Notes and Queries, Number 38, July 20, 1850 | Page 5

grounded on the assumed fact, that the soul became divine in the same ratio as its connection with the body was loosened or destroyed. In sleep, the unity is weakened but not ended: hence, in sleep, the material being dead, the immaterial, or divine principle, wanders unguided, like a gentle breeze over the unconscious strings of an ?olian harp; and according to the health or disease of the body are pleasing visions or horrid phantoms (_?gri somnia_, as Horace) present to the mind of the sleeper. Before death, the soul, or immaterial principle, is, as it were, on the confines of two worlds, and may possess at the same moment a power which is both prospective and retrospective. At that time its connection with the body being merely nominal, it partakes of that perfectly pure, ethereal, and exalted nature (_quod multo magis faciet post mortem quum omnino corpore excesserit_) which is designed for it hereafter.
As the question is an interesting one, I conclude by asking, through the medium of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," if a belief in this power of prophesy before death be known to exist at the present day?
AUGUSTUS GUEST.
London, July 8.
[Footnote 1: For the assistance of the general reader, I have introduced hasty translations of the several passages quoted.]
[Footnote 2: (And I moreover tell you, and do you meditate well upon it, that) you yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you,--about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, the irreproachable son of Oacus.]
[Footnote 3: Consider now whether I may not be to you the cause of divine anger, in that day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo shall slay you, albeit so mighty, at the Scaean gate.]
[Footnote 4: Wherefore I have an earnest desire to prophesy to you who have condemned me; for I am already arrived at that stage of my existence in which, especially, men utter prophetic sayings, that is, when they are about to die.]
[Footnote 5: That time, indeed, the soul of man appears to be in a manner divine, for to a certain extent it foresees things which are about to happen.]
[Footnote 6: Pythagoras the Samian, and some others of the ancient philosophers, showed that the souls of men were immortal, and that, when they were on the point of separating from the body, they possessed a knowledge of futurity.]
[Footnote 7: The soul, says Aristotle, when on the point of taking its departure from the body, foretells and prophesies things about to happen.]
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Divination at Marriages.--The following practices are very prevalent at marriages in these districts; and as I do not find them noticed by Brand in the last edition of his _Popular Antiquities_, they may perhaps be thought worthy a place in the "NOTES AND QUERIES."
1. Put a wedding ring into the _posset_, and after serving it out, the unmarried person whose cup contains the ring will be the first of the company to be married.
2. Make a common flat cake of flour, water, currants, &c., and put therein a wedding ring and a sixpence. When the company is about to retire on the wedding-day, the cake must be broken and distributed amongst the unmarried females. She who gets the ring in her portion of the cake will shortly be married, and the one who gets the sixpence will die an old maid.
T.T.W.
Burnley, July 9. 1850.
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FRANCIS LENTON THE POET.
In a MS. obituary of the seventeenth century, preserved at Staunton Hall, Leicestershire, I found the following:--
"May 12. 1642. This day died Francis Lenton, of Lincoln's Inn, Gent."
This entry undoubtedly relates to the author of three very rare poetical tracts: 1. _The Young Gallant's Whirligigg_, 1629; 2. _The Innes of Court_, 1634; 3. _Great Brittain's Beauties_, 1638. In the dedication to Sir Julius C?sar, prefixed to the first-named work, the writer speaks of having "once belonged to the _Innes of Court_," and says he was "no usuall poetizer, but, to barre idlenesse, imployed that little talent the Muses conferr'd upon him in this little tract." Sir Egerton Brydges supposed the copy of _The Young Gallant's Whirligigg_ preserved in the library of Sion College to be _unique_; but this is not the case, as the writer knows of two others,--one at Staunton Hall, and another at Tixall Priory in Staffordshire. It has been reprinted by Mr. {118} Halliwell at the end of a volume containing _The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom_, published by the Shakspeare Society. In his prefatory remarks that gentleman says,
"Besides his printed works, Lenton wrote the _Poetical History of Queene Hester_, with the translation of the 83rd Psalm, reflecting upon the present times. MS. dated 1649."
This date must be incorrect, if our entry in the Staunton obituary relates