin: Et Rose elle a v��cu 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, d��j�� 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 poss��de Ce qui me fut si cher; Mais en un accident qui n'a point de rem��de, 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-��-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 ?quo pulsat pede," &c. of Horace, which a countryman of the poet is said to have less happily rendered "La pale 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 all required.
Bishop Hurd, in a note on the _Epistle to Augustus_, p. 72., says:
"Malherbe was to the French pretty much what Horace had been to Latin poetry. These great writers had, each of them, rescued the lyric muse of their country out of the rude ungracious hands of their old poets. And, as their talents of a _good ear_, _elegant judgment_, and _correct expression_, were the same, they presented her to the public in all the air and grace, and yet _severity_, of beauty, of which her form was susceptible."
S.W. SINGER.
Mickleham, July 2. 1850.
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"DIES IR?, DIES ILLA."
In reply to the first of Mr. SIMPSON's Queries (Vol. ii., p. 72.) relative to the magnificent sequence _Dies ir?_, I beg to say that the author of it is utterly unknown. The following references may be sufficient:--Card. Bona, _Rer. Liturgic._ lib. ii. cap. vi. p. 336., Rom?, 1671; or, if possible, Sala's edition, tom. iii. p 143., Aug. Turin. 1753; Gavantus, tom. i. pp. 274-5., Lugd. 1664; and the Additions by Merati, i. 117-18., Aug. Vindel, 1740; Zaccaria, _Biblioth. Ritual._ tom. i.