Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 | Page 8

shall feel much obliged by information on the following points:--
1. Whether any portrait of Thomas Earl of Ormonde has been published? He died in the year 1614.
2. How many engraved portraits of Thomas, the famous Lord Ossory, have been issued? their dates, and the engravers' names.
3. How many engraved portraits of the first and second Dukes of Ormonde, respectively, have appeared? their dates, and engravers' names.
JAMES GRAVES.
Kilkenny, Jan. 31. 1851.
Tradescant.--In the inscription on the tomb of the Tradescants in Lambeth churchyard, which it is proposed to restore as soon as possible, these two lines occur:
"These famous antiquarians, that had been Both gardeners to the Rose and Lily queen."
Can any of your readers inform me when the elder Tradescant came over to England, and when he was appointed royal gardener? Was it not in the reign of Elizabeth?
J. C. B.
Lambeth.
Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Craigs.--L. M. M. R. is very anxious to be informed as to the origin of the name of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Craigs, the well-known hill and rocks close to Edinburgh.
Lincoln Missal.--Is a manuscript of the missal, according to the use of the church of Lincoln, known to exist? and, if so, where may it be seen?
EDWARD PEACOCK, JUN.
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Replies.
MEANING OF EISELL.
(Vol. iii., p. 66.)
I must beg a very small portion of your space to reply to your correspondent H. K. S. C., who criticises so pleasantly my remarks on the meaning of "eisell." The question is: Does the meaning MR. SINGER attaches to this word require in the passage cited the expression of quantity to make it definite? I am disposed to think that a definite quantity may be sometimes understood, in a well-defined act, although it be not expressed. On the other hand, your correspondent should know that English idiom requires that the name of a river should be preceded by the definite article, unless it be personified; and that whenever it is used without the article, it is represented by the personal pronoun he. Though a man were able "to drink the Thames dry," he could no more "drink up Thames" than he could drink up Neptune, or the sea-serpent, or do any other impossible feat.
I observed before, that "the notion of drinking up a river would be both unmeaning and out of place." I said this, with the conviction that there was a purpose in everything that Shakspeare wrote; and being still of this persuasion, allow me to protest against the terms "mere verbiage" and "extravagant rant," which your correspondent applies to the passage in question. The poet does not present common things as they appear to all men. Shakspeare's art was equally great, {120} whether he spoke with the tongues of madmen or philosophers. H. K. S. C. cannot conceive why each feat of daring should be a tame possibility, save only the last; but I say that they are all possible; that it was a daring to do not impossible but extravagant feats. As far as quantity is concerned, to eat a crocodile would be more than to eat an ox. Crocodile may be a very delicate meat, for anything I know to the contrary; but I must confess it appears to me to be introduced as something loathsome or repulsive, and (on the poet's part) to cap the absurdity of the preceding feat. The use made by other writers of a passage is one of the most valuable kinds of comment. In a burlesque some years ago, I recollect a passage was brought to a climax with the very words, "Wilt eat a crocodile?" The immediate and natural response was--not "the thing's impossible!" but--"you nasty beast!" What a descent then from the drinking up of a river to a merely disagreeable repast. In the one case the object is clear and intelligible, and the last feat is suggested by the not so difficult but little less extravagant preceding one; in the other, each is unmeaning (in reference to the speaker), unsuggested, and, unconnected with the other; and, regarding the order an artist would observe, out of place.
SAMUEL HICKSON.
St. John's Wood, Jan. 27. 1851.
P.S. In replying to Mr. G. STEPHENS, in reference to the meaning of a passage in the Tempest, I expressed a wish that he would give the meaning of what he called a "common ellipsis" "stated at full." This stands in your columns (Vol. ii., p. 499.) "at first," in which expression I am afraid he would be puzzled to find any meaning.
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I might safely leave H. K. S. C. to the same gentle correction bestowed upon a neighbour of his at Brixton some time since, by MR. HICKSON, but I must not allow him to support his dogmatic and flippant hypercriticism by falsehood and unfounded insinuation, and I therefore beg leave