Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 | Page 6

guilt of flattery and slander violate the bands both of
friendship and charity."
Thus writes Benlowes:
"He who shall contribute to the improvement of the author, either by a
prudent detection of an errour, or a sober communication of an
irrefragable truth, deserves the venerable esteem and welcome of a
good Angel. And he who by a candid adherence unto, and a fruitful

participation of, what is good and pious, confirms him therein, merits
the honourable entertainment of a faithful friend: but he who shall
traduce him in absence for what in presence he would seem to applaud,
incurres the double guilt of flattery and slander: and he who wounds
him with ill reading and misprision, does execution on him before
judgement."
G. A. S.
Traditions from remote Periods through few Links (Vol. iii., p.
206.).--The communication of H. J. B., showing how a subject of our
beloved Queen Victoria can, with the intervention, as a lawyer would
say, of "three lives," connect herself with one who was a liegeman of
that very dissimilar monarch, Richard III., reminds me of a fact which I
have long determined in some way to commit to record. It is this: My
father, who is only sixty-eight years old, is connected in a similar mode
with a person who had the plague during the prevalence of that awful
scourge in the metropolis in the year 1665, with the intervention of one
life only. My grandfather, John Lower of Alfriston, co. Sussex,
distinctly remembered an aged woman, who died at the adjacent village
of Berwick at about ninety, and who had, in her fourth year, recovered
from that frightful disease. Should it please Providence to spare my
father's life to see his eighty-third birthday, the recollections of three
persons will thus connect events separated by a period of two centuries.
I may take this opportunity of mentioning a fact which may interest
such of the readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES" as are students of
natural history. My grandfather, who was born in the year 1735 (being
the son of Henry Lower, born on the night of the memorable storm of
November, 1703), was among the very last of those who engaged in the
sport of bustard-hunting in the South Downs. This bird has been extinct,
on at least the eastern portion of that range, for upwards of a century.
The sport was carried on by means of dogs which hunted down the
poor birds, and the sticks of the human (or inhuman?) pursuers did the
rest. My ancestor was "in at the death" of the last of the bustards,
somewhere about 1747, being then twelve years old.
MARK ANTONY LOWER.

Lewes.
Longevity.--Some few years since I had occasion to search the parish
registers of Evercreech in Somersetshire, in one of which I met with the
following astounding entry:--
"1588. 20th Dec., Jane Britton of Evercriche, a Maidden, as she
afirmed of the age of 200 years, was buried."
I can scarcely believe my own note, made however, with the register
before me.
C. W. B.
The Thirty-nine Articles.--The following MS. note is in a copy which I
have (4to. 1683):
"Sept. 13. 1702.
"Memor. That Mr. Thomas King did then Read publickly and distinctly,
in a full Congregation during the Time of Divine Service, the nine and
thirty Articles of Religion, and Declare his Assent and Consent, &c.,
according as is Required in the Act of Uniformity, In the Parish Church
of Ellesmere, In the Presence of Us, who had the said Articles printed
before Us.
E. KYNASTON. THO. EYTON. AR. LANGFORD. WILL.
SWANWICK."
J. O. M.
Emendation of a Passage in Virgil.--Allow me to send you an
emendation of the usual readings of the 513th line of the first Georgic,
which occurred to me many years ago, and which still appears to me
more satisfactory than any which have hitherto been suggested.
"Ut, cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigæ, Ac sunt in spatio,--en
frustra retinacula tendens, Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus
habenas."

"When the chariots have passed the barriers, And are now in the open
course,-- Lo, the charioteer vainly pulling the Reins, is carried along by
the steeds."
The usual readings are "addunt in spatio," or "addunt in spatia," which
are difficult to be {238} explained or understood. The emendation
which I suggest is, I think, simple, easy, and intelligible; and I can
imagine how the word "addunt" arose from the mistake of a transcriber,
by supposing that the MS. was written thus:--ac[s]vnt, with a long [s]
closely following the c, so as to resemble a d.
SCRIBLERUS.
Poems discovered among the Papers of Sir K. Digby.--In page 18. of
your current volume is a poem of which I am anxious to know the
author: it is entitled the "Houre-Glasse." Among the poems of
Amaltheus I