Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 | Page 3

bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing

melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, . . . . he, and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain."
Plato Phædo, § 77. (p. 85., Steph.):
"Men, because they fear death themselves, slander the swans, and say
that they sing from pain lamenting their death, and do not consider that
no bird sings when hungry, or cold, or suffering any other pain; no, not
even the nightingale, and the swallow, and the hoopoe, which you
know are said to sing for grief," &c.
* * * * *
Hooker, E. P. I. c.5. § 2.:
"All things therefore coveting as much as may be to be like unto God in
being ever, that which cannot hereunto attain personally doth seek to
continue itself another way, that is, by offspring and propagation."
Clem. Alex. Strom. II. 23. § 138. (p. 181. Sylb.)
Sir J. Davies. Immortality of the Soul, sect 7.:
"And though the soul could cast spiritual seed, Yet would she not,
because she never dies; For mortal things desire their like to breed,
That so they may their kind immortalise."
{459}
Plato Sympos. §32. (p. 207. D. Steph.):
"Mortal natures seek to attain, suffer as they can, to immortality; but
they can attain to it by this generation only; for thus they ever leave a
new behind them to supply the place of the old." Compare § 31.
"Generation immortalises the mortal, so for as it can be
immortalised."--Plato Leg. iv. (p. 721. G.), vi. § 17. (p. 773. E.); Ocell.
Lucan. iv. § 2.

* * * * *
Butler, Serm. I. on Human Nature (p. 12. Oxford, 1844):
"Which [external goods], according to a very ancient observation, the
most abandoned would choose to obtain by innocent means, if they
there as easy, and as effectual to their end."
Dr. Whewell has not, I think, in his edition, pointed out the passage
alluded to, Cic. de Fin. III., c. 11. § 36.:
"Quis est enim, aut quis unquam fuit aut avaritiâ tam ardenti, aut tam
effrenatis cupiditatibus, ut eamdem illam rem, quam adipisci scelere
quovis velit, non multis partibus malit ad sese, etiam omni impunitate
proposita, sine facinore, quam illo modo pervenire?"
J. E. B. MAYOR.
Marlborough College.
* * * * *
SHAKSPEARE AND THE OLD ENGLISH ACTORS IN
GERMANY.
My studies on the first appearance of Shakspeare on the German stage,
by means of the so-called "English Comedians" who from the end of
the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century visited Germany
and the Netherlands, led me to the following passage of a Dutch author:
"In the Voyages of Vincent le Blanc through England, I met with a
description of the representation of a most absurd tragedy, which I
recognised to be the Titus Andronicus of Shakspeare."
I have examined the Voyages of Vincent le Blanc without having been
able to discover the passage alluded to; and as the Dutch author says
that some time had elapsed between his first reading those Voyages and
the composition of his treatise, and as he seems to quote only from
memory, I am led to believe his having confounded Vincent le Blanc

with some other traveller of the same period.
Undoubtedly one of your numerous readers can furnish me with the
title of the work in which such a description occurs, or with the name
of some other foreign traveller who may have visited England at the
period alluded to, and in whose works I may find the description
mentioned above.
ALBERT COHN.
Berlin, Nov. 19. 1850.
* * * * *
TEN CHILDREN AT A BIRTH.
The following circumstance, although perhaps hardly coming within
the ordinary scope of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," appears to me too
curious to allow a slight doubt to prevent the attempt to place it on
permanent and accessible record. Chancing, the other day, to overhear
an ancient gossip say that there was living in her neighbourhood a
woman who was one of ten children born at the same time, I laughed at
her for her credulity,--as well I might! As, however, she mentioned a
name and place where I might satisfy myself, I called the next day at a
small greengrocer's shop in this town, the mistress of which, a
good-looking, respectable woman, aged seventy, at once assured me
that her mother, whose name was Birch, and came from Derby, had
been delivered of ten children; my informant having been the only one
that lived, "the other nine," she added, "being in bottle in the Museum
in London!" On mentioning the matter to a respectable professional
gentleman of this place, he said "he had a recollection of the existence
of a glass