Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 | Page 9

Ideas or Inventions.--In Vol. iii., pp. 62. 69., are two interesting instances of this sort. In Wilson's Life of Defoe, he gives the titles of two works which I have often sought in vain, and which he classes amongst the writings of that voluminous author. They run thus:
"Augusta triumphans, or the way to make London the most flourishing city in the universe. I. By establishing a university where gentlemen may have an academical education under the eye of their friends [the London University anticipated]. II. To prevent much murder, &c., by an hospital for foundlings. III. By suppressing pretended madhouses, where many of the fair sex are unjustly confin'd while their husbands keep mistresses, and many widows are lock'd up for the sake of their jointures. IV. To save our youth from destruction by suppressing gaming tables, and Sunday debauches. V. To avoid the expensive importation of foreign musicians by promoting an academy of our own, [Anticipation of the Royal Academy of Music], &c. &c. London: T. Warner. 1728. 8vo."
"Second Thoughts are Best; or a further Improvement of a late Scheme to prevent Street Robberies, by which our Streets will be so strongly guarded and so gloriously illuminated, that any Part of London will be as safe and pleasant at Midnight as at Noonday; and Burglary totally impracticable [a remarkable anticipation of the present state of things in the principal thoroughfares]. With some Thoughts for suppressing Robberies in all the Public Roads of England [rural police anticipated]. Humbly offer'd for the Good of his Country, submitted to the Consideration of Parliament, and dedicated to his Sacred Majesty Geo. II., by Andrew Moreton, Esq. [supposed to be an assumed name; a common practice of De Foe's]. London. W. Meadows, 1729."
R. D. H.
"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon!"--The above text is often quoted as not being in accordance with the present state of our astronomical knowledge, and many well-known commentators on the Bible have adopted the same opinion.
I find Kitto, in the Pictorial Bible, characterising it as "an example of those bold metaphors and poetical forms of expression with which the Scriptures abound." Scott (edit. 1850) states that "it would have been improper that he (Joshua) should speak, or that the miracle should be recorded according to the terms of modern astronomy."
Mant (edit. 1830) says: "It is remarkable that the terms in which this event is recorded do not agree with what is now known rewarding the motion of the heavenly bodies."
Is it certain that Joshua's words are absolutely at variance and irreconcileable with the present state of astronomical knowledge? Astronomers allow that the sun is the centre and governing principle of our system, and that it revolves on its axis. What readier means, then, could Joshua have found for staying the motion of our planet, than by commanding the revolving centre, in its inseparable connexion with all planetary motion, to stand still?
I. K.
Langley's Polidore Vergile.--At the back of the title of a copy of Langley's Abridgement of Polidore Vergile, 8vo., Lond. 1546, seen by Hearne in 1719, was the following MS. note:
"At Oxforde, the yere 1546, browt down to Seynbury by John Darbye, pryse 14d. When I kept Mr. Letymer's shype I bout thys boke when the Testament was obberagatyd that shepe herdys myght not red hit. I prey God amende that blyndnes. Wryt by Robert Wyllyams, kepynge shepe uppon Seynbury Hill."
At the end of the dedication to Sir Ant. Denny is also written:
"Robert Wyllyams Boke, bowgyt by John Darby at Oesforth, and brot to Seynbury."
The Seynbury here mentioned was doubtless Saintbury in Gloucestershire, on the borders of Worcestershire, near Chipping Campden, and about four miles distant from Evesham.
P. B.
Luther and Ignatius Loyola.--A parallel or counterpoising view of these two characters has been quoted in several publications, some of recent date; but in all it is attributed to a wrong source. Mr. M^cGavin, in his Protestant, Letter CXL., (p. 582, ed. 1846); Mr. Overbury, in his Jesuits (Lond. 1846), p. 8., and, of course, the authority from which he borrows, Poynder's History of the Jesuits; and Dr. Dowling's Romanism, p. 473. {138} (ed. New York, 1849)--all these give, as the authority for the contrasted characters quoted, Damian's Synopsis Societatis Jesu. Nothing of the kind appears there; but in the Imago primi S?culi Soc. Jesu, 1640, it will be found, p. 19.
The misleader of these writers seems to have been Villers, in his Prize Essay on the Reformation, or his annotator, Mills, p. 374.
NOVUS.
P.S. (Vol. ii., p. 375.).--The lines quoted by Dr. Pusey, I have some notion, belong to a Romish, not a Socinian, writer.
Winkel.--I thought, some time since, that the places bearing this name in England, were taken from the like German word, signifying a corner. I find, on examination, that there is a village in Rhenish Prussia named "Winkel." It